September 20th, 2010

To the family of families:

Hi binkyheads!
NEW COMPUTER?!?! Jejda, that's GREAT! I'm not going to lie, it's about time. :)

The weeks go by so quickly here--I've almost been in this crazy country for a MONTH! Can you believe that? Yeah, me neither. That's great to hear that everyone is doing so well. I pray for you every day--really, truly, sincerely. I'm so proud that you're such great missionaries.

It's interesting that you bring up the -------- family not coming to church--we had the area president over the European missions visit us on Thursday and talk to our entire zone. He was a bad (as in the awesome kind of bad, when the word good just isn't sufficient) stout fellow and kind of had a Godfather-type gangster voice with faint Portuguese accent. Needless to say, we listened when he spoke. And he spoke for at least an hour on the importance of getting people to church. He said that Sundays should be the busiest day for missionaries. If necessary, we should leave our apartments at 7 or 8 to pick up our investigators and bring them to church with us around 9. He said to explain about church to investigators and then invite them, saying, "Would it be more convenient for me to pick you up at 8 or 8:30?" Haha. I don't know how that'd go over with the ---------s, but you never know for sure until you try it.

He also talked a lot about finding ways to talk to the friends and family of the investigators we have...I'd never really thought of this before, but it makes so much sense! When we dig for "gold" and find one nugget we keep looking for more in that same spot, we don't just pick up our stuff and set up a new camp 40 yards away. So we've been talking to Petr about his friends and family. We actually met some of his friends a few weeks ago--we watched them play soccer. Afterwards he introduced us to them all. Of course they were all drinking and smoking, as most Czechs do, (except for Petr...seriously, he just glowed in the midst of all them). It was a little bit of a weird place for sister missionaries to be--in the midst of 12 older men whose abilities to think clearly were diminishing by the gulp...we joked that it was going to be like that for Sister Wheeler when she gets home and is around all those bad BYU students drinking their energy drinks and such (which happens in the end of October, Ma...also, save the pictures, but I don't think I really care much for anything else). So we talked with them for a while and then found a reason to leave. Apparently afterwards, one of the friends was saying that we were really weird, talking about how he didn't like us much--AND THEN! Much to Petr's surprise, another of his friends jumped to our defence before he could, saying that we were the coolest girls he'd ever met. I KNOW. You hear that, you sister missionary downers out there? We're cool.

Anyway. I've been meaning to tell you--there's a new convert named Pavel in our branch. He was taught by Sister Wheeler and baptised the week before I arrived here. And he is a 'borec' (stud). He uses crutches to get everywhere because something's wrong with his legs, but he's awesome and he's already begun to bring friends to activities. The first time we met--we were playing volleyball at sports day--he was convinced that I was japanese or some sort of asian breed. Unfortunately, I'm afraid the truth was a big let down. I thought you might get a kick out of that.

Today we are going to PRAGUE! WEEEEEEEEE! Sister Wheeler is having trainer training, which means I'm tagging along and being someone else's companion for a week--Sister Lier, who was Sister Wheeler's companion in the MTC. I hear she's awesome and that we're challenging 10 PEOPLE to baptism this week. Whoa.
Something else weird that I've noticed about the Czech Republic: I've never seen so many people with crutches/limps in one city as I have in Brno. It's so strange, I can't really figure out why it is that way. People here are really concerned about their health, so I'm guessing that half the be-crutched people I've noticed have broken toes or pulled muscles or something. I'm not sure about the others.
This week we made Americky cookies and took them around to the people in our new apartment building and introduced ourselves. Some of them were really puzzled by the whole thing and just tried to avoid the awkwardness of the situation by taking the cookies and closing the door as quickly as possible. A few were really nice though. Our next door neighbor, Marina and her 3 1/2 year-old daughter Masha, were awesome. They invited us in and we talked with her for about an hour. She moved here from Ukraine with her daughter, recently divorced and is one of the strongest women I've ever met. She is aching for the light of the gospel, I can just feel it. But she's so positive and hopeful about everything.

Also this week we visited Sister Cadeni--one of the oldest members in the branch, whose son is the district president. Her husband died a while ago and the funeral left their family in a bit of debt, so her job keeps her from church on a lot of Sundays. Usually the sisters go a clean a bit for her because she's getting old and then she shares what she's been studying in the scriptures lately. It was my first time meeting her, but boy oh boy did I immediately love the old girl! Seriously. We went in and she fed us and asked us to bless the food first. She shared what she'd studied in D&C 1 that day and told how she'd gone to institute for 10 years as a student and then 10 years as a teacher and now she just loves her daily personal study. As we cleaned, I noticed garments hanging on her drying rack...it was just incredible to catch a glimpse of what some of our investigators could become some day.

AHHH! I love being a missionary! Sometimes I feel like a much more subdued version of myself here...there's always so much to do and think about--saving souls is a serious business. But the more I get to know Sister Wheeler, the more fun we have together. I'm so grateful for all of you. Keep up the great work! Pray for the work here in the CR! (Did you know that Elder Uchtdorf prays for the Czech Prague mission every day?! THAT is cool.)

I LUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURVE you!

Sestra Dean

One thing more: people here CANNOT say Sister Wheeler's name. Usually they end up calling her something like Veely--Liba calls her Beely. It's SO funny.

Ahh, I love my life.