Week 61 -- The foetus of my kidney

In the scriptures we read "the fruit of my loins" and in Czech it is translated as "the foetus of my kidney" I don't know about you but I prefer the kidney foetus phrase.

It has been an eventful, successful week. 

This week we:

1. met a ton of great people, exchanged numbers with them, tried to set up a lesson, and a lot of the time it fell through. It's successful, then agency and prioritizing issues get in the way. That's been tough, but we are still finding like crazy and meeting the Coolest people with a ton of potential! We expected 4 people to come to church. None of them came BUT 3 of our less actives did, and the other elders had a total of 5 investigators at church. The mission is united and successful and we all feel it! 

2. every. other. day. we have sun and a cool breeze and it's beautiful. the other days it's overcast and people are whipping out their scarves again. Make up your mind weather! 

3. Bratr Kolek has hooked up our district this week with a fun service project for his neighbor who has a bee farm. This old man (his look and voice reminded me of a nice old hobbit) and his wife have several bee hives in their backyard. It was so cool to see how it all is supposed to work and how its all organized. We also tried some fresh honey. SCORE. We will return to help build hives. NEXT on Saturday there was a city wide service project. Only a small group of nice people actually showed up though. Our group cleaned up the garbage alongside the river. SO. MUCH. TRASH. Glass bottles, plastic bottles, bags, a backpack, a large rubber tube, clothes for dayyys, I even found underwear! It was insane and sad. But we worked so much and met some cool people! The police officer that walked alongside with us is a greenie officer and we were talking about his work and his english and he was so awesome. We also were talking to all the people in our group about whatnots and getting to know them. The best way to get to know someone is to work alongside with them. It was so fun and since we were right next to the river, you better believe I was tempted to tube down it. but that can wait

4. Culture night! We last minute got together with 2 members and one of our English students, dressed up fancy (casual missionary attire) and saw HAMLET THE OPERA! But wait, it gets better. It was a French Opera. That was a treat. Sestra Witzel and I had to leave an hour early to be home on time. #obedience.

That's about it. We are always meeting the coolest people and having fun and growing together. Our mission is so unified and we are all doing a great and inspired challenge to bring someone to the waters of baptism by June 30th. We pray as a mission every Thursday morning at 7am so we can strengthen our force. Join us! We need the blessings and divine intervention to continue being guided to find the elect and to work with the progressing. 

mám vás ráda!!

-Sestra Hale

 The beekeeper Mr. Sladkovský

 We found this while tracting. Best day ever.

If you zoom in closely, you will see that I am surrounded by a ton of bees flying to and from their hives. ahhh!!

 Let's Clean the Czech event.

Week 60 -- Week 7 already?

(confusing title, I've been counting weeks since Melanie arrived in the country-- 60 weeks since she arrived in the Czech Republic. She titled this week's entry as Week 7. She is on week 7 of this nine week transfer period. After that, she has only one more 9 week transfer and she'll be home, can you believe it?)

Time honestly flies when you're running around 2 cities finding, teaching, organizing, meeting, planning, and having fun.
This past week we were able to go on exchanges. Not only was it a TREAT to be back in Mlada Boleslav and to be with Sestra Fredrickson, but it was also full of miracles! I swear, the Lord loves exchanges because He puts elect people in our path. Sestra Fredrickson and I were chalking the city with "mormon.cz" and "#ldsconf" hoping to catch the eye of the curious on the streets of Mlada Boleslav. We met a man who met a Mormon in New Zealand 5 months ago and this member was able to produce for him, a Czech Book of Mormon! That left such an impression in his heart that someone would go out of their way for him, that when he met us on the street, he was SO ready! HE SAID THESE WORDS: "I am still looking for something but haven't found it yet...I have an open heart to find it" Holy elect, right? Anyway, that was sooo fun and rewarding. Sestra Fredrickson literally cried and we had a few minutes of a tender and sweet spirit as we exchanged numbers with him and testified of the truth of the Gospel. 

I ALSO SAW E! (picture attached) she is a straight up YOUNG WOMAN now. She is gorgeous and has experiences in the Gospel and is so bright and hilarious! I am so grateful I understand Czech nowadays. She was talking about the food diet her mom puts her on because her mom loves E's teeth. She says her mom makes her eat only fruit to a point that E doesn't like the taste of fruit anymore. Then she says she loves visiting her aunt in Russia over the summers except her aunt spoils her with chocolates and candy when E is sad. Plus her aunt cooks well so E said it's fun to see her aunt except she gains 7 kilos on a weekly basis over there! I was dying. I love that girl. 

We watched General Conference this weekend and made a ton of crepes for lunch for everyone. It turns out, Sestra Witzel is a crepe flipping master. who knew? We watched Gen Konf in Czech with the members but has English subtitles for us missionaries. I now understand where foreigners come from-they don't have the privilege to draw close to the literal voice of the prophet and apostles because they have to be translated. I missed hearing their voices but I also know a few of the Czech translators personally so it was fun to hear their voices as well. 

OH MY GOSH! Last thing, The Holts are the missionary pair in charge of the humanitarian efforts in our mission. They came to town, we met one member and went to the Salvation Army facility to deliver 2 blankets, take pictures for documentary purposes, and to offer our humanitarian services as a church, to theirs. I and Sestra Wolfova (the member) were the actual ones to deliver the blankets into the hands of 2 clients of the Salvation Army...this is when I grew jealous for the ministry of Christ. The woman I handed a blanket to was teary eyed as I walked up to her with a fleece blanket. I gave her a hug and cried with her as she thanked me...This experience touched my heart. I cant imagine being among Christ as He performed miracles. I would be a bawling mess. It was so beautiful and later this week we finished the rest of the blankets and will deliver the rest to the facility with all the rest of the members of the Relief Society for them to see the joy they are bringing to these precious people! It was a blast to translate for the Holts and to be a part of this project.

I love our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I love our Prophet, his counselors and apostles, our leaders and their spouses. I know that this work is the true and best work and blesses lives. Enjoy this week and be a better disciple of Jesus Christ! Let us allow ourselves to change for the better! 

-Sestra Hale

Week 59 Poslouchejte

Happy warm sunny weather! Its still chilly in the mornings and at night but daytime is the time to shine and its is sooo pleasant. We love contacting nowadays because everyone is happier and in a better mood. We actually are contacting about that today. It's fun to hear people's responses of why they think they are in a better mood. God gave them a beautiful planet to enjoy and live on. God is real!

ooh myy gooodness. We went tracting in this cute village-like place by our house on Saturday morning. A man opened his gate and when we told him we have a living prophet, he said how that isn't possible then his daughter came up behind him, asked how long we've been out and asked if we were thirsty. So they let us in and it was a FAMILY REUNION!! There were 6 people of this one family at a table with us at once and after talking about whatnots for a few minutes, the youngest son asked "whats the difference between Catholics and Mormons" so we taught the restoration. but wait! There's more! We ended up being there for 2 hours, getting asked all kinds of questions, they said the Book of Mormon wasn't the word of God and that Jesus was the last prophet, they told us we should be careful with following faith blindly, we shared our conversion stories when we knew the Book of Mormon was true, they suggested we forget everything we have been taught and only follow Jesus, etc. It was definitely a flavorful event. We were even given a priest blessings by inspiration and holding hands with this -no acclaimed religion-priest, and were each individually given blessings of which I translated for some of it for Sestra Witzel. They also were translating for each other throughout the whole time......wow! if anything it only grew my testimony of our true church. Men can say that the Book of Mormon isn't true, but that doesn't change the answer I already received from the messenger of God himself, the Holy Ghost. Sorry, no one can change what is written on my heart.

We also had training. Starsi Marcucci found a better train system to take. Instead of waking up at 2am, we woke up at 4:15am and instead of getting home at 10:30, we got home at 6:30 with just enough time to return to a house we tracted into where a woman had interest. Its was so pleasant. OH! and after training, I just told Sestra Witzel not to look at her watch, but to just keep running. We made it from the Prague church building, to a metro, to a tram, to the train station, in 15 minutes. There was definitely some divine intervention going on. 

ABOUT TRAINING: I feel like when we are prepared with questions, and when we have been studying the topics of what training will be about, there is SO MUCH REVELATION received! When we are prepared, we truly are blessed. Every word from this last training was easy to my ears and we have been trying new things, using new ideas, and have been successful in our work.

Its been a wooonderful week and we await this weekend with watching General Conference. I've heard its sooo good. Bring it! 

-Sestra Hale

p.s. try APPLYING those things from General Conference that stuck out to you. see what happens :)