Mlada More Boleslav and Laughter this Transfer

Pardon my title...it is getting harder to come up with these haha. 

 

Running to catch up to fellow missionaries on the streets of MB

 

 

I am staying in the mighty mighty Boleslav! Woo! With none other than, Sister Hicken! :D I am so stoked! We have so many great ideas for this transfer and it is such a relief that we will be staying together. We can just keep working without a hitch. We are loving our investigators. The one that was in the hospital moved to a different city, so we take buses to get to him now, but sadly enough, there are absolutely no buses that go to or from his city on Saturday or Sunday... -_- so we prayed and prayed and PRAYED that he would be able to get to church somehow... and thankfully a women who is not able to come to church very often said she would give him a ride. She she drove out to get him in that city and to get her mother. It was soooo amazing! So he just loved church and has stopped smoking. He fasted on Sunday and bore the sweetest testimony! And the branch is really putting him under their wing, and even though his medical condition is not getting any better, he has found renewed energy and strength in the knowledge of the gospel:) We are sooo happy for him! I am absolutely loving it here and learning more and more daily. 

 

We went to the Skoda museum today and it was fun :) You know how much I just love cars ;) (Courtney's note: it's super funny that Carley wrote that...she literally has the worst luck and experiences with cars than any 21 year old I know)

 

 

Sestra Schoen and Sestra Hicken

je te skoda = that is a pity = darn = name of the car museum???

 

In a separate e-mail to Courtney (I asked her what she meant by the fact that in a talk last week her mission president "spoke about the growth of the church from Joseph Smith to the beginnings of the church here in the CZ, including all the history and empowering stories of early members here who met secretly during the time of communism. We had the opportunity to meet one of these women this past week, she is in a nursing home and while she can't come to church, her faith is ever-bright. She is 94 years old and learned about the church (like many members here) through yoga!"

 

"Through yoga"? What does that even mean? She explained...

 

The members who joined through yoga, joined at the time of communism. They would seriously be in Yoga and the instructor who was a member would mention gospel principles and then invite people to take the lessons (there were no missionaries at that time) and they would do it in the basements of places and in secret. The members would be baptized in the middle of the night, pull up in their car to a lake, run into the water, be dunked, run back, and that was it. Crazy right?? But they are so strong! There are also many who have gone inactive, which is difficult, so here in MB we do a lot of reactivation work. The members had a hard time being moved to a different city for their meetings (with no cars and only buses that took more than an hour to get there one-way, it was difficult for sure) so they stopped going to church, feeling like the church didn't take into consideration their limitations... It is very hard to refute their excuses, there is some validity, but we are trying to reignite their faith and desire to come-back and forget the past. Hakuna Matata!!!!! 

 

 

But we are seeing success and loving these people. Satan tries really hard to bring it down, but God and good always win! :)

 

I know that no matter what we will be blessed in the long-run and you know we have always loved long-runs ;) Carley is an ultra-marathon runner. Got to love that sweet girl. I miss her!