Feb,13, 2017

I just want to talk about the Savior. I am a very imperfect man, I see that every day, I face temptation to do stupid things, to get angry, to say silly things, and the list goes on and on. I am not sinless, and I find myself repenting daily. But I know that we have a Savior, and I know that He did not suffer for 80 percent of my sins, nor did he suffer for 99 percent of my sins, but he suffered because of and for me, 100 percent of my sins. I, just like every other human being who has ever or will ever be born on this earth, will eventually be brought back into the presence of the Father, and there I will stand. Whether I stand with or without spot will depend entirely on my willingness to allow the Savior to change me, and to clense me. The Atonement appears difficult to understand sometimes, but when understood correctly, even an 8 year old can understand it well enough to apply it's principles in his/her life. This week was pretty cool. We were teaching english in the chappel on Wednesday, and then after english, we tried to set up a meeting with one of our students, and he was being pretty resistent to our invitation to talk about the Gospel. Within a few minutes of everybody leaving the chappel except us and our friend, we heard the back doors of the building open and in walked our mission president. President Pohořelický was in UH on Wednesday because he needed to have a meeting with his councelors, one of which is a member here in the UH ward. President had also told us that he would be attending our District Meeting the following day (thursday) so that was cool to find out that he would actually be staying the night in a hotel somewhere in UH so that he could come to our District meeting the next day. District meeting went well that next day. President interviewed all of us. I was excited to talk to president about some recent personal revelation. After district meeting was over that day, the other missionaries in my district started telling me about how President had talked about me during their interviews. Apparently President is very pleased with the changes in missionary work that I've been pushing for over the last 5 months, and he wants us all to bring these changes to the rest of the mission. I am very excited about this, and I know that it will bring the mission in an entirely new and better direction. That is, focusing on Member work more than Personal missionary work only among the missionaries. On Saturday the Relief Society had a Chocolate Day, where they made dozens of chocolates and gave them to friends and stuff. Elder Vickers and I stratigicly entered the chappel and just the right time to get some chocolates for ourselves. We hid some chocolate above some things on a high shelf for later, but when we came over to them on Sunday, somebody had found them and had opened them and had eaten them! It was so sad! Probably the deacons... gotta love them... hey at least we have deacons, that's a blessing that many places out here in the czech republic don't have. Well, I realized that every single pair of my pants are destroyed, they all have holes in the bottom, except for one pair, thank goodness, and so I bought an extra pair of pants today, European... 400Kč... that seems like a lot... yeah that's only 20 bucks. they're nice though. Love you all, and I'll talk to you next week! S Láskou, Starší Dean

Feb, 7, 2017

Fear doesn't come from God. my companion just said that now, and I felt like I needed to say that here. Today we had a meeting with our less active members the S family. They are actually just a mother and son, the step father is never present at these visits because he (from the records in the areabook) doesn't like the church. L and his mom are really cool. L has ginger hair and is 11 (still not baptized), and Sister S is becoming more and more active in the church. L will probably be baptized soon (remember the Lord's timing). We went over there today and we had family night. It was probably the first family night that they had ever had before, and we prayed, shared some spiritual experiences that each of us have had in our lives, and then we had rootbeer floats (without the rootbeer). The Zlín Elders (Elder Stacey and Elder Backman) were supposed to go to the American Candy Store in zlín and buy some rootbeers for us this morning but they forgot. So we made our rootbeer floats work using Kofola instead of Rootbeer. (což je škoda). But sharing spiritual experiences was fun. We each talked about times in our lives when we have felt or just simply known that Heavenly Father was involved. I told some stories from my mission experience about finding lost objects. It was a good visit. This upcoming Saturday, the Releif Society is having a "čokoládový večer" (chocolate night). That caught my attention when that was said over the pulpit yesterday, Elder Vickers and I quickly talked to the relief society president and made sure that we would have part in this Chocolate Night, because who wouldn't!? The recent changes to missionary work have honestly not changed too many things in our missionary work. The rest of the world has always followed a very strict schedule in terms of missinoary work. Waking up at 6:30am, then doing personal study at 8:00am, Companionship study at 9:00am, Language study at 10:00am, and then lunch for an hour. We were then expected to procelyte from 11:00am until 6:00pm where we were supposed to have dinner for an hour, then we were expected to procelyte from 7:00pm until 9:00pm when we would plan for the next day. The funny thing is, our mission has never been run this strictly... our day looked more like this: 6:30am wake up 8:00am - 9:00pm do the following things at SOME point during the day: - Personal study - Companionship study - Language study - Lunch - Proselyting - Dinner 9:00pm was planning time every night, planning for the next day. Now the NEW schedule is different for every mission. the new schedule makes life for other missions a lot more free, but ours stays exactly the same, only now we have daily planning in the morning instead of the evening. Really funny actually. Anyway, Love you all, and I'll email again next week! S Láskou, Starší Dean

January 30, 2017

So apparently there's a big broadcast that we have yet to see about missionary work. The Prague zone has seen the broadcast already, and apparently there are some big big changes coming to missionary work. I am so grateful to be here in my mission. I have so many blessings. I was in a public restroom today and I looked around at the dirt and the grime and the smell of smoke and the world around me. The other day Elder Vickers and I found a drunk man who fell over twise, he told us, "I know that you are good boys, I know... I know." and even though the world around me is often low and sad, and broken, the Lord shows me that I have been brought to hights that the world could never bring a person to. I litterally have just strived to be obedient and good in my life, and in my imperfection, the effort has gotten me to serve a mission, to love the Lord, to have a wonderful relationship with my parents, to love my siblings, to accept callings, and to do much much more. I am so grateful that the Lord has brought me so far. Today, Elder Vickers, Sister Demann, and Sister Wilson and I took a bus to Malenovice in an attempt to get to Kroměřiž, a city not to far from UH and Zlín. We were trying to get there so that we could meet up with the Zlín elders so that we could go czech out a new city for fun. Take some pictures and stuff, but our bus connections were terrible, and we ended up just getting stuck in Malenovice. So that was an adventure today haha. Tomorrow we have training in Brno. It'll be the longest training we've ever had, it will go until 5:00pm, which is crazy because we normally end around 3 and so that means that we'll wake up, leave on a bus, have training, hop on a bus back to UH, and then go to bed. What a crazy day. We met with a member a few days ago. Brother G sat down in the church building with us, and we shared a spiritual thought with him. We asked him to think of somebody who he feels would need to receive this message of the restoration. He had a name, R. We asked this fine Brother about his friend R, who, he told us, was alone, getting older, and needs a friend. We got some more information. We asked brother G whether or not he thinks that R would accept the message of the restoration of the Gospel. He told us that he did not believe R would accept the gospel. "Still a couple years" he told us. Well, we met with R a couple days later, and brother G went with us. When we first met him, we didn't talk about the Gospel at all. We just got to know him a little. He likes airplanes. When we came for a second visit, it was just Elder Vickers and I. And we learned that R can tell you anything about the stars and about NASA and about rockets. He feels alone in his life, his two daughters live in other countries, and his one daughter that still lives here in the czech republic doesn't really talk to him. R has an old radio receiver set up in his house that he used to talk to people during communism and that he learned to use to tap into radio signals from around the world, and through which he would talk to people most of the time they were from people speaking in different languages. R was entertained with this for years, it was something that allowed him to talk to people... at least to talk to total strangers who were communicating over radio-waves. But as R got older, so did the world, and as things like the Internet came out, and the world moved on, his friends on this radio world would over time silently and quietly dissapear into the static. As he turned on the old device for us we heard as he changed the channels, over and over he would search for people, turning the dials. Anybody who would at least talk to him. just static. When we came for a second visit, Brother G was not with us. We felt that we wanted to try to talk about the Gospel with him. We had been praying that his heard would be softened. R told us, "I would like to try faith, and I want you to teach me." We have since been teaching him, he will be coming to church next week. I love you all, and I know that the Chruch is true. I know that the Lord's elect are here. S láskou, Starší Dean