Week 14 in C Bud

27 Aug 2013 Ahoj! This week was crazy. So many things happened, I don't even know where to start. First of all we had an AMAZING first lesson with Zuzka, she is the most prepared person I have ever met. It was so cute, she was like, wow, I really want to read this book, can I borrow it or something? haha. She is like 26, speaks perfect English, and guess what she studied in college?? sociocultural anthropology. aaaah it was so much fun to bond with her. She was telling me about her thesis project and it sounds fascinating. Oh yeah and she accepted the baptismal invitation, we are giving her a date on Wednesday :) I'm so excited about her. And this week we also managed to give a date to Constantin, who has been investigating for like a year. We ended up having a group lesson with the elders (they teach him Czech) and he really responded well to Elder Bahr, finally just admitted he's just scared. So we'll see what happens, it's for september 7th. And Michal's coming back this week too! So things are looking up. We prayed about our baptismal date goal for August and felt like we should go for 3 even though we had like no investigators at the time, and now it's looking like it might happen. So that's exciting. Oh yeah, cute story: we went to Ctibor's panalak to teach him and as we were leaving this group of little boys came up to us and were like, do you speak English? Can you teach us how to pray? it was adorable. I'm going to start putting the modlitba (how to pray) cards in my bag so we can give them one next time. On Friday we had training in Prague which was amazing. President McConkie just blows my mind every time. He is so great. And he trusts us so much. He gave us a bunch of new finding ideas, he wants us to get creative. We are allowed to go on cultural vylets now with members and nonmembers, once every 2-4 weeks, which I'm super excited about. I've been wanting to understand Czech culture better since I got here, but didn't really have a way to do it. So because of the new rule we got to go mushroom hunting with Brother Sir on Saturday, it's so Czech. They love mushroom hunting, they call it their national hobby. I loved it, it was actually really fun. And it really helped us gain more trust with him too, which we needed, which was more of the point. The only downside was that almost all of us got ticks on our legs...oops. haha. It was my second one, I think I forgot to tell you about the one my first transfer. So I didn't freak out as much this time and got it out just fine haha. Gross. Me and Sister Regnier decided we are buying tick spray the next time we go into a Czech forest. It was actually pretty funny, yesterday we were talking about how well we get along, and both of us were worried when we heard we were going to be together haha. Guess first impressions in the MTC were wrong! She was like, I thought you were like perfect or something, but you are actually really fun! haha great....apparently everyone still thinks I'm intimidating when they first meet me. Oh well, I feel like I've changed so much since the MTC anyways. It will be interesting to see what you think when I get home. What else...I gave another talk on Sunday, used Elder Bednar's definitions of testimony vs conversion. No idea if my Czech was intelligible or not, because no one said anything about it. So I hope it helped someone, I learned a lot preparing it at least. We had 26 people at church, even more than last week :) And the senior couple finally got their visa so they are coming on Wednesday. oh yeah another thing, they've banned backpacks. We can only wear them on P-day or for service, when we aren't in proselyting clothes. I'm quite bummed actually because I love mine and use it every day. So I have to go buy a bigger messenger bag today, because my little one is just too small. So that's a pain. But I understand why, they don't look very professional, hopefully it won't be too hard to find a good one. love you sooo much, Sestra Cooper