September 24 Letter

big stuff that happened this week:

i am learning how to understand a bohemian accent... i will say it is different. if brno was the South in culture, then Ceske Budejovice (goodness that is tough to type!) is the south in accent. i'll leave it at that :) (the people here are fantastic as well. no worries there :)  it's super funny, normally people here think that none of their friends believe (cause very few people here discuss religion to any extent) so asking for referrals is a task to prepare for... with that being said. with the past week, literally, everybody that we have met has said, "i have some friends that share my beliefs/think the same way i do/would also be interested in the Book of Mormon/would like to learn english/etc." it's next to unbelievable. but it's wonderful. :) literally everybody. it makes teaching the masses a lot easier when they come in masses rather than having to gather them ourselves :)

sorry no pictures of the city (much easier to type than the full name :) but those will be coming. till then, it's beautifuL! wow! maybe the most beautiful city around. i just love it.

as far as the questions go, it's wonderful here. the first week has absolutely flown by! wow! it's been a ton of pounding the pavement lately, but that just means that next week is full of goodness and lessons :) the teaching that we plan a little more for haha. it's great though. i got to give a talk on sunday about the importance of keeping commandments. it was decent. i used many scriptures :) haha

my birthday was quite enjoyable. had some vanocka for lunch and svickova for dinner at the "best hotel in the czech republic" named the budwies.... and yes. budwieser beer does come from here. i'm not gonna say i joked about induldging when i turned 21... but lets be honest that joke has to be made some time (don't worry momma i'm not gonna get into any wild stuff)

i'll try to write more stories to send to yall

but till then sure do love ya momma

tell gpa happy late brithday.
lovelovelove
elderstimpson

Transfer to Bohemia

so. i'm not going to talk too much about transfers because odds are you heard most of that from the martins.
i also recorded a tape so ya'll will be getting that in due time.
wow.
wow.
wow.
first: pics. the shoe line up. i left the old guys in brno...... but don't worry dad i got the soles out ;)
the other is a good last one of me and elder stradling with a solid member who we taught with/learned with a lot :)
another is me and my junk in the car of the train... i got lazy packing (it was a lil rushed haha) so it took up more room than i like to. that and i'm pretty sure i have a gagillion ties.... maybe two gagillion.

but story time!

so as far as wild czech stuff goes, the czech way to say cobble stones is something along the lines of little-kitten-heads. so that made walking on them that much more fun.... just playing. it was just funny :) ALSO the way to say "i have two left feet" in czech-as in i can't dance (we met someone the other day who was into dance) is i have two left legs. or knees. or it could actually be feet. their anatomical terms are very general... i would hate to be a doctor here! (my leg hurts..... okay... could you be a little more specific?)

but yeah! another transfer down and wow did it go by super fast!!!!!!!!!!!!
it was an amazing week all together. really really great lessons. helping a lot of people make progress. wild business. wild getting lost-ness. wild finding out where we are-ness. i talked about a bulk of the weekend on the tape, so i'll spare you the boring details. i will say i got called for transfers during the prayer at polar bear (the name of our czech class). so my reaction to where i was going was very quite... elder durrant (the assistant who called) after telling me where I was going said.... hello? elder stimpson? you're going to Ceske Budejovice (ded guhm that is tough to spell! (i'll get the muscle memory down in no time :) hello? elder stimpson? to which i finally whispered- "diky! we're praying right now" ... it was pretty funny because an investigator of ours was there helping us with our pronounciation (bless him) so he got a first hand account of the wildness of transfers!

as far as the new district goes. i know next to nothing about cbud (much easier to type). but i'll stick to the long form :)
1. it's officially bohemia. i'm now on the other side of the country. the people here sing when they talk (or so i hear) and speak slower. hello better understanding! :D but that also means that they don't understand me as easily... ya win some ya lose some :)
2. There are really cool sites around! there is a famous photographer here who makes books about the czech republic... and very few cities have there own book to themselves... i think prague. maybe brno. karlovy vary maybe? ostrava definitely not (but i think it's a beautiful place nonetheless) but ceske budejovice has it's own. which means preparation days here are going to be killer! :) i'm excited. that's all i'll say about that.
3. that's about it.

i gotta get going to a lesson! we're teaching the last 5 ten commandments :) (good thing i know the hand signals... cause i didn't get to study them this morning (becuase of the poor packing i did last night :/ oops!

love ya'll tons!!!\
caucau
elderstimpson

September 10 letter

so all these are pictures of food :)

one is the food i just ate (when ya'll come i already know the restaurant we are going too. it's delicious. and one of us is getting this. it's a ton of food. we just finished a fast so i ate it all.... i don't recommend that part hahaha)

another is elder stradling and I with the sisters celebrating the year mark. we made halusky. it was really good and a really fun time.

the last is part of my choco collection... only part :) i forgot some in the fridge and i found a new flavor today so i had to get it :)

i'll send some more in the next email

in other food news we made hand-made milkshakes last p-day with the district. it was delicious! milk and ice cream. super simple but incredibly tasty. nothing makes a preparation day like milkshakes and watching the restoration film :) teehee

as far as this week goes: it was awesome!

we had a great lesson at the end of preparation day with some new people (they are reading in the book of mormon and really enjoy religious books) we had a great first lesson with them last week and have another meeting this week! we're super pumped. the only downside is that one is an artist, with a show coming up (so he's busy enough). but it's really worked out perfectly. it's just been miracle after miracle with those two. everything is just falling into line as if there was someone in charge... hmmmm funny having that thought while being a missionary! everything we do is for some reason or another. and it really does all build up to great events.

District meeting was really great. we focused on LOVE. becuase that's what it's all about, right? without quoting the beetles, I emphasized love as much as possible this past district meeting. and have been trying to think about it more and more as of late. it's interesting that sometimes we show love without thinking about it at all. our last dist meeting of the transfer is coming up, which is quite scary. i'm not ready for it. but it's going to come anyway (tomorrow. as if that's not soon enough) so i'm going to love it when it comes and have faith that the spirit will tell the missionaries what they need to hear rather than it coming out of my mouth.. goodness mee! haha

it was just a great week. a few more highlights:

we started a stop smoking program with a kid. his desire isn't super strong so we'll see how it goes on his end, but stopping smoking is not easy. but it is pretty stinking cool to see how the program works. i had never really done it before. he'll be coming to english tomorrow so we'll see how that goes.

thursday was prolly one of the most spiritual days in a while. we had a few lessons that were just crammed with the spirit. it was pretty cool to be a part of. and nothing really motivates you to get the spirit more than getting the spirit a little. sorry if that doesn't make sense. 

we went to sports day this week (with a member kid here who wants to go on a mission, we just got to get him consistent at church first :/ it was a blast though! we played soccer and basketball, the shot came back after a time. and i don't have much to say other than i am certainly not in the same shape that i used to be in, and my legs may be feeling it a little bit still... it was a blast though. just a blast. goodness me.

the awesome part of sunday was the talks. we heard from many young men/women this past sunday, which was really really cool. many of them had gone to the temple with their family this past week (it was like half the branch went. killer. :) it was just cool to feel the spirit of their testimonies. but the capstone was something that a young man said who's leaving on his mission in a week. his talk was full of jokes or funnies, and scriptures (i love the kid. it was great). but toward the end we got his testimony which was no doubt the highlight. he said, among other gems, "it's (the mission) is something i will look back on for the rest of my life."

it was a great sunday. we had a family there from india.. only half of them speak english. let me just say that teaching them is a real treat :) i love it.

I'm learning tons and tons every week, and if there was one thing that stuck out this week it was the importance of attitude. and today has only emphasized (sp?) it. goodness me. life really is all about how we take things.

sure do love ya'll 

(especially you momma)

p.s. i got the packages ya'll sent :D diky! a ton! the shirts are great. fit wonderfully. and the candy/stickers/pens are very much appreciated. the district loves them :) and i love them too! goodness. it really is all about love.

love ya'll again!

momma, you're the best!!!!

September 3 letter

WOW! THIS WEEK FLEW BY! BUT NOT JUST THIS WEEK! ELDER STRADLING AND I REALIZED WE ONLY HAVE ONE MORE PREPARATION DAY LEFT IN THE TRANSFER!!! EEP

sorry for the all caps. but yeah. i'll have to get better at typing now cause the time will be much more hectic hahah :)

anywho's! this week was wild! and awesome! it was quite possibly one of the best district meetings ever. i was very proud of it. in the good way, though :) we learned about how to create good relationships between ourselves and those with whom we come in contact. it was very enlightening. english class was also super super awesome again! the girl who got contacted in a bus came back! (but she went into a more advanced class.. she shoulda been there to start with we just got lucky for the extra student haha) i just gotta keep praying she'll come back again so we can start teaching her the restored gospel! :) goodness. otherwise it was the biggest english class that i've seen in ages! we had oodles of students in all of the classes, and had a really great spiritual thought as well about parenting from 1N1:1. it was nice :)

On wednesday we went over to one families for dinner- and it was just a great experience. the part that stuck out the most was them asking us what stuck out about our parents, or what made us decide to stick with living the gospel (they are converts so have yet to have that perspective really) and for both of us it was the examples of our family. it was pretty intense. there is a pretty strong spirit when speaking about families. and this evening was no exception.

we had some pretty wild days. as far as not having very much time to fool around. and by fool around i mean we had to fly around everywhere and couldn't really afford to miss our trams! goodness me.

sunday was super super awesome. the testimonies were amazing, and the spirit was just powerful. I didn't want to leave. then elder's quorum was also stinking powerful. I've come to really enjoy sundays as a great time to be uplifted by the spirit and learn some good czech while i'm at it! :)

sure do love ya momma and i'll get more organized for next week as far as getting more too ya. so don't worry about writing more or less for your emails next week. 

the most powerful point of the week was probably one particular lesson we had. the guy came a little late so we only had 15 minutes to really meet. we had planned to talk about the plan of salvation- but he hadn't read 2N2 so we started to read it with him. we met this kid a few weeks ago on the street and it has been really amazing to see his progress since that point! the meeting, much like church this sunday, was like a spiritual wall. or like a 15 minute ride down that one wild water slide at the atlantis hotel that i was too chicken to go down... someday i will conquer it! hahaha but back to the lesson. it was really neat reading with him, being able to really pick at the scriptures while reading with an investigator and the member that was there was loving it! she said 2N2 was her favorite chapter so we were all just having a ball. she pulled out some colored pencils and would start marking after we read a verse and talked a little bit about it and what it meant. i will say in the 15 minutes we didn't read the whole chapter. i think to about verse 4 or 5 (the whole chapter would certainly take much MUCH more time to digest to a deeper extent) It was just really great. it was "the vision" as we call it here in Brno. We've got a vision and we love to refer to it :) elder stradling and I have a bit of a quote wall going, and one of the first ones up there (even dating back to my second transfer in its inception) was "it's the vision starsi!" it's very important to have a vision-and to refer back to the member visit (sorry pres, you don't get to see that part of the letter) my vision is coming from members of my family :) It's become clear to me this week that the family is the center of God's plan for us. It is the reason of our coming to this earth and the reason of our existence and experiences that we gain. I am eternally grateful to God for the family he has given me. not only here in the mission field, in Brno, in the church, but most especially my family in america/canada.... we're kinda spread out :) momma- you and dad are the start of it. I couldn't have asked for better examples of dedication to the gospel. i love you tons and tons. dare i say to the moon and back :) (of course we know the moon is not nearly far enough to describe the love in our family)

sure do love ya and can't wait to hear how this week goes for ya!

love

elder stimpson