Mlada'mazing Experiences

This has been an awesome week! We have really putting our shoulders to the wheel and pushing along. We have had some push-back too, one of our investigators got some anti-Mormon stuff thrown at her by her priest and refuses to meet with us again... It is really sad, not just that she is missing out on the opportunity to continue to grow in her understanding of the truth but that there are people, supposedly representing God, who feel the need to spread slander about our religion, having no actual knowledge about who we are or what we believe. 

 

Our purpose as missionaries here is to invite people to come unto Christ, we teach them what we believe and allow them to learn it for themselves. The foundation of our religion is truly personal-experimentation. That is the basis to the First Vision, a young man who wanted to know for himself what was true, praying with faith that he would receive it, then acting on it. That is our message. 

 

We believe that our personal relationship with God is the most important thing, that we can receive personal revelation for ourselves and also have the guidance of righteous, faithful leaders to give us a standard and proper direction. If people really sought for the truth and if our church is of God, it would be completely obvious by the fruits of our religion. And it is really sad to see how Satan can coerce people to believing good is evil and evil, good. 

 

The Church is 100% everything we boldy proclaim it to be. We hide nothing. We love truth and we follow to-a-tee, what the Savior outlined and lived while he was on the earth. We believe in being honest, true, chaste, virtuous, and in doing good to all men. We also allow all others to worship how, where, and what they may. Never are we prohibited, forced, or mislead by our church leaders. And we are not held accountable to them for our salvation, only to our Heavenly Father through His Son Jesus Christ. We are his disciples, we carry His holy name on our hearts and strive to be more like Him. But it gladdens my heart when there are those who really get it. Those who aren't afraid of changing their life and receiving the blessings of the gospel. 

 

There was another baptism in our branch on Saturday and it was such a beautiful spiritual experience. There are people who are prepared and it is soooo awesome to feel the strength of the people here. We are seeing a lot of success in MB and I am holding my thumbs that I stay next transfer. We are having Branch Conference this week in Prague so that will be awesome. We are also having training again this week on Wednesday and on Saturday we are having a concert in Liberec. Btdubs, I have never been a "singer" really, but we have been asked to sing quite a lot lately.

Sister Hicken and I sang at the baptism and at Church the Sunday School teacher asked us to sing an impromptu hymn that has been newly translated for the new Czech hymnbook. I think it is  "Father in Heaven" in English, that is definitely one of those songs rarely sung unless the ward chorister gets a little daring and the whole congregation flounders for the melody...either that or its been awhile since I heard it... anywho, we sang it and a miracle happened...we got it! Our Branch Pres. heard us singing it and liked it and wanted us to sing it again...in priesthood. So we had to call on the Lord's help once again and... got it! Then we had to hurry back to relief society and teach the lesson! The Lesson went great. We are really getting to know the branch better, it has been difficult since we're in Jicin only twice a week usually and most of the members live there and the Elders are technically "their" missionaries. But now we are helping the relief society since we need their help for some service.

A homeless shelter in Mlada Boleslav is having a beneficiary concert and we are helping them make small gifts for people who attend. We are getting nice and creative, but since we don't have a ton of time to devote to making all the things, we are having activities and the relief society is helping put the flowers together. I will attach pics of the specifics next week. They're really quite cute. We teach the amazing woman who is the head at the shelter. It is Christian-based and an awesome opportunity to help serve the community. We have loved getting involved in the service opportunities here. It really opens your eyes to the blessings we have and how much Heavenly Father loves all His children. Long email this week! Woo! I love, love, LOVE being here and I love you all! Have an amazing week!