February 27 Letter

this week was wild. don't know what else to say really, so i'll just dive into it!

 

pictures: one of the post presentation at adam's class, another is after game night, and another is me with my big napkin becuase the last time we ate at this member's house i spilled... "jidlo mi napadlo" so this time she gave me a bigger napkin to eat with haha

 

 

 

firstly cool stuff in czech: amputovat = to amputate. real verb. hopefully will never have to be used!

another cool thing i learned is how to say, "we'll miss you" and it kinda makes sense but at the same time the first time i heard it i couldn't help but laugh.  Budete nám chybět -we will miss you. directly translated: you will be, to us, to miss (or to lack or something of the sort) i love czech haha

so elder gleue and i went to adam's school this friday, we have way too much fun, and learned that the winnie the pooh character Eeor (i have no idea how to spell his name) is, in czech, iaček. i had a good laugh after learning that one.

 

We had a really cool lesson this week with a chinese girl, kasey. We met her at the dorms. super wild story. firstly there are two forms of written chinese, traditional and simplified. i guess if you can read traditional then you can read simplified, but the converse does not hold true. for some reason we had a traditional but not simplified book of mormon.i dunno why. so during splits elder gleue and elder gibson (our fearless district leader) were going around the college dorms with a traditional chinese book of mormon becuase we met a kid who needed one in chinese (but we only had the traditional one). they were in the dorms to see if he could read the traditional, but he couldn't, so few floors later ran into a chinese girl who firstly says "i don't speak czech," they learned speaks decent english but when they found out she spoke chinese they whipped out the book of mormon! haha she was amazed that they'd had one! it was really awesome! but unfortunately she couldn't read the traditional chinese either. fast forward a week after our trip to prague and picking up some simplified books, we went back for the next lesson with her. it was awesome. i had my little baby english book of mormon, we were on splits so elder gibson had his czech book of mormon and we gave kasey a simplified chinese book of mormon. It was wild! we read through the introduction with her (chinese sounds so wild! haha) it was awesome though! def one of the coolest experiences thus far.

 

thanks also for the rice krispies, again :) when we were at the foreign police in prague i shared them with the MTC group (they all remembered them very, very well! hahaha) (and thinking about them is building my appetite! haha)

 

But yeah this past friday was Adam's presentation at school about America, so we went and helped him out and spoke about America. Showed our pictures and talked about what we did before coming to the czech republic. It was pretty cool! it was really nice to meet adam's friends (theyre awesome) and it was also pretty weird to be in a high school in a different country! it was nuts! the culture of shoe-taking-off here is so strong that the kids don't even wear the same shoes from outside into the schooL! i had no idea! it was way neat though. also the teachers don't have their own classroom, much like college (or more like college i guess) they teach in all kinds of different rooms. it was wild. but elder gleue and i got treated like VIP's! haha we got there about 10 min before class and so we went into an office and talked with who i thought was the principal (i still don't know how to spell that word, as if i did before my spelling went down the drain) but she used a different title that may have very well been from england in translation or something. she gave us some fruit tea and this cake (baked by kids at the school!) when i heard that i firstly pictured like a home ec class baking cakes and giving them to visitors that came (a scary thought in my mind). but i could not have been more wrong! the presentation was comparable to yours momma and the taste, oh wow! i would gladly go back and give another presentation there hahahaha i still just laugh thinking that kids at that school baked a cake so stinkin good. and I think about Home ec adventures and eating baked goods from those classes. goodness me. i sure am on the other side of the world haha

 

in other news, twix (the candy bar) has some weird promotion here that i can't read all the adds on the bars for (it may be for eating twix with coffee or something?) but they are now selling packs of 5 twix bars that come with free spoons! it's my childhood dream of the toys in the cereal boxes except not having to send the 8 coupons to some strange po box to get the prize! so i had to get it! i use the spoon every morning with my cereal or oatmeal hahaha the only problem is, i still have 5 twix bars that stare me in the face everytime i open the pantry!

 

i've been reading talks by elder christopherson (in preparation for the conference of his that is coming up in NO TIME! oh goodness. if you have any suggestions/requests for when i'm in his vicinity (sp?) email them to me by next week haha ) but it's really strengthening my testimony of the organization of the church. I know this is Christ's church. He leads it. That knowledge gives me so so much comfort. I love the scriptures more each day and am so happy that i have time everyday to do nothing but study in the scriptures! it's great!

 

sure do love ya'll tons and can't wait till next week!

 

Dean

Pictures from Prague : P-day February 22

February 21, 2012

Feb 21 4:43am

firstly expect a letter in two weeks. i just sealed one up (already forgot if i actually finished the letter i was just so excited to send it haha)

nextly expect a package in much more time than that.. i'm still working on it but imagine i'll get it sent by next pday? i dunno

where to begin!

elder gleue and i had the best time in prague  - we got there pretty stinkin early so that we could go for a nice walk and boy am i glad we did! haha it was def the best weather in prague i've ever seen (you'll see on the photos) i'm trying to get the photos up but i'm having some trouble... i'll figure it out don't worry.

tons of wild stuff happened this week!

firstly, i finally made a fool of myself while speaking czech and actually heard it (all the other times the members just don't say anything or forget about it or something).  i've been waiting for a moment like this and finally it arrived hahahah needless to say it's the first of many!  while i was giving my testimony last sunday, i guess i said something at the beginning that was pronounced terribly... (now i'm glad i did cause it's HILARIOUS) or at least i thought it was/is. while starting off saying how glad i am to give my testimony, i guess i instead said something like, oh man i'd really like to get married! (the words for married and the verb to share a testimony i guess are eerily similar?, who knows! haha) so that was nice and i had a really good laugh when i heard about it. I'm almost proud of it cause there are def some worse stories about there about mispronunciation (ostrava has tons of them!) [you may want to edit this out of the online one i dunno, i don't really mind either way... but the verb for "to share" (like a testimony) and "to poop one's pants" are really similar- podělit se and podělat se (who was in charge of making those verbs so similar? I do NOT know. goodness me. you can imagine how people reacted to that one from the pulpit! hahahahahahah] oh garsh.

i also heard the other day that were like 4 miles from the closest part of poland! it's wierd to think i could run to another country in the time we have for our morning workouts.... interesting thought.

in business i guess from now on when sending packages instead of putting my name on the package just put the number "1216" anywhere on the package. i guess the packages are diff than the letters and if there is a name at all on them then the office people have to go pick them up at the post office cause they hold on to them. it's nuts. but yeah so the address would just be the normal package address (without my name on it) and the box would have the number 1216 somewhere on it? (any questions talk to sister bohne i think? haha she's so stinkin funny and nice, elder gleue and i love when we get to call her! haha)

wild story time: one of the pictures of me in snow is from when i went on splits with elder bahr (he's new this transfer so we're even younger than elder gleue and i!) and we had to get to the building for some things that i had there. he likes to run and i certainly don't mind so we went for a nice jog in the morning! it was crazy.

later that day we got into a panelak and tracted out 79 doors. it was nuts but at the same time super, super fun. It's a very strange mix of emotions knocking on that many doors (not a very normal activity for everyday life) but having some really cool testifying experiences. We gave out more restoration pamphlets than i would shake a stick at! it was great!

oooh real quick: i got the package from Rexanne! CRAZY story! i got a call from the elders there that a package had just been dropped off for me (i thought UPS or something) then that morning elder gleue and i are walking around prague taking in the sites, ended up going down the same road twice (at the time i had no idea why but now it's super obvious) and i heard my name! this has happened once or twice before cause i guess there are some similar sounding czech words. but it was immediately followed by my full name, at which point i thought i was sleeping and dreaming the whole thing! Then elder gleue and i turned around and met Barb, the nice lady who dropped off my package from Rexanne!  IT WAS NUTS. for much of the morning i was wondering the odds of seeing people i know or other missionaries, and decided it wouldn't happen, but how cool would that be to meet someone i knew/had a connection to in prague! sure enough it happened! the lord sure does love his misisonaries, that's all i've got to say about that.

(ill send another with more pictures)

 Feb 21 4:47am

The internet will be able to tell you more about the attached pictures than I could, but yeah, Prague on Monday was awesome.  I'll try to paint a picture:

We got into Prague around 9 or so and had plenty of time that morning before our trip to the foreign police to take pictures and walk around and find all kinds of fun stuff! cool places we went: all kinds of cathedrals, the Charles bridge, the Amercian embassy (my personal favorite : they had a sign on the front that said:

                                    Today is a Federal Holiday

                                       PRESIDENTS DAY

Then had picture of an ax with apples (an allusion (?) to good ol George Washington right?) has that story actually been discredited yet? I love it anyway haha

I love ya'll tons and tons and cant wait till next Monday! :D

love

Elder Stimpson

February 12, 2012

Dearest fam!

new czech phrases:

spellovat- to spell ( i laughed out loud for quite some time when i heard this one :)

hypnotizovat- I will give you one guess at that one. yes i do love czech. when you don't know a verb in czech you pretty much just say the english verb and then add ovat. it's beautiful... if only the rest of the language were so easy hahaha!

sisters: thanks ton for all the letters. i love them every week. so keep sending them i really do love em!

but cool stuff that happened this week: looking through my scripture case (same one since i was 8 i think! haha) i found some notes from a conference in Tupelo, who knows how many years back, and written on the page was the word: AHOY!   that was quite a find. and who cares if it's really spelled ahoj in Czech, i didn't know how to spell back then.  that was a cool find though! also in my case is my For the Strength of Youth pamphlet from the ages ago that i was actually a youth (tessa hearing about the activity you set up for made me kinda miss it) and that was way awesome too! cause studying this week i read an article in a liahona about using that pamphlet even when we’re older! i was glad to still have it!

next pday elder gleue and i will be in prague! the 20th we get to go and renew our visa's, so ya'll can all be jealous! it's gonna be our preparation day too so we'll see what kinda sight seeing gets done! :D needless to say we're both looking forward to it :]

OOOH- in January liahona magazine there is a bit on the "12 week program" for missionaries- elder gleue and i just recently graduated :) we had some treats and birthday hats haha it was great. we joke about being old but it's our district leader's last transfer before her goes home, so he just laughs at us.

elder gleue and i had the greatest lesson this week with a less active. it was really amazing. the holy ghost was there and it was really really cool cause it all started the night before! elder gleue and i were going through what we could teach, decided on the gospel of Christ, felt good about it. began studies the next morning, started reading in Preach My Gospel about the gospel of Christ and didn't make it past repentance, haha it was a really awesome day of studies. planned out the lesson with some good scriptures. and then we went out and delivered! the best part was that during the lesson, i gained some personal insight into the things we were teaching (a testimony builder) then we shared a scripture we had planned from the night before and she said to us: did you just decide to share this? and we responded, no we planned last night for this. She testified to us, and I testify to you that Heavenly Father knows us and exactly what we need. He knows us better than anyone ever could and wants us to be blessed beyond our comprehension! gosh am i thankful for that! she shared some of that with us because she got angry at a telemarketer and felt terrible about it, and was trying to get over it so she was relieved when we read in the Book of Mormon Moroni 6 with her (specifically the verse that involved repenting and being forgiven) It was a great lesson and we both felt pretty good afterwards cause we were instruments in the lord’s hands and we knew it, and the member knew it. it was awesome.

i love ya'll tons and i'll try to squeeze some cooking stories here at the end:

halusky is a traditional slovak dish which elder gleue and i have been making way too much (there's just sooo much of it ! :D  after missing the pot one time with some of it, it ended up cooking like a pita next to the stove.  i tried it and it was pret-ty tastY! so needless to say later on we made some breadlike patties from potatoes and such. with some nutella and powdered sugar we had some of the best things that have ever been cooked by our hands. it was delicious hahahah

love yall tons!!!