Ni hao, Beks, Ni hao. (You may get a kick out of my life for a moment) September 10th, 2011

Okay, seriously, where am I? I was sent to the Czech Prague Mission, Czech speaking, right? How did I end up here?

Let me explain. One of the miracle things about Sister Anderson getting transferred here is that she studied Chinese for 5 years before coming on a mission. Most of it she's forgotten, but some of it comes back to her when she really focuses on it/hears it.

Our investigator from China, Li Hang, is just a miracle. He's read the Book of Mormon twice and he says he believes it's true. He reads everything we give him. He finally has more time to meet than just once a week, so we've been showing him any church films we can find in Chinese. We ordered a Gospel Principles book in Chinese, so it looks like we will be teaching him about the commandments by having him read a chapter with us. Is this my life? Yes, please. :) Sister Anderson's brother served in the Taiwan Taichung mission, so we gave him Li Hang's email address and hopefully he can answer some of his questions. He says that he has a lot of questions. President also found some Mandarin-speaking missionaries in England that could skype with us sometime next week and help with some of the teaching. If that doesn't go through, I definitely won't hesitate to recommend my dear ol' bff on the little island itself who's baptizing the entire nation. :) But we won't get our hopes up about that just yet.

He's coming to church tomorrow. He taught us the word for nervous-- 'hai pa'-- saying that he was nervous to come to church because he won't know anyone/speak Czech. I don't know how it will go, he barely speaks basic Czech. But we'll be praying our brains out for him (as will all of you?!).

Sometimes I just stop myself in the midst of all this and laugh and think of Bekah and how we were basically side by side for a vast majority of 5 years and how it would be just so bangarang if for a brief second she could slip over here and tell this boy to be baptized for me.

Apparently there is also a friend of his who is reading the Book of Mormon. However this friend works all day and only has time for anything at night. So he reads the Book of Mormon at night while Li Hang reads it during the day. Apparently he goes to a Chinese school around here and there's a Chinese church. If I could say a little more than 'wo ie ni' we could start our own little Chinese branch. And other times I remember all the impersonations of Chinese accents we used to attempt. Now sometimes I'm tempted to speak Czech with a Chinese accent to see if Li Hang understands me a little better.

God works in mysterious ways.

Also. Remember the miracle Vlastik I wrote about maybe a month ago? How Sister Christensen and I contacted him and then he contacted us later and said he'd thought a lot about what we said? Well. I was a little worried because he'd cancelled 3 or 4times since then. Finally we met with him on Wednesday, and the month-long gap made the suspense build within me--even more so when he asked us to come meet with him in the office of the business that he owned. So we went. We got inside and he led us past his personal secretary into a room for business meetings with a large intimidating conference table. I'm not exactly a business woman myself, so I initially felt a little out of place. And then he sat down and told us he had 20 minutes. Eek, people, eek.

But! He had read the information we had given him about the Restoration. And it had intrigued him so much that he went out and bought a little book about Jesus (this is the guy who said that he felt that the idea of the Greek gods seemed more plausible to him when we first met)--something along the lines of a Czech version of "Jesus Christ for Dummies", not one exactly recommended by the Quorum of the Twelve. So we shared more about Joseph Smith with him. As we described Joseph's plight of confusion, he said, "That's like me!" So I asked him how he feels about that. He said that he usually just hears people out and then moves on. He said that we were the first people he's sought to learn more of.

I know, right?!

So we gave him a better book about Christ, maybe you've heard of it. We showed him how it is evidence that Joseph Smith was a prophet. And we have another meeting with him tomorrow. Who else is excited?

And my companions are just so cool. Sister Bean is a violin whiz. We're tossing around the idea of holding a concert at the end of the transfer and using it as a finding opportunity. People here love music.

Big shout out to Criddapher--TWENTY FIVE YEARS OLD! And about to rule the financial world. I love you. And Corey. Thanks for the emails--I am always amazed at how good you are to me. :) Great pictures as well

And MAAAA! Happy birthday my dear wonderful woman, you. :) I hope to hear that Dad and Michelle and Daniel made you feel like a queen and that you bought lots of new ''knick knacks'' for the housey-doo.

I love you all soooooo much. Keep being aMAZING with the Satan face-kicking and all.

S laskou,

Sestra Dean


Molls: All animal print things still remind me of you. Which reminds me of late-night dance parties and lisps and Gossip Girl and Rosie and a thousand other things. How are you?

Danielle: Fair? How was it? Poetry man still there?