Week 5 in Plzen

3 Mar 2014 Ahoj! Wow this week was so good. I really don't know what happened, but I guess your prayers are working!! It's a miracle. Me and my comp have been getting along just fine and working hard and we have new investigators!! hallelujah. Training really helped her I think, she's caught the vision too and we are just talking to EVERYONE. It's crazy. I'm going to run out of pages in the back of my planner for potentials numbers--I never ever thought that would happen! Of course a lot of them don't answer when we call, but who knows, someone could call them in a couple years and they will be ready. And we have a really cool new investigator from Portugal, she's studying medicine here and she came to all 3 hours of church! That was a feat because we had to translate the whole time (she doesn't speak Czech) but she stayed anyways. We have a second lesson on Wednesday, and I'm really excited. Plus the FAMILY we are teaching is just amazing. I have wanted to teach a family my whole mission. Those girls have so much faith already, I kind of wish we could teach kids more often. So cool. And they are reading in the book of mormon on their own. We are going to give all four of them baptismal dates today :) It's so refreshing to teach people that actually care! Plus we have some more first lessons set up with really cool people this week, I'm so excited. This one contact was really neat--she started out by saying she was a complete atheist, and 20 minutes later she was saying that she would love to go get hot chocolate with us and talk more about the answers to her questions, and that she feels like meeting us really helped her feel inner peace. Miracles happen every day! Oh yeah and the other thing that happened on Saturday--Constantin called! haha I don't know if that's even allowed, let alone how he got our number but it made me happy. He just kept saying over and over I didn't lie!! There's going to be members in my town, my wife got baptized! haha it's awesome. Then he gave the phone to one of the sisters and she told me about all the miracles that led to his wife's baptism--the sisters had just barely opened a new area in the branch nearest to his town 2 weeks before, when he showed up to church and said hi, this is my wife, she's not a member and we've been reading the book of mormon every day together, you should teach her! haha love it. She said they almost have enough members to establish a group in his town, you need two women and 2 priesthood holders, his sister-in-law is getting baptized in 2 weeks, and his brother-in-law and son are investigators too. And then they will have their own missionaries in Cimplung. Just miracle after miracle. Constantin kept asking when I am coming to Romania with my whole family so it looks like we have to take a side trip next summer haha. Love it. He kept saying you can skype in August, you can skype in August! hahaha. OH the miracle with housing?? So cool. I'm so excited to live with Kylie, I can't believe she was praying for that too! God really is good. I just feel so much love. So much. I was thinking a lot about the quote from Pres Monson--the future is as bright as your faith--this week. I'm not trunky, because I love it here and i'm working hard, but every so often it hits me that I really don't have that much time left until normal life again and that freaks me out. It's already March, Christmas was yesterday, and before I know it, it will be over. But it really is true that the future is as bright as your faith. If the Lord can guide my life as a missionary, of course he can guide it after as well. And there are only good things to come! Plus I still have a lot to do here. But my testimony of the atonement has just grown so much. So much. That was one thing I really wanted to learn as a missionary--before I definitely knew that Heavenly Father loved me, and that was so important, but I didn't really have that much personal experience of how Christ fit in. I knew the doctrine intellectually, but it wasn't written in my heart you know? But now I really feel it. And I understand. In Czech there are a couple words for understand --one is rozumet, that's like I understand the words you are saying, but then there is chapat/pochopit, which is I really get it, I understand what you mean, not just the words. It's like that. Predtim, jsem rozumela, ale ted' chapu. (Before I understood, but now I get it.) Missions are just the best. love you!!! Sestra Cooper