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Ahoj moj milujici rodinu, (my loving family)

If you have any doubts if I am enjoying the work here or not, let me clear that up for you, I LOVE THIS WORK!!!! There are miracles each and every day! Like this morning. We had a lesson with Martin and we were talking about how the lesson didn't go well and we felt like it was way off. But then as we reflected over it and discussed we realized how many miracles were in that little event. Even if we didn't feel like the lesson went well, the Lord is still blessing us and helping us out. So this investigator is meeting just to receive knowledge, he doesn't believe there is a Christ and doesn't care to find out. He believes in energies and has a strong belief in that. We have taught him the first three lessons and he won't pray because he has his own prayer and why would he pray to someone else's god when he already prays to his own. It doesn't matter what we teach, it is the same just a different name and... so it has been a struggle to know where to go with it. We decided that we would just start him reading at the beginning of the Book of Mormon. He said he only reads when it is going to be used in the lesson. SO we are working at teaching from the chapter he is in. It isn't hard as everything relates in the gospel. Just have to make sure we track where he is at. We felt like we needed to ask him about family history and what do you know, it is easily tied in with 1 Nephi 1. Nephi keeps a record. He even brought that up! So we are going to contact our family history consultants and get him going in that. He was interested! Talk about being inspired by the spirit. Then we always ask him for referrals and he has said he will ask and he hasn't. He said he felt more comfortable telling them about our English class and then we could ask them at English if they wanted to meet. So he asked for 10 contacting cards with our English info on it. I was excited, I didn't expect him to want 10. So we will see where that goes over the next few weeks! So stoked! There were lots of little miracles throughout the entire lesson that was like ok, I am so not leading this lesson, the Lord is! It was wonderful!

Poor Mirek, we confused him with the plan of salvation but he is having us over tonight for ovoce kinedliky! We are excited, he loves us and we get to meet his wife and we plan to teach them some plan of salvation and hit hard on the families are forever. They have a daughter in SLC who was married in the temple! So we are excited and know that we can get them out of their atheist ways with the help of the Lord. such a great work we have here!

Our Hercules at the kebab shop has been reading! He is Orthodox and so he talks about this is all new and hard for him to digest, but he wants to read the entire thing! He still wont meet with us but all in due time.

Radim we have met with three times and we will meet again tonight. It is amazing to see the difference in lessons when the investigator reads. He didn't read the first time and was really closed off and then the last two times he has been reading and he has made so much progress! He is back to being open about a baptismal date and he desires to meet with us. He didn't come to church yesterday because he was on vacation but he called us at 5 yesterday asking if there were any activities that we had going on that he could come to. We are so excited. It is so neat to see his progress and see his believes changing!

We had some amazing contacts this week as well that will be turning into investigators in a few short days. It is so amazing how the Lord prepares his children and then places them in our path to teach and bring closer to him. Sister Rosenvall and I are stoked for this week as we have realized the limitations we have been putting on ourselves and we are not allowing that this week. This week is a week of Faith- lots of belief and even more action. We are really excited to see the miracles that are going to be happening. I hope that you all have a wonderful week, I love you all tons and am so appreciative for your love and support. This is the Lords work!

Love Sestra Hicken

P.S. everyone always asks about the language. It is improving daily. It is so neat to see the gift of tongues and interpretation of tongues. I couldn't do it on my own. The other day we were in a contact and I was able to understand and testify and help this atheist desire to learn about the plan of salvation. He said something and didn't think we understood so I restated it in my own words and, it was right on. So exciting to see the Lord helping me out. He went on forever about something and he asked me to translate it for my companion as he was asking her a question it was crazy, he thought my Czech was good enough to do that. Little does he realize it is the Lord working through me, so wonderful! I love this work, these people and this crazy language!