Month: September 2019

This week was pretty solid, despite being fairly open and devoid of meetings. Elder Papworth and I tracted for a long while this week. We also spent a good amount of time just talking to people on the streets. No one really had much interest but it was still a good opportunity to talk to people and to get the name of the church out there. 

Real quick email this week due to time restraints. We went on exchanges this week and got an unplanned tour of Jihlava from this man who only wanted to speak broken english to us. He did tell us some interesting stories that I might relate in another email though. Today we went to a nearby town called Třebíč, where we toured a gothic basilica, which is where the pictures are from. We also got to tour their old Jewish Quarter, which was very pretty. I also spent way longer than intended in an antique shop there. I’m running out of things to put in the subject line, but this week we had a wonderful old Czech Babička come up and give us bananas on the bus this week and say that it was for our health. Sorry that’s it for this week folks, we were running around all day.

Howdy folks! It’s been a pretty busy week for us here in Jihlava. We almost spent more time outside of Jihlava than in it! Last Tuesday we didn’t really do much exciting. We taught English class, which is always a blast. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before but our English class is mostly Vietnamese children under the age of 10, and then about 2 adults. Having that many children who don’t always want to learn English is sometimes a challenge, but it’s also fun to see what they can do when they do decide to learn. They certainly keep us on our toes. On Wednesday we had to return to Prague for a meeting with all the missionaries being trained in the Czech Republic. It was good to once again see my friends from the MTC, as well as missionaries who had been waiting in the states because of visa problems, and to see the progress we’re all making. We ended up spending most of the day in Prague. Thursday morning we started exchanges with the other missionaries in our district, Elder Rice and Elder Reed. Elder Rice came here, and he and I got to be companions for a day. We ended up teaching a couple of interesting people and even had a cool experience where we attempted to teach a man who only really spoke Bulgarian. Neither of us really spoke the others language, but by some small miracle we managed to communicate about our message. Now he wants to meet with missionaries again, although hopefully over Skype with Bulgarian speaking missionaries this time. On Friday, Elder Papworth came back to Jihlava, and then we caught another ride to Prague. We spent the night in Prague, and then headed up to a town called Liberec on Saturday morning. Liberec is built essentially all over some hills, which means that the typical crazy European roads were even more confusing. Half the roads there also double as tram tracks, which makes driving there very exciting. Liberec is a gorgeous city though, with some wonderful views. It is also, apparently, where the Spiderman movie was filmed, but I wouldn’t know about that. We went to Liberec to take part in the Wallace Toronto Project, which is a wonderful organization that goes to one city in either the Czech Republic or Slovakia and does service all over the city. Elder Papworth and I had the opportunity to work with members from all over the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and other missionaries. We got to do work on a school and residency for disabled children and adults. It was cold and drizzly, but we got to work and did a lot of service. It felt good to work hard with our hands and do some good service. That’s about it for this week! Things should finally calm down for us for a little bit now, and we should be doing a lot more working and teaching in Jihlava.

Things are busy, but not really in Jihlava. Also I lied, there will not be any planes involved in this. Elder Papworth and I had a lot of things scheduled last week. We spent all of Monday in Znojmo or in the surrounding area, and had to hurry to get some groceries and other essentials for the week. Nothing really happened Tuesday, but Wednesday we taught some people and then began packing for our early morning trip on Thursday. We got up at 5:30, then caught a ride to Prague with the senior missionaries that live in Jihlava. We spent all day in Prague with the rest of the missionaries on this half of the mission talking about goals and new ideas and things to study. It was an inspiring meeting. Immediately after that, we rode with the leaders of our zone of missionaries up to a city called Hradec Kralové. We spent that night and then the whole next day with them there, working with different companions. It was interesting to spend time with other missionaries, and see different approaches to the same situations. That night we caught a series of trains back to Jihlava. We accidentally got off at the wrong stop, which made it a little longer, but we met some really cool people, and got to see a beautiful sunset on the Czech countryside. We got up the next morning and did service on a farm again, this time moving wood and shoveling potatoes for turkey feed. We also got fed some very authentic Czech gulaš, which was very good. Then it started raining, and then rained some more. Now it’s a little chilly and it feels a little more like fall might actually be on it’s way here. This week we get to do even more traveling than last week. I’m actually writing this from a train right now, and we took a bus this morning. I’ll save the details for next week, but theres a lot going on.