Dean's First Email home

Excerpts from Dean's first email (Sept 13, 2011):

WOW! Where to begin.  SO much has happened. Czech is awesome. …

My companion is awesome, way cool guy, like 6'8" or so, so naturally we make the perfect companionship cause if we're ever in a crowd I ask him if he can see our district or to stand up so they can see him! haha

I got called as district leader! :D that's kinda neat… The other elders in my district are awesome (2 other Czechs and 2 Slovaks) and the sisters are amazing. They’re so motivated and cheerful all the time! It's amazing. Czech is super neat. The district is gonna start speaking only Czech Sunday so I'll have to let you know how that goes for the next email.

Wearing the name tag is so cool! especially since now I can read the Czech haha …

I love you guys! a TON! it became very very clear that I wouldn't be here or doing well at all without what ya'll  have done for me.

My companion and I are teaching our first "progressive investigator" Stepan (pronounced ShTYEPan, so naturally I have way too much fun saying his name) and we are learning Czech kinda well?  the first lesson was crazy but by now we're becoming much much better at adjusting the words we know to fit his needs.

I don't really know what Czech to say for ya'll but I guess my favorite words are spolecnik (with an accent over the c that I don't have the time to look for) which means companion and then Do toho! which I think means let's go!  Czech is soooo cool.

Czech hymns are awesome. We sang ‘Master the Tempest is Raging’ the other night in the room and it was pretty dang rough! That song is tough enough in English but when tempo is cut in half to allow for reading a language we've only heard for 5 days it becomes uber tough. but wow. I sure do love it here, tons of cool people all here for the right reasons.