October 29th Letter

this week was nuts. so so so much stuff.

lenka is doing better and better with reading daily! which is awesome. she's just great. really loves reading and learning about the gospel. a real blessing to be teaching her.

the end of the week was the most nuts 4 days ever. starting thursday night we went to prague for a training on friday amazing training. i'd send you the notes if i had them. goodness me it was great. like general conference all over again! friday night got back for some lessons, then saturday helped a member move (it was raining buckets :D hahahahah goodness gracious. then we had a halloween party which was really really great. had plenty of people there and they really enjoyed themselves! it was super wild. just nuts. not enough time to talk all about it haha. sunday had church. then went back to prague for visas! which went well. so now we're back in cbud for the day and have a lesson super soon so i have to go. sorry for the wildly short email. i'll get more next week. but till then have tons of fun momma. hope this week goes really really well. (elder lisonbee and i have a great looking week ahead of us :)

we did have a really cool experience that i'll write quickly about. as missionaries we baptize people. which means we invite people to be baptized. we had one guy who we were a little worried to invite because from what we knew about him he is super active in his church, (he's a great guy i love him to death) but we were gonna pull out all the stops. The assistants gave us a commitment to present people with a calendar to set goals and things to prepare for baptism, which was another step up for this guy too. needless to say we were nervously excited for this lesson. then came the big day. we practiced the heck out of it during studies, and the lesson came around and it went super super well! we even got some really good concerns and questions from him to address in later lessons. basically we got blessed like crazy for being obedient even when we were somewhat nervous about being bolder. and another lesson taken, my companion is the man. love him

love ya tons momma can't wait to hear from ya next week!

til then (the vanocka looked delicious :)

lovelovelove

elderstimpson

October 22 letter

this week was nuts. quick highlights: new people like crazy. zone leaders came down for an exchange. huge progress with our investigators. million dollar questions like crazy! and last but not least, even more greatness to look forward too this week! :D

yeah. so firstly. the picture is of the library where we email. everytime i walk past the boulder and say to myself, wow! that is a big rock! (in czech of course, so it's jejda! to je opravdu velky kamen!) it's good fun. also the first picture after my haircut today. there are few things as dear to a missionary as a place where you can get a nice, cheap, quick haircut. it's the simple things in life :)

anywhos back to the week!

first amazing question was after english a guy we've been meeting with, who is an absolute stud, toward the end of a lesson focused on God being our Heavenly Father, asked us "what is prayer?" we've invited him to pray probably close to 5 times now... but he's all the sudden interested in it now that he understands what kind of relationship we have with God. just like in the bible dictionary- something like, (poorly quoted) "when we understand our relationship with God, prayer becomes a natural action." so true.

the next million dollar questions came yesterday. one of our investigators who has not been making huge progress asked us how he could know if the book of mormon was true (it makes missionaries smile hearing that question). so we've got great plans for him now! and in a first lesson yesterday this young couple contacted while on exchanges asked what it takes to be a member of the church. uhhhh well meet with us a few times so you can learn some commandments and basic doctrines. and a dip in the baptismal font and receiving the Holy Ghost later and then your done! haha no. we didn't say that. although wild funny responses came into my mind. it was a nice opportunity to testify of baptism and what it is. it was a really really cool lesson. we're pretty pumped for where there will go :)

the zone leaders came down for a day which was a real pleasure. they're really cool guys! PS one of them (elder osterloh) knows president fisher! from MT. he had a picture of him and i said, hold on! i know that guy! haha it was awesome. so tell the fishers hello! had a really great time with them teaching and finding and studying and all kinds of stuff. it was a blast. really learned a lot about leadership in general from them. it's weird moving zones cause you get a whole different look with new zone leaders and it's just a different identity and everything. great fun :) haha

in other news elder lisonbee may have stumbled upon the biggest burger i've seen in a while. plan on a picture of that next week... we're going to fast and then feast or maybe skip the fast and just feast :D hahahahaha

love ya'll tons. ceske budejovice is wonderful. really really love it here!!!

going to prague on friday for training then on monday for visas so it'll be a wild time! (i don't know about emailing on monday. it ought to happen but not sure yet. we'll see. love love love
elder stimpson

October 15 letter

 















I really feel like we emailed just yesterday. which is not terribly true but almost. anywho's. i'm gonna dive right into it.

starting from the beginning.

wednesday was a great day. we had a really nice district meeting and a stinking busy day. we had a few lessons on plan... taught none of the planned lessons ( a little sad, but those were taught the next day or the day after) but our day was filled with lessons that just kinda came up! i sure do love when people are spontaneous. Favorably spontaneous that is. :)

Thursday was an absolute blur. wow. i'll have to look at the journal for that one and get back to ya :)

friday was really really cool. we had a first lesson with a new kid, who reads stories like nobodies business. czech is normally pretty monotoned except for around punctuations... commas go a little up. periods go down. and question marks go way up. well this kid was like a roller coaster. and also studied the bible, so after reading a verse very intensely would pause and give a few good.... mmmmm's and oooooo's. he's a stud. we're excited to keep meeting with him the only problem is that he is only in town for a little while longer and then going back home to znojmo (a beautiful town, so i hear, south of brno, very far away.. well as far as czechs are concerned it's the other side of the country! but in MT terms it's closer than helena and just a lil farther than missoula) i love MT :)

THEN CONFERENCE.

best conference ever. can't say much more than that. we were blessed in that we watched it in czech (while i can understand the gospel somewhat well in czech... the stories and large verbs used by some apostles *cough* elder christofferson *cough* (he's my favorite, that's the only reason i'm calling him out. and cause last conference he gave a "translate that" {we listen to conference as we work out in the mornings and always laugh as the translator translates that, then chuckles a little bit... cause otherwise the translation is wonderful czech. and by wonderful czech i mean incredibly tuned to one note. :)  but yeah.) (i've lost track of how many parentheses i've used i'm sorry). anywho's i really enjoyed conference! the spirit hit me like a brick wall from the very beginning and i really enjoyed every second of it. some people said it was long (the members here are hilarious when they talk about the video [one old lady here calls it that, teehee] :)  but it was amazing i was not tired during any of it! i need to be a missionary during conference more often that's all i can say.

it was full of revelation here as i'm sure it was for all of you, fam. basically i'm grateful that our home was a place where living the gospel was easy. and i'm grateful that we have the guidance of our leaders to remind us of our commitments. it was just lovely.

oh goodness it was great. this week is looking stinking awesome too!! :D

sure do love ya'll!

elderstimpson (specially you momma!)

October 9 Letter

pictures: the first is the path elder lisonbee and i were on in tabor. went to visit some people that we hadn't heard from in ages... it was nuts. super super fun though! Haha  Number 2 may be from the train to prague (for visas)
3 is me in the jacket you got me for my bday (thanks oodles. it's awesome) in front of prague.

so the week! wow.  where to begin!
we had great lessons saw great things, but i guess i'll start with the most recent.
we went to prague for visas! went into the kostel inside of prague castle, and.... ran into a mormon couple from richmond, VA! what are the odds! haha so we got to hear about the wild conference, the announcement (don't know what to think yet, except how tough it is going to be not to name the first 18 yr old in the mission, "kid" hahaha) and about elder uchtdorfs talk. (they really like it) they also got a picture with us, so if elder lisonbee and i pop up on hte itnernet somewhere or on facebook or whatever. that's why. also we'll be going back there soon for me to get the litlte card visa guy. so that means in 3 weeks or so the emailing may be strange again.

in other news we met an american here! he's been here for two years with his wife as missionaries for another church! they plan on staying here for a long time and trying to help establish christian values. imagine ammon, with a wife, a kid, and another on the way, except without the book of mormon, and what comes to mind is this guy. i dunno if he could knock off some arms though... we'll see haha he's interested in why we move around so much because in their case it really wouldn't work...

also! wow! a lady we've been meeting with for a while is starting to recognize feeling the holy ghost, which is the coolest part of conversion. oh man. she's been doing really great and is overcoming a lot. it's a great blessing to be able to help her come closer to christ.

on the street once this week we ran into a college kid, introduced the book of mormon and told him about it, and he was like, "well how much does it cost???" so we told him, free. he than said, well what do i have to do to get it?!?! i almost made up something like, do a backflip, or 50 pushups or something. but luckily we were speaking czech, so we set up a meeting. he's a really cool kid so i'm excited to see how it goes this week.

thanks oodles for the bday cards and the post card momma. you're the best. love ya tons.
there really isn't enough time to write all the miracles that we see, but yeah. i'll write em in my journal... so just a lil patience is recquired :)

love ya oodles and oodles!!!
elder stimpson

October 1 Letter

wow. yet another week. some wild stuff happened. and it all started last monday!

we had a lesson with a woman who is just great. she's growing a lot spiritually. but yeah. last weekend was rough for her (we didn't know why, she didn't come to church and we weren't in contact) it was rough. then we tried her monday evening, elder lisonbee called and she was actually super close to the building! (she doesn't work close or live close so it was really completely by chance)... so we met. she told us what happened and to make 20 min of conversation into one sentence, pictures and momentos of her childhood were thrown away by someone. it was one of those things that i couldn't really grasp at first and didn't really know what to do... but then i remembered my family! (and i also thaught of ammon when his buddies are all worried cause something bad is about to happen but ammon is just pumped cause he's got a plan and is really excited to see the spirit at work [i can't remember if that's exactly how the story goes... but it's somewhere in mosiah i think?]) but i was reminded to every week emailing-last week in particular, and laur's email about eternal fam's. ooh. i just got pumped! elder lisonbee and i started testifying and teaching like crazy and it was just a wonderful meeting. you could've cut the spirit with a knife it was so thick.

in other news there is a town around here somewhere, that when pronounced, sounds like the mexican place chichenice... i dont' know how to spell it. haha but elder lisonbee and i were looking at where some membres live outside of town and found this place :) there are some castles around too! oh man we're pumped.

we had a training this week which was wonderful. one of the picturs is from the train on the way back. it was a really cool ride :) and trainings are just great! spent the night with the office elders (one elder i don't know too well, and another who was in ostrava my 3rd transfer there) it was just a blast. elder lisonbee and i found the coolest ties in the world. and everybody was complimentin em. (elder lisonbee has wonderful taste in ties if i may say so.) unfortunately that means the picture i sent a week or two ago is already out of date... as i have since acquired more ties...

this week is looking packed like crazy. wow. it's gonna be nuts. i'll work on more pictures so i can type less but say more. til then, love ya'll tons and tons. miracles are happing like crazy, so many that they can't be contained in this 1 hr of emailing. but know that theyre happening. daily, if not even more often :)

love love love ya momma
Elder Stimpson