July 7 Letter

wow! what a week!

go america. funny that brady and i look alike. does that mean brady looks like dad? or have i just been gone for so long that people don't remember me? (don't answer the second one.)

don't remember the swarts too much... but that's cool about the mission! i lov emissions! haha i mgith remember them from seeing them but otherwise i don't know.

cool story that elder knapp just reminded me of!

so on saturday we had a particular thing on plan to teach alena, but we decided to change it with fast sunday coming up and all, to teach her about fasting. which was a little bit of inspiration becuase she has a huge decision in her life to make! and what better way to get help  then to fast about it! she realized that the lesson topic was inspired and it helped up realize the same thing. it's always nice when other people recognize and comment on things like that. she's doing really great and gettin ready for a baptism on the 19th. which we need to start planning! haha

love you tons momma!

thanks so much for the email. 

love you tons!

elder stimpson

(i'll work really hard to send the tape today, but it may just get finished and have to wait til next week. we;ll see. we've got about 6 or 7 lessons on plan so we'll see if we have time to send it :/ haha)


JULY 8 Letter

so i am hoping that emailing first before reading with improve the mass of my emails. we'll see.

Wild things that happened this past week. and by wild, of course, i mean amazing. firstly a few side notes.

happy late 4th of july! i love america and we sang lots of songs on the fourth. we had opening and closing hymns to nearly every study/planning session that day. We have the best anthems. although the czech anthem is pretty beautiful. I can't take anything away from that. Otherwise we ate some chocolate chip pancakes using our finely tuned (as of this transfer) pancake making skills. they were so good (especially with the euro chocolate), however the lack of choco chips resulted in large cut up peices of a bar being used. and those peices almost always melted out of the pancake (is there a way anyone knows to avoid that?) so it was more like half chipped pancakes with more of the chocolate taken off of the pan and put on top of htem. in any case they were delicious. and i had some of the batter last night (i cooked if of course) and i'm still alive so i guess it stays well too! :D

In other news Alena is doing great! she is hilarious! wild story, she got marked off grades in school because she said that america freed part of the czech republic (i guess the communists didn't like admitting any of that, it's so wild to live here! it's all i studied, except people here lived it! it's amazing) and aparently she idolized Patton for how awesome he was (who can blame her, he was a great leader), but that also lead to some trouble. pretty much every lesson with her we end up laughing like crazy at some point because of something, and then every lesson she also gets a little emotional with how her testimony is growing. im not much of a crier, but it is pretty cool to see how she is recognizing her growing testimony. 

otherwise. week number two of teaching oodles of lessons. and we have even more planned for this week! it's wonderful.

in cool news we got to meet the McConkies. THEY ARE SO COOL. They are amazing. The kids are great and president and sister McConkie are just wonderful. It's pretty different having an entire family in the mission home (ex. i stepped on a lego when we had lunch after a meeting there-it's been so long since i've stepped on a lego!) :D but it is a real blessing to see president McConkie back in the czech republic! what a blessing. 

i got the package you sent! thanks so much! the district loved it! as did our investigator from moldovia, he was at a loss of words (i think becuase he doesn't know how to describe food in czech yet haha)

we went up to a cool castle last monday- i took some pictures and got some stuff on the tape so no worries. 

everything is going really really well! i'm reading in helaman right now and i think it may be my favorite book in the book of mormon. helaman 5 is amazing. and all the stuff about nephi and his prophesieing (sp?) is remarkable. what a guy. needless to say my study notbook is getting filled up quite quickly (and the one you sent me is getting put to special uses :)

our diet has been modified we've added a few rules and changed a few around so we'll see what kind of results it yields- certainly dont worry about if i'm getting food :) i am:)

the district is doing great! and while the zone didn't have the best week it's seen this transfer, everyone has big plans for this week, which is exciting to say the least. it's such an amazing time to be a missionary!

 love you tons and i'll write more if anything comes to mind :)

love

elder stimpson