Letter: 26 September 2016

Dear all,

Time seriously just gets faster and faster! I think it is running faster than me and sister Baxter when we exercise in the morning! I love being a missionary and it feels like a dream come true to just be here and work and serve the Lord by talking to others and helping them come closer to Christ. It really is the easiest and yet also the hardest thing I have ever done. People seem to be so amazed that we can speak Czech and be here but they just do not understand how much to Lord is helping us. He truly is by our side each and every day!

We loved being able to spend time with the sister in Plzen and they are doing great, getting adjusted to being in a brand new city and sister Miller has been such a great help to sister Andersen. She really lifts her spirit and encourages her. 

 

I loved being back in a city that had trams and being able to talk to people so easily as we traveled to places. Sister Andersen and I also tried to visit one of their investigators who is married to a member and they live in a little village and we got off at the wrong bus stop (the driver had told us wrong) and we ended up walking through villages to get to the right place, only coming an hour and a half late! But the family were happy to see us there and they were surprised that they were so important to us. I think it helped them gain our trust very quickly. Petra, the investigator asked why she wasn't baptised yet and it was great!! Such a miracle! The sister there are already seeing so many miracles happen and we were happy to hear that they are already having success with some of the people we meet with them on the streets. One of them even brought their friend!

Pardubice is doing great, too! Desmond prayed about his baptismal date since we wanted him to have the full responsibility. He prayed and feels like the 15th of October is a great date so we will help him to be as prepared as possible for that. We had a really great lesson with him this week when we simply read out of the book of Mormon with him, reading Moroni 6 and focusing on sacrament meeting. It was very spiritual and we all left the lesson feeling uplifted and inspired. we hope the missionaries will feel the same way this week after our training about faith. Sister Baxter and I are focusing on making our lessons short but powerful since our time is so precious and so far it is going great.

This week we really saw how diligence makes a big difference and I feel like that is what Elder Uchtdorf focused a lot of in his talk at the women's conference this past weekend. We got back from a long day of traveling on Friday and were tired but decided to go out and talk to people about the gospel before we had a lesson with Lucia and her darling kids. As we simply talked to people around us we were able to teach a young man from Romania all about the Book of Mormon, using the pictures and sharing our testimony and now we are going to be teaching him even more! It was a miracle and a blessing from being diligent, despite challenges.

I know that this work is true! I live it and love it!

s laskou,

sestra Manners

Letter: 19 September 2016

​Dear all,

This week went by so fast! I really do not understand time because each week just keeps on getting faster and faster. I feel like things that happened this week happened a month ago. 

 I think sister Van Dalen phrased it best this week when she said, "You are not doing missionary work right unless you are having fun!" And we are having so much fun, so we know we are doing things right with the Lord on our side.

We did a lot of finding last week and this past week, we saw the fruit of our labors a lot and we have begun to teach people and find more investigators and teach them and the missionary blessings just keeps rolling. I love it! and we haven't even started having exchanges yet. Exchanges brought so many miracles last transfer and I know they will be the same. 

We are thrilled that we get to go to Plzen this week and help sister Anderesen and sister Miller build up their area. They have opened the area up for sisters after being closed for over a year. 

 

We are also extremely excited that we get to be training next week. We are studying for it each day and are finding lots of different ideas. We are wanting to relate having faith to rock climbing since both sister Baxter and I have done rock climbing in our lives and love it. If you have any ideas, we would love your help! Please email me!

Desmond is doing great! He is starting to get busy with school and getting ready for his job in Brno  He came to church yesterday and even brought his Czech friend who was interested in why he was meeting with us. Her name is Lenka and she loved church and said that we truly are like a family there and she could feel the love. I love this ward so much! They are incredible! 

This week, we also had the opportunity to attend missionary leadership council and we watched a video that I would like to share with you. President related it to obedience and that as we do exactly as we have been invited, we are saved and kept dry on the boat. Exact obedience brings so many miracles!  

 

Today sister Baxter and I also went out with the Holts (our awesome senior couple)

We saw a really cool carving of the nativity in a rock in a forest. 
 

Our mission has the coolest things! We are so blessed to be here! 

I know that Heavenly Father created this beautiful earth for us because he loves us. The church is true! 

s laskou,

Sestra Manners 

 

Letter: 12 September 2016

Dear all,

Time flies by so fast! This week has been so great and we have seen many miracles as a result of just speaking to everyone we can. We found some really sweet investigators because we tried to talk to everyone we could and we varied where we went finding and what we would approach people with. 

I would like to share just two short examples:

We decided to go family history finding this week and we talked to many people about doing a family history pedigree chart but we felt like we were not having very much success but we felt prompted to continue forward and go down a street that we did not plan to walk down. As we did so, we spoke to a young mom on a park bench waiting for her kids to finish school. Her name is Lucia and she is from Slovakia. She took a blank family tree sheet and just started to fill it in as we spoke with her. Her kids came out of the school building and it felt as if we had been friends for years. She even asked us to sit on the bench with her while she could tell us about her family. She has had a really hard life. She was in a come just over five years ago and completely forgot everything, how to talk, walk, eat. But she remembered that she had children and they have been the most important thing to her ever since. She is a great mom and has an incredible story that we know can be helped by the gospel. We already had our first lesson with her yesterday and we went over to her little panalak, which is very close to our apartment, and helped her to start her own FamilySearch account. We are taking things slow with her but I feel such a sense of peace and tranquility when we are with her. I know that Heavenly Father loves her. She even prayed with us at the end of the meeting and said a beautiful sincere prayer.  God sent us down that unplanned path so that we could meet her and help give her hope. We are also going over this evening to talk more about the plan of salvation.

Another miracle we saw came when one day we had nothing planned but contacting after we got back from the Toronto project and even though we were tired and not feeling our best, i knew we would be blessed as we went out and spoke with others about Christ. We headed towards the train station and spoke to everyone we could and although it seemed like there were not many people on the streets, we had some great little lessons as we simply asked people what gave them joy. Many spoke of their families and nature and we were able to talk about the creation and Christ. We walked past a man smoking on his break from working in a pizza place and he invited us in and we sat down and had a great lesson. He moved here from Syria ten years ago and is Muslim. But he was very interested to hear about what we do and ¨why we are here and we keep on seeing him. As we walked home yesterday from church, we saw him again and helped him find the Book of Mormon in Arabic on his phone to read. He even keeps trying to send us away with pizza! He is very kind.

Desmond is also doing very well. He was not able to come to church this week because he went to Prague to pick a friend from the airport. We will be speaking about Sabbath day importance in our next lesson. We also decided together with Desmond that the 24th of September was a good date for his baptism as he needs to attend church a few more times before he can be ready. We explained that as this is a life long and beyond commitment, it is better for him to go to church a few more times.

Sister Hill is now training a new missionary (which makes me a mission grandma!)

We had the privilege to be as part of the Wallace Toronto Project, which is named after a past mission president and is a mission wide service project held annually near a branch or ward in the mission to help the community and work together as saints to do good. 

We helped make envelopes as part of helping a charity called life without barriers, which helps those with disabilities to live a good life. The elders worked on ripping out old doors and glass from a building nearby that the charity will use to do training. It was such a blessing and my highlight was just getting to know the members more and being able to see and meet so many people I had heard about, including missionaries from the past.

Sister Baxter and I also made our transfer vision and we want to focus on becoming firm dedicated disciples of Christ. We are loving to so far!

What a blessing it is to be a Czech Slovak missionary!

I know that this work is true and that Christ truly is with us.
 
s laskou,

sestra Manners

Letter: 5 September 2016

Dear all,

This week has been incredible! 

We had the funniest experience this week. We received a call from a man that we contacted last week, he met the elders about two years ago and gave them his card and nobody had called until last week. What a blessing from going through the area book! He asked us if we could travel to his home to meet with him and we told him that we would only met with him in a public area and he still agreed so we went. We met this young man probably in his late twenties named Radek and he seemed really nice. He brought his dog, too. We started teaching him and he told us that his dad worshiped the devil and our lesson got really weird and we both didn't feel right (it was the gift of discernment by the Spirit). We told him we had to leave and he respected that but we will not be meeting with him anymore. (One example of how it got strange was when he asked us if we could take our nametags off when we met with him) 

However on our way to him, as we were traveling on the bus I sat next to  cute young mom holding a baby. She was on the phone so I smiled and waited and when she hung up, we had a great lesson! Her name is Talia and she has three kids and she and her husband are from Armenia. She in the end asked us if we could meet again! We are so excited. We actually ran into her this morning as sister Boza and I were dropping her off at the train station. What a miracle! She is really excited to meet with us and they are having some financial problems that we know can be helped and strengthened by with faith in Christ. 

Desmond has a baptism date of 25 Sept!

We also had the most wonderful opportunity to attend the temple dedication here in Prague for the Freiberg temple. I felt so blessed! 

The Spirit was so strong and I loved being able to understand everything in German and then again as it was translated into Czech. What a miracle! We also had the opportunity to watch the cultural celebration and it was so great!!! We had so many youth participate and I loved seeing so many that we recognized. We were cheering for them like we would cheer watching FIFA at home. 

I am looking forward to a new transfer here in Parduibce with Sestra Baxter, She is a sweetheart from Paradise, Utah and we have been wanting to serve together for a long time! I am excited!! 

My new companion, Sister Baxter!

S laskou,

sestra Manners 

 

Letter: 29 August 2016

Life truly is wonderful!
 

I have found that the more I love my mission, the quicker it goes by and time is flying! Sometimes I wish it would slow down but I don't want to make that mean I will not enjoy my mission. So I am very happy with the way things are going. 

The weather here has been so so hot this past week and it makes me appreciate that I am not serving in south America! I know that I was meant to serve here. The people here have stolen my heart. I love learning from the saints examples. This week they got to go to the temple open house in Freiberg Germany and they loved it! What a blessing it it that they will be able to go and do ordinances in their own language. We went on a vylet (a trip) today with the sweet Novotny family and the darling mom of seven kids was telling us that when she went for the first time to the temple, everything was in Bulgarian and she didn't understand anything! We really are so blessed! I love finding little things to be grateful for. 

I am also so grateful for the wonderful materials that we have to teach the gospel here. This week we taught our dear friend Desmond about the word of Wisdom and used the pamphlet a lot to explain things. It is such a  blessing! He is so prepared and just accepted to live according to the Word of Wisdom so easily. People truly are being prepared for us everywhere!
 

I love my mission and I love this gospel! It is true!

S laskou,

Sestra Manners 

English class!