November 26 letter

wow! what a week! and best part, CHRISTMAS!!!! (elder hansen and i are having way too much fun in the christmas spirit. way too much fun. elder lisonbee was hesitant before thanksgiving, but now he has joined in the fun :) lets be honest, one of the many purposes of thanksgiving (along with initiating the winter coat phenomenon (i'm going to see if it happens this year haha) also letting us know when to start celebrating christmas. but it was so early this year that, that threw me off, and then in the czech rep, thanksgiving isn't a holiday, so they just start whenever they feel like it. the decorations are up around town (i'll try to get some pictures) and christmas is nearly in full swing. fun fact-i don't know if you remember, but instead of santa here they have jezisek, pronounced... that's a toughie actually. it's like ye-shee (but with a more z sound) and then shek at the end. like shrek but without the "r". and a popular song here is "uz se zase tesime na jeziska" which, translated, is we're already looking forward to little jesus. or something along those lines. i'm no good at translating.

anywho's that's tons and tons of fun. we're just pumped for christmas.

some amazing stuff happened this week- on the train of running into people that we don't normally run into- we found a guy that we've been trying to set up with for along time (he's about to be a branch president) when we were out doing some finding this past week. it's tough to describe in detail, but pretty much the Lord can be as specific as to tell us what street to go on and when to do so. it's awesome.  we had quite a few first lessons this week with people, which was wonderful because we got to practice our teaching with elder hansen a lot! i just love threesomes. aside from having way too much fun, we're also working super hard, which is great :)

thanksgiving was great. i think i said some of what we had already. but it was some indian chicken and bread (delicious) and some czech desserts (you really can't go wrong). and then in the spirit of america we had some cranberry juice (that is one of the few "american" items sold at the grocery store during "american week..." apparently we just eat sweet popcorn, chicken, oven pizza's, and drink cranberry juice and milkshakes..... while that's not entirely false... i do get a nice laugh out of the stereotypical national foods. (i had a sesame seed bar... really just strait sesame seeds and a lil honey turned into a granola bar.. and apparently it's greek! go figure!)

as far as the spirit goes, this week was amazing. we had, at family home evening, the commitment to strengthen our testimony of the restoration. so a saturday of preparation and prayers was spent, and sunday was a beautiful day. it's just amazing. it started with the sacrament (there is a picture of the first vision at the back of the chapel/multipurpose room where we have the sacrament) just one of those powerful moments where you pick up your head from a prayer or reading something, see a picture, and then get that warm/fiery/amazing feeling inside and you just start smiling (or i did... which was good). that was really cool, but then it just came back to the simplicity of our testimony and all of the simple, wonderful truths that the restoration brought back, like the real identity of God and all kinds of great stuff. it's wonderful.

time to fly