April 10 letter

dear momma:

 

WOW was this week awesome!!!! Such a wild roller coaster of everything it was nuts!

 

it started about a week ago when we had FHE with some branch members to end Preparation day. Adam came, the elders from poruba (my old area) gave a spiritual though about prayer, and it was stinkin good. a lesson with adam later watching a conference talk, well... basically adam went from kinda sitting on the fence about baptism to knowing that it's all true in a matter of 7 days. His whole conversion reminded me, or rather taught me, how little we actually do as missionaries. I mean it takes all day and all night for two years to do the little tiny peice of conversion that we help out with, but otherwise it's all on the investigator, and the Lord takes care of the rest.

 

(slash can i get the name of our ancestor who was in the martin handcart co.?)

 

We got to watch conference this weekend which just amplified the spiritual high, can you say conference, conference, baptism, more conference. then the next day more conference and easter? needless to say it was a beautiful weekend. for a few hours it wasn't quite 100% that we were going to get conference (something between translation and getting to branch presidents happened or something) but the members are awesome and we got to watch every session of conference right on time :) friday night was just loaded with phone call making haha.

 

elder gleue and his companion came over from prague for the baptism, which was just awesome. adam was way pumped! and we went right back to having way too much fun! haha

 

as far as easter goes in the czech republic. it's a lovely time of year. the sun was shinning nicely. birds were chirping away. as far as traditions go, this country is full of them! wow. from a missionaries point of few its rough becuase as opposed to american holidays where many people are out and doing stuff (be it shopping or sightseeing or what have you), czechs don't really go out on holidays. much like christmas time, every shop was closed. and i mean every shop. well about every shop. (mcdonalds was opened but i'm convinced that is becuase it's an american institution. KFC, however, was not open. so i'm not so sure about that one...) thusly this email is a day late (it was an adventure searching yesterday, but to no avail). but back to traditions. they fashion very large whips here made out of who knows what kinda sticks... tie some ribbons on the end... and the men go around whipping all the women! i don't know how hard they whip (never actually saw it happen) but it is pretty nuts to think about! young women, old women, women in the home, walking down the street, no woman is safe from these whips. (but seriously some of them are like 7 feet long) It's wild cause literally every guy walking down the street has a whip. i'm surprised they haven't started to make holsters for them or something. so the guys whip the girls, and if it is before noon then they get candy, and if it is afternoon then they get water sprayed on them. so with an early morning and listening for the bells from the church towers it could be a very eventful, candy-filled day! luckily we got to avoid all the wild shananigans. it's a big holiday though, even though very few believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior. it was a great weekend to testify to people though. we were inviting just about everyone we talked to to conference and the baptism :)

 

oh my goodness was conference amazing. it's like each one is better than the last! i'm not sure how that is possible, but i have yet to prove myself wrong. i wont go through all the talks and what i liked cause ya'll heard them already. but they were all amazing. it was weird not hearing from elder holland during priesthood, but it was an intense session nonetheless

 

(don't worry i hid some eggs in the building for district meeting today, so the district will get an egg hunt... however instead of candy they're filled with the blessings of church attendance! haha, i love being a missionary)

 

speaking of church attendance, we visited a less active this past week, single momma with a 2 year old and 8 month old twins. she was very happy to see us! elder bahr is a twin, and she was like, "ask your momma how she did it!" momma i've got no idea how you did it cause whatever i saw while i was in heaven i have already forgotten. but you did a very good job! :) so if you have any advice i'll relay it to her haha (i already told her to push their cribs together teehee)

 

the pictures are some from the baptism. one with elder gleue, adam, and i. one with members from the branch who came for the baptism, and another of elders clyde, and bahr, adam, and i. something funny just happened (i think someone stepped on adams foot or something of the sort)

 

anywho's time is flying by but i sure do love ya momma!

elder stimpson

 

slash this week my testimony of God keeping promises grew soo much. I getting more worried than i should have before adam's baptism cause he wasn't quite sure. i was pouring through the scriptures trying to make sure that all those blessings we promised weren't just me getting excited, but that they had some backing. and sure enough, every stinking thing that we promised was fulfilled. i feel like underneath "Another testament of Jesus Christ" the Book of Mormon should also have "book of promised blessings, and how to get 'em!", or "if you have any question, read me, pray, be willing to work for an answer, and then you'll receive it!" that would take up way to much of the gold colored printy stuff that goes on those books, but i may write it on the inside of mine. It's amazing how testifying to people why we have the book of mormon brings so many other reasons to mind! good ol missionary mojo :)

 

love ya tons! 

 

p.p.s. i apologize for my lack of capitalization. speed is more important to me than proofreading :/ (is that a decent tradeoff?)