It's Raining!

Ahoj,

Hradec is so great! I love it here! I have a wonderful companion Sister Rosenvall who is from Layton Utah. She is one of the young ones that started her papers the second the announcement was made. She and I are very similar so it has been way fun to work together. So last Monday after writing, we had a lesson with an investigator named Radim, he is a character. We teach him in English and he believes in energies and reincarnation. So it is interesting to teach him, you never know where things will go, it is an adventure! After our lesson we started to walk home and who would have thunk, it started to rain. But this was not a light rain, it was an all out down pour! It was so great. We were laughing and singing and getting drenched on our walk home. The streets were flooded and it was just a really great and fun experience. Helped me to realize how awesome my companion is. She was enjoying the situation rather than complaining about being drenched. Dripping wet doesn't even cover it. After wringing out our clothes they were still dripping ha ha. But we have a very similar out look on life, there is no use complaining, it won't help. Enjoy the moment. How many times are you going to get to be in the Czech republic? ENJOY EVERY SECOND! So that is what we did. Unfortunately in the enjoyment I somehow managed to lose the keys to our apartment. But Sister Rosenvall had others so it is all good. We called the Landlord and he said it is fine, we just need to make copies so life is great. No worries!

This week has been a lot of contacting, but Sister Rosenvall is a good sport and doesn't even complain. She pushes herself so hard and is a wonderful worker. The more we talk the more we find how alike we are. She is the 5 of 6 kids. Loves to be with her family whether it be hard work, like remodeling, gardening, etc. She loves to sew and cook she is an outdoors girl and loves sports. She is a sweet heart and when she sees a need she fills it. She is always wanting to go out and find some way to serve others and she is just so happy. I am LOVING it.

We got to go and teach a less active this week, we call her Lexagon. She is Mongolian and speaks little to no Czech and even less English. So we have a pmg in her language and a Book of Mormon so we just have her read and we testify in Czech Her husband and children are not members and didn't really pay attention to the lesson. In fact I think he asked if he should leave and it was in very broken Czech and my companion said yes. I looked at her and asked what he said, she had no idea, but by that time he had left so.... yeah. But as we were leaving, he walked us to the door and the thought to ask him if he wanted to learn came to me so I asked. (trying really hard to follow thoughts like that) He said he had work Monday but... I told him we would be back on Thursday and he was excited. Come to find out he had been taught by the missionaries previously and we have no idea why they stopped but he seemed interested so we are really excited to do that. We want to teach something to the parents and have an activity for the little kids to do or something so I am stoked about that. We are working with a lot of people, unfortunately none of them speak Czech, most of them speak English with us. So we will have to adjust that. but we are teaching and loving it!

Finally I will end with a wonderful little story about an amazing contact. Some background first. We were out trakting some houses, having a blast, when Sister Rosenvall looked at her watch and said, oh we should probably head out. I looked at my watch and was shocked we still had 45+ minutes. So I questioned her, as we only had a few houses left on the block. Then I realized maybe she was being inspired and we are supposed to contact someone on the way home and the timing is right that we have to leave now! So I mentioned that and we decided to contact home. Every person we saw we were stopping and we got some really good contacts, people who were actually talking a little to us but with no real interest. We got to a point where the streets were completely empty and we started talking about all the Book of Mormon musical and how much that has advertised our religion and how great that is. How the church has taken it and run with it and made the best out of it. We then talked about how amazing it is that we can make such progress with something that was initially negative. It was about that time that a man was walking toward us and I contacted him on the Book of Mormon. He said he had heard of the book and then went on to say it was from some atheist on TV and he didn't mean any disrespect or anything but... and he went on to share everything that he heard from this guy. But it was amazing how something so negative about our church made him interested and curious about the book and we were able to sit down and have a nice long bench lesson with him. He had so many questions! He would ask one and then another and talk and talk and talk and as he did he was answering his questions. It was really neat to see him finding answers for himself and to realize that some of his thoughts were wrong. He feels that evelution is fact, he can't see how it isn't possible. We really hope we can meet with him this week and teach more, he wouldn't promise to set up but we got his information and he is going to read in the Book of Mormon. His name is Mustafa! and he is a heart doctor. So yeah it was really a testimony builder to me this week that it doesn't matter if people hear good things or bad things about our church. As long as they are hearing about it they are being prepared. The Lord is amazing and He uses everything to his advantage. He knows how to prepare people. We are so excited to be doing this work! I know it is the Lords work, and He is here laboring with me!

Love you all!

Sestra Hicken