November 23 2015

This week has been absolutely crazy, and when I say Crazy I mean Cool crazy! Pondělí ( Monday ) - We woke up at 4:30am and caught a Vlák (train) into Prague. We needed to go to Prague because Elder Page had to finish up his Visa work, and now he has his resident card thing so he doesn't have to carry around his Passport everywhere with him like I do right now. A couple of days before we left to Prague, Elder Page had asked me, ¨what do you want to do while we're in Prague?¨ I told him that the ONLY thing that I wanted to see, was President McConkie. I just love the man and his family so much, and I wanted to thank him as well for his amazing help with the Family that we had found on the Naměstí. Elder Page had made it clear, ¨you're not gonna see president.¨ He said this because it was true, President is just such a busy guy that he would likely be in another city or off doing something else that's super ïmportant. When we arrived in Prague, we Traveled to the Mission home and then to the Mission office, which is just directly accross the street from the mission home. When Elder Page and I got there, we went inside and I dropped Elder Page off so that he could work on his Visa stuff, and I went with some other Elders and sisters to go out contacting in Prague while Elder Page took care of his visa work. When me and my small group of missionaries left the office, we saw President McConkie crossing the street coming from the Mission Home, over to the office. When he saw us, he stopped us to say Hi. When he said he had to go I just said, ¨It's really good to see you, President.´ He replied, ¨It's really good to see you too Elder Dean.¨ and that made my day. I did what my companion thought was close to impossible. After that, and after we had gone contacting in the metro underneath Prague for a couple hours, we went to lunch, and then we went and emailed, and then we went home. On Tuesday, we were having a semi-regular day (there's no such thing as a regular day here in Jíhláva) and then we recieved a call from our District Leader, Elder Huffaker, and he told us, ¨Hey, I just had a thought. I met a man near the beginning of my mission in Prague. His name was Phil, and he loves baseball. He said that he was in Prague for work, but now he lives in Jíhláva. will you see if he's in your phone?¨ Elder Page and I found the man he was talking about in our phone under the name, ¨baseball Phil¨. We called him up, and he told us where he worked, we went into the mall where he works and started talking to him. New Investigator, and he's making progress too. Met with him twice already. Středa (Wednesday), we woke up early... Again... and caught a train to Brno, where we had Training. President McConkie had texted us the night before (tuesday) and had told us that he wanted us to have our interviews with him after training. So we had a good training Wednesday morning about what's going to happen during Christmas and such, and then we had our interviews with President. Then we got home that night and I realized that Jeremy Royce was officially becoming Elder Royce and I was just so excited. I need his emial by the way... On čtvrtek (Thursday), we contacted o křtu (about baptism) almost the entire day, and it was cool. And then we prepared for our English presentation that would be the next morning. on Pátek (Friday), we woke up early... again... and took a bus to the Strední Školá (high school) and met up with Bohdán, the teacher who we can contacted into the week before. The name Bohdán litterally translates to ¨gift from God¨ so we treated him as such, and from him we found ourselves standing in front of 3 different classes of young people learning english, each with about 20 to 30 people. The Lord helped us through our presentations and it was a good way to get the church name out there in the world, and now there are young people all over Jíhláva who know that the LDS missionaries have free english courses every tuesday, and that we talk about God. All thanks to the Lord, who sent us a man named Gift From God, or Bohdán for short. Long story short, we're likely going to be going back to the high school to do it again because now more teachers are hearing about us and want us to come back... talk about blessings haha! Sobota (Saturday), was one of the sister's in my district's birthday. Elder Page planned a fun way for us to make apple muffins and such and then we suprized the sisters with them and it was just really fun. Later that day we went tracting and met a man named Jirka, who wants to learn more about the Gospel. Then also on Saturday, I was asked by our Branch Mission Leader, ¨will you speak in church tomorrow?¨.... as missionaries we're not really allowed to say no, so I just said Yes, and then quickly wrote a talk... Nedělé (Sunday), we woke up, went to church, I was prepared to speak and then at the last minute, our Branch Mission Leader came over and said, ¨actually you don't need to speak this week, please next week¨ and I just said, ¨okay I'll do that.¨. After Church ended, a member in our branch asked us if we wanted to come over for lunch. me, with my terrible czech, thought that she had asked, ¨are you going back now for lunch?¨ to which I responded, ¨probably yes¨. which meant that the entire thing in reality had been, ¨would you like to come over for lunch?¨ ¨eh... probably yes¨... talk about a rude missionary, that's me! hahaha. I explained later and we're all good now. Then today so far, Monday agian, I was talking to a lady on the bus and we were talking about how she had visited California and Florida and such, and then when we got off the bus, Elder Page walked over to see how my contact was going and he got there just in time for her to tell me, ¨You cannot have any of the young Czech girls over here, you CANNOT take them away, YOU don't do that, that is NOT GOOD!¨ all of which I was not understanding and was just smiling and nodding just like some stupid american visitor on vacation... ha... yep, so that's what's going on here in Jíhláva right now. Love you all! Mom I have not recieved your 2nd or 3rd package... you said that you sent those but I have only recieved one of them. I got it when I went to Brno to Training, I wouldn't be too concerend about them though, they'll show up somewhere soon, maybe I just didn't see them while in Brno. I have not opened it yet, but I want to because it has my music in it, and I want music hahaha. I'll wait unitl the first of December. Here's a picture of deep fried cheese... that we made.. it was... edible. It's a legit thing here in the Czech Republic though! Love you all! Elder Dean