August 15, 2016 -- "Animal Crossing"

Ahoj,

Jak se máme? or in otherwords "How do we have ourselves?"

This week has been a great one here in Liberec. If anyone has played the game

"Feed My Sheep."

 Animal Crossing I think it could be related a lot to here. Literally, the trees are filled with fruits of all sorts that are ripe this time of year. Just walking down streets or paths you have have your choice of Cherries, Apples. Plums, or from the bushes wonderful raspberries, blackberries, or even blueberries depending how high in the mountain we are tracting or contacting. It is pretty blissful, I would say. Wow, I love the Czech Republic. I love these people soooo much. I could never explain.

This past week we had Prezident and Sister Pohořeličtí come to Liberec for a district meeting which consisted of us and the Elders in Liberec with us. I was amazed because they are truly Czech People, and they know what they need. Haha. I feel like I have been teaching people wrong my whole mission and am starting over. But I trust that God really has known what He was doing in the past with this place and knows now and will continue to know. Somethings they told us was that, people don't know what missionaries are or what we even do. So to them it sounds weird. So we say that we are here as volunteers and we are not from here.  We are trying to learn Czech and the culture, and we have something important.  Prezident related to the scriptures in Alma when Ammon teaches King Lamoni.  He didn't even know Ammon was a missionary till a long time into their relationship. They said in first contacts your main goal is to set up with them. They said that the first lesson can literally be building the relationship and talking about the nature of God. People here don't know even know anything about him. They said they need to grow a relationship with God before they can know that God called Joseph Smith as a prophet. They said the main goal of the first lesson is for them to be a Successful Member.

Prezident and Sestra Pohořelická (and Sestra Baxter)

For me some of these things were really different. We decide to go apply the things we learned. At multiple times of my missions with my companions discussed how being a missionary would be a Czech's worst nightmare, getting rejected, yelled at, and talking about God. But we went out with sweet Sestra Pohořelická.  I can not think of a better word, but she slayed it. Literally every person we talked to wanted to know more. One lady even said there is such a positive energy, she didn't want to leave. After they left, it really felt like I started all over again for a day--learning how to talk to people instead of just sharing things we know. 

But yesterday on the street we saw our neighbors, this couple. They are sooooo cute. They live one floor down from us. We talked about everything.. possible. They started asking questions and things about why were here we asked if we could maybe talk someday and they said they were pretty busy but I am pretty convinced our golden investitgors have been one floor down from us this whole time but we needed to learn to contact like Cesky ("Czechs"). We are going to make them cookies and deliver them to them this week. Wish us luck.

This week, though, we really are low in the investigator pool. I feel like we were always running, though: pushing 2 dead cars out of the road, helping people carry their bags, showing a German man who flew in to Liberec by his own plane to his hotel, pushing a man in a wheelchair to his doctor and to the main street again, brought a member food who lives in a cabin in the mountains, got her water, and washed her clothes. So that has been good. I think we are really opening these people hearts, though.

I love you all. Thanks for everything.

-- 

Save the Trees and Pray Always

Sestra Baxter

The destroyed shoe.