Week 9 in Plzen!

31 Mar 2014 Ahojky! Oh man I cannot believe this transfer's already over!! aaaah. I better stay, things are going really well. We're teaching more and more people and Simona and the girls are just the best. I'm pretty exhausted though, with going to Prague twice this week (we have to get up at like 5:30) and daylight savings I really need some more sleep....Training was good as always, and district conference was awesome yesterday. It was cool because I was in the Prague district last time in October, and that was my third transfer--I understood about half of what they said. This time I could actually take notes and really get a ton out of the talks. So cool! Plus I got to see people from Prague--Vaclav is still active and he's almost been a member for a year can you believe it!! that was my first transfer. Plus another girl we taught that transfer just got baptized last week. So cool. And they reorganized the district presidency, and the new president is Bro Chrdle from C Bud so I know him too! It's going to be so great. We had a seventy from Sweden there as well, and he talked about hastening the work, it was really good. Oh yeah and Sister Zmolkova updated me on C Bud--they are meeting with inactives we visited for the first time when I was there! A whole family, and only the mom is a member. And then they visited a couple that I met once as well, and he wanted to give his wife a blessing cause she was sick but didn't know how, so they called around to get the instructions in czech, and he was able to give her one--she said he just was staring at his hands after and was like, wow I could feel the power. Missions are just so worth it. You never know what little thing you do will make a difference. All of those hours organizing the branch list in C Bud :) Last night we had a miracle as well! We got back from District Conference at like 6 and I was really wishing we could just go home to eat dinner, but we had on plan to visit an inactive. So we stopped by but she was sleeping (she's really old and sick) so then we decided to walk home and contact. So we talked to a couple of cool people, one lady from Argentina, but no one wanted to meet. Then Sister Bruno contacted this YSA guy, which is always iffy, you never know if they are going to hit on you and ask you out for a beer.... But this one was nice, and he was like yeah I'm interested in knowing if God is there, I have time right now to talk about it! So we were like...ok...let's find a bench! So we sat down and taught him about the book of mormon and prayer and invited him to find out if God is there. He just kept saying, this is so weird, I'm so scared of reading this book, what if it does change my life? But he agreed to read Alma 32 and try praying and we have a meeting with him on Wednesday! The coolest part is that we had made a goal of 2 new investigators for the week and we didn't have anyone on Saturday morning, that night we got an unexpected one and then yesterday we found the other! The Lord really does help us out when we are doing our best. love you sooooo much!!!! Sestra Cooper

Week 8 in Plzen

24 Mar 2014 Cau! Phew this week has been crazy! We taught so many lessons. The most in my whole mission, 22, and we made standards in all areas! That is sooo hard to do. I still don't know how that happened, but I'm just grateful for blessings. The work that we've done all transfer is finally paying off. It was really cool cause the family we are teaching finally came to church all together!! Our district had 13 total investigators at church so it felt like half the branch. It was awesome. And we met some really cool people this week too. Things are finally getting going! Of course it's at the end of the transfer, like always. I don't know where the time is going....we have training in Prague on Wed, and then District Conference on Sunday in Prague again, so this week is just going to fly by. only two weeks left of the transfer! I really hope I'm staying, it would be weird if I left after only one. Other things....We have some new less-actives to work with, so that was exciting...I really don't know what else to say. We've just been busy, nothing too exciting happened. We're going to go shopping today and hopefully I'll get a haircut....nothing really to say haha. We're going to go get sushi on Thursday cause I haven't had it in a year and my year mark in the country/sister bruno's on her mission isThursday. So that should be fun! I'm studying the New Testament now, which has been really cool. I never appreciated it enough before my mission. We got to teach a lesson on the life of Christ for gospel principles on sunday, and it just made me realize how much my testimony of Christ has grown. Missions are just the best. And I finished the Conference Ensign from Oct, just in time! I'm sooo excited for conference. Oh yeah and I read one of the last CES firesides the other day--The Blueprint of Christ's Church, if you haven't read it you should!! It's crazy. Elder Callister talks about how Christ's church was organized in the New Testament and how ours matches the blueprint in every way. Super cool. It just makes so much sense. love it. Love you!!!!

Week 7 in Plzen

17 Mar 2014 Ahoj! What even happened this week...? A lot of lessons cancelled, we got some new investigators, but they are kind of shaky. We did make a lot of progress with the family we are teaching though! The mom is really engaged now I think, we just really need to meet more than once a week. But we got to go to the girls dance rehearsal, and that was sooo cute. Reminded me of ballet :) And they came to the branch activity on Friday and loved it. So we are getting there! That activity was actually a huge success, we had 30 nonmembers there! more than members I think. We celebrated Purim, that Jewish holiday for Esther? The kids loved it because every time the story says the name Haman they got to scream and make noise, and then there was food and Jewish dancing after--Kuba invited his Jewish friend to come lead it. Everyone seemed to have a really good time. So that was great--besides I don't know when in my life I would ever get to do that again! And we had Branch Conference on Sunday, all of the McConkies came and it was spectacular of course. Two of the kids spoke too, it was adorable. The spirit was so strong, and one of the elders' investigators was sitting next to me, so I pointed it out and she was like, wow do you really think that's the spirit? It was awesome, I don't think she's ever recognized it before, so that was exciting. It was really interesting too, because Relief Society was on the Ten Commandments, and I was translating for Sister McConkie, which I like doing because it helps me focus better anyway. But I learned some things--we were talking about the sabbath day, and she mentioned how grateful she is that we have one every week. How much we need that day of rest to just focus on the Lord's work and rest up for another week. That is something that I really miss as a missionary--I think Sundays are the longest, most empty days, it's hard to find things to do cause Czech people all go out of town on the weekends. Anyways, then we were talking about honor your father and your mother, and what is the difference between loving them and honoring them? That was really interesting to think about--we came to the conclusion that honoring means respect and forgiveness. Sister McConkie was talking about how she likes to watch her kids sleep because it's like they are healing from all the parenting mistakes, and that's really what it is--that forgiveness, recognizing that they are human and most likely did the best they could. It's hard here with a lot of people here who want to get baptized because often their parents are so against it, and so they have to choose between following God and the traditions of their families. Anyways...so other things. We are making some progress with one of our less actives so I'm optomistic about that! And we did building tours as a district! That was so fun. And we taught 8 lessons total and got new potentials out of it, so that was exciting. That was probably my favorite thing we did this week--I love it, cause the people you teach are actually interested in what you are saying or they wouldn't have come in in the first place. Oh yeah! And we got to do service on Saturday! That was so fun, even though we were working in a garden and it started hailing and pouring rain. But I was just happy we got to go, sisters never get asked because we can't lift heavy things, but I was like we can shovel dirt just as well as elders! Put me to work! haha. It was fun. And we got to know the couple we were doing service for a lot better--she is Czech, he's British and they found the church in Brazil. Crazy huh? Their life is so interesting. So different than anybody else I know, she escaped communism at 19 and their kids live all over, mostly in the states. Unfortunately they are always travelling so we don't really see them very much, but it was really cool. Thanks for making me weed on Saturdays :) I know I hated it at the time, but I appreciate it with hindsight :) So overall it was a pretty good week. I'm trying not to get burnt out contacting--it's just hard when I get really excited about the cool people we find and then it's so disappointing when they never come for a meeting. But I'm trying to just trust God and work hard anyways, and trust that what's supposed to happen will happen. Maybe they really weren't ready right now, but that contact helped prepare them a little bit. Love you! Sestra Cooper

Week 6 in Plzen

10 Mar 2014 Can you believe it's already week 6?? So weird!! This transfer is just flying by. This week was kind of rough, people dropped us, did a lot of contacting, but then some really cool things happened too. So that was weird, it just felt really long. I still don't have my package mom cause it was held up in customs for some reason, but hopefully I'll get it soon, the next time somebody goes to Prague. We have training in two weeks so at the very least I should get it then. The family we are teaching is doing well, at least the girls (they are reading and praying every day!) but we haven't seen them for a week. The mom comes to church and prays and said she'll come to the activities this week too, but she isn't too thrilled about meeting with us and won't read, which I really don't get... But she's like best friends with a bunch of members now, so that's good? hopefully we'll get a meeting soon, she says it's just because her mom is in the hospital, so we'll see. But in our last meeting they all agreed to a baptismal date! So that was exciting. Oh yesterday something crazy happened. We wandered around the city for 3 hours trying to track down inactives, but no one was home or they don't live there anymore. On our way to Lochotin, I contacted this lady, and she said i'm in a hurry bye, but I gave her a card. So we kept going to the next address, (czech addresses have two numbers, one for the order they were built in and one that's actually the street number.) We didn't have the street number, just the other one, so wandered around forever, until finally getting back to where we started, and we eventually found it. Anyways, the point is, that even though I felt dumb for not looking at that door in the first place (I really don't know why it didn't occur to us before) apparently our steps were being guided that whole time. Because when we got on the tram to go home, the same lady was there! She was like hi I really was in a hurry, but what did you want to talk to me about?! And then she came and sat by me and I got her number and she wants to meet. that really showed me that the Lord is in control, there's no way that was a coincidence--that it was the exact same lady, the exact tram she was on and that she was sitting right by the door we got on at?? So cool. Oh! and another cool thing--we were coming home the other night and i was exhausted, but right outside our apartment this lady was standing at the bus stop, and I felt like I should talk to her. So I did even though I didn't want to, and we had a first lesson with her on saturday, and she is SO prepared. She was telling us that she loves the bible, but she always felt like something is missing. And when we taught her how to pray she said wow, i've only ever said otce nas (the lord's prayer) it never occurred to me that prayer is a conversation with God--that feels so good! She said she almost didn't come to our meeting but she was so glad she did. It was one of those moments when I'm just so glad to be here! That's about it, I really can't remember most of the week, i'm so tired all the time but that's status quo. Oh we started running again in the mornings, that was fun. I can't believe you are learning French now Dad! YES. You can help me relearn it when I get back :) haha cause it's just gone. Oh yeah and we went to a castle today. That was fun, we hiked up this mountain for forever, (all of the castles are on these steep hills) but didn't realize we could have worn normal clothes so we are all still dressed up haha. Awkward. Though I did feel kind of like a princess in my skirt hahaha. I'll send some pictures. love you!!! Sestra Cooper

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

Week 4 in Plzen

24 Feb 2014 Ahoj! This week I saw soooo many miracles. First of all, Constantin's wife got baptized :) I just got a picture. So happy. But in Plzen, I decided to take your advice Annica, and just decide once and for all that I will just talk to everybody, and not be afraid about it, instead of having to make that decision every morning. So I did it! It started with the exchange with Sister Donaldson on Thursday, that was SO fun. We went running for the first time since Fall and she's so easy to talk to. We had a goal of getting 6 numbers that day (to put this in perspective, we had gotten 7 numbers in the first two weeks of the transfer). I really wanted to work on tram contacting so we planned a lot of that, and we wanted to teach an other lesson to someone we would find that day. So we went to work, and at the end of the exchange we had not only taught that lesson, but gotten 6 numbers for gospel interest and 4 for English. And I gained a testimony of tram contacting and goal-setting, and spiritual finding. We prayed about who would be looking for us the next day and S. Donaldson said, ok I think it's a YSA guy, wearing all-black with brown hair. I was like ok...we'll try it. But she totally found him, exactly as she had described him! I don't know why I doubted--I mean if God knows everything and we are doing His work, why could He not help us recognize the people we need to talk to?? And so I've really been trying to follow the spirit in finding, and have found the most prepared people I've ever talked to. One of them told me she envied my faith and wished that someone could help her to develop it, so of course I told her that's what we do! And then yesterday I saw this girl in a yellow scarf about to cross the street and I talked to her--turns out she had literally just had a two-hour conversation about faith with a Christian friend and she wants to know how to develop faith in God and how she can believe. She just kept saying, wow that's such a coincidence! It was amazing. To think that I've probably been passing all of these people that the Lord has placed in my path, but because I didn't open my mouth, we didn't get to teach them. In the last 4 days we've gotten 18 numbers. 18!! It's been a miracle. And all it took was an exchange with an inspired sister trainer leader and greater trust in God. Plus I studied Elder Bednar's talk about tithing, and how we should ask for strength to change our circumstances instead of waiting for them to be changed by someone or something else. So I decided that I wasn't going to think of my area/city as dead, but that I was going to do something about it. And it's been so neat to see how it's just exploded. I think Heavenly Father was just waiting for me to decide to be all in, so that he could bless us with success. We met with someone who contacted us the first week of the transfer, someone from october texted us and wanted to meet, someone else met with us the same day we called him...and an investigator who comes to church but wouldn't meet with us is suddenly best friends with the coolest member ever and she got us a meeting this morning! She is so cool and has 10 year old triplets that we are going to teach too, we have a meeting on Thursday. It's been crazy. The Lord really does labor with us!!! I think she will get baptized this transfer, and hopefully the girls too :) I've never taught kids before, but I'm so excited. Good things are happening in Plzen! love you!!! Sestra Cooper

Week 3 in Plzen

17 Feb 2014 Oh jejda....I don't even know what to say about this week. It was kind of train wreck, but that's ok, cause I'm finally feeling better. Really though I don't even know how to describe it, it was probably the hardest week of my whole mission. Lots of depressing things happened, along with the new area/companion/members/district stress. We taught one lesson to a potential who decided he didn't care enough to meet again even though we did everything we could to persuade him, all the other ones cancelled, our rcla came to a lesson so drunk that he couldn't stay awake and the elders had to escort him home, a creepy man gave me chocolate with "ma cherie" on Valentine's Day (we gave him to the elders), we did some tracting and tried to find inactives...And some less active blames my companion for why he's mad at the church. So yeah....it was a little rough. But I learned some life skills? 1. don't contact creepy-looking men or you will be creeped out. 2. I now know what beer smells like. (I'm just glad I had a sheltered childhood) I don't want to smell it ever again. It was so sad. 3. Don't start off a contact/tracting with "we're here as missionaries" because you won't get another word in, it's much better to just start testifying, and then you get in a meaningful conversation. So good life lessons from Plzen.... And some journal entries I will probably laugh about in a few months. The one I wrote in C Bud when I had the worst day ever is absolutely hilarious now. At least we did some fun chalk displays with the district, that was good, I like them better than singing displays. Anyways...the elders gave me a blessing yesterday and I'm feeling a lot better. Priesthood power really is the power of God. I felt the darkness lift the second they laid their hands on my head. I'm just so grateful for the gospel, I don't know how people live without faith. It's something that I've really learned on my mission, people's lives here are really hard. And really sad. The message that we have really does bring so much hope, and the commandments are there to keep us safe! They are so so so important!!! And they protect us from so much heartache. Gah. I wish that everyone could understand that. That's why it's so hard to watch them not even give it a chance, because I know that it would change their lives! Sigh. That's why I'm here, they need it so bad!!! That's why we do what we do. Well all we can do is keep praying, keep working, and wait for the miracles. I know they will come. Just maybe not when I want them to. I did hear about Brno from Sister Senkane, and their area is on fire, so I'm at least glad that the foundation I helped build is solid! This weekend they had a YSA Conference at our building at least, so I got to see a lot of the YSA from Brno, C Bud and Prague that I haven't seen for a while, so that was fun. And the Archibalds came too, so I got to see them. Today we went on a vylet with the elders and saw the historical underground, that was fun. I'll send some pictures. Other good things...I finished the Old Testament! Finally. That was exciting. And we have exchanges this week, I'm going to be with Sister Donaldson! So excited. I haven't really seen her my whole mission cause we are always on opposite sides of the country, but now she's one of my STLs :) So yay! That will be fun. love you!! Sestra Cooper P.S. pictures: the district with our free beer vouchers from the tour....gotta love Plzen. me and S. Bruno in the underground a chalk display we did, that was fun, it's the gospel of jesus christ with hopscotch