Transfer 8: November 14, 2016

I love this area. I love my companions. The Lord has taught me so many things here, and I believe that He has many things yet to teach me. This area is doing so well right now, and the members are so strong. We are working together with them, and we are seeing so many blessings. I know that when we leave ourselves in the Lord's hands, we are taken, and shaped, and humbled, and it hurts sometimes, but He takes us and uses us for His perposes, and saves us. I am at a point where I don't even want to hang onto any pride anymore. and I've found that pride is anything that stops us from doing the Lord's will too, even if it's something small. I have found that I cannot walk with God, if I am not receiving His individual help. And that means, I cannot have the faith, hope, humility, patience, or Charity that I desire without His help. I must pray for these things, otherwise we will have a much harder time achieving them. Let's use the enabling power of the Savior's atonement, to enable us to be faithful, to be charitable, to be patient. Let's pray for Humility, if you're scared to pray for humility then you need to be humbled. If you are worried that you need more faith it's probably because you want more faith, and you need to pray for a gift to have faith. I find myself constantly needing to pray for such spiritual gifts, to have charity, to have faith, to have patience... we can even pray for a gift to be happy, and our Heavenly Father will help us. I have found that praying in this way, and trying to do everything I can to live up to my desires to be humble, and to be patient, and to be happy, and to be charitable after praying for these gifts, I have found that I have received Heavenly Father's help to make changes, to become better, and He continues with me, it is amazing. This week, the sisters got here. It's awesome to have sisters serving in UH. They have not had sisters here in over 2 years, so the members are very excited. The winter markets are already begining to pop up around the country, and things that are only seen at christmas and during the winter are coming around, like Frgaly, my favorite Czech desert, and also the Trhy, little booths on the town squares where they sell treats and fun things for the hollidays. Thanskgiving is next week, and we'll be spending it together as a district. There are 6 of us in our district, and the Zlín Elders are going to come down here to UH and we'll probably go to the Sisters' appartment and have thanksgiving, or we'll go to the church building, but we're not sure. There are some miracles happening here. We are still working with our friend M, who is excited to get baptized. We have given him a new Baptismal Date, the 17th of December. He is excited. Yesterday at church, m came up to me after Sacrament meeting and asked, "What do I have to do to go to the temple?" Bishop Dynka has spoken a little about the temple in Frieberg during Sacrament meeting, and M was interested. Together we went and talked to the bishop who explained to him about the temple and about how only members who are baptized and have temple reccomends can enter the temple. M is now excited to go get the priesthood and go to the temple. Also, a woman who we contacted has been coming to church for several weeks, her name is S, and she is awesome. She speaks English and has been learning Czech for 4 years, and we gave her a Book of Mormon one day after church. Last week, Elder Andersen and I called her up and asked her if she had read the Book of Mormon. She replied that she had not, and then we asked, "how is it going with work?" she replied by telling us that she was still searching for work, and that she was not sure what she was going to do. She was stressed and we knew that she needed work because she has a 6 year old boy. We thought for a second and then we told her, "S, if you read the book of mormon, we promise you will find work." She accepted the challenge to read the book of mormon, and has been reading it, a few verses a day. She came to church yesterday. I asked her how her reading is going and she looked at me with a big smile and said, "I start work tomorrow!" She said that she'll still keep reading, laughing as she said, "it wouldn't make sense to stop reading now that I have work." We have an English student, her name is E, and she has been coming to english for quite some time. We have always had a feeling that she had potential, but whenever we approached her with the Gospel, she was not interested. We prayed for her, and then right before Elder Andersen left, she came up to him after english and said, "I have a question..... you can say that it's about your church." We set up to give her a solid answer to her question which was, "what happens after we die?" The sisters met with her in the building and now she's the sisters' investigator. She never wanted anything to do with the church, and now her heart is being softened. We have a friend named R. He's from America. He met the missionaries about 6 months ago, and then went back to america. Last transfer he randomly stopped us as we were coming home one night and said, "are you guys the Elders?" We've been working with R, and he shared with us that a missionary who served here 6 months ago shared a verse in the book of mormon with him, and R said that this verse helped him answer some very tough questions. This Elder probably had no idea that this verse helped prepare R to receive us here now. We met with R in a resturaunt and ordered dinner, we pulled out the book of mormon and talked about it. R said that he will be going back to america for a week. We promised him that If he reads the Book of Mormon, every day, he will be able to find even more answers to his questions. He is excited about this, and when he gets back here next week, we're going to put him on Baptismal Date. There are amazing things happening here in UH, and in the Czech Republic as a whole. Preparing for the hollidays and such, we're all looking forward to seeing what comes out of this work here in UH. S Láskou Starší Dean