Month: May 2020

Čaute všem!

We are really living it up here in Prague! This week Elder Williams and I spent a lot of time getting 4 of the 8 new cars we are purchasing for the mission here, and selling 4 of the old ones. It took a good bit of brainpower, and a slightly higher-than-healthy amount of stressing, but we got it done. Just a word of advice, keep a close eye on all the important documents that belong in cars, bad things happen when they go missing. We are also finally making progress on all the visa work that needs to be done for the missionaries here in this mission. That required a lot of phone calls, but we got pretty familiar with the inner works of the Czech Ministry of the Interior and the Department of Foreign Police by the time we finished. Also listened to the same 30 seconds of hold music for a cumulative total of 2 hours.

We had quite a few lessons as well this week. Some went better than others, but it felt amazing. We haven’t been able to do that much teaching in a long time, and it felt really good to do some good old fashioned missionary work. As part of our adventures with the cars and visa work, we got to explore a little more of the city. I forget how much I love Prague sometimes. It certainly is one of the best cities in the world.

Have a good week!

Elder O’Barr 

Pictures:

1. A really cool mural at a tram stop by the river
2. The Vltava river. If you look close you can see a huge horse statue in the background 
3. The ivy by the church building might be slightly overgrown. We could actually disappear into it, it’s so thick.

Well, it has been an incredible week here. We had a lot of meetings with people, and every companionship in our district began teaching at least 2 new people this week, which was a bit of a miracle. We also had a zone conference this week. Due to the borders being closed, all of the missionaries in the Czech Republic got together, and all of the missionaries in Slovakia got together, instead of the normal mix of both. I got to see a lot of missionaries I haven’t seen in almost a year, including Elder Carter, who was my companion in the MTC. It was a very uplifting experience all around, and it was so nice to see everyone again, as we haven’t been able to gather the past couple of months. We also had dinner at a members house, and got to help teach someone the sisters are teaching. Our friend who was baptized in January was there as well, and he helped teach. It was amazing to see how much he has grown since his baptism! The gospel brings so much added hope and light into our lives! Even at our lowest, when we feel like we’re completely alone, and without hope, Christ is with us. When we are at our best, and we feel like we’re on top of the world, Christ is still with us. When we mess up, and feel like we can’t fix the problems we’ve caused, Christ is still there. Through him, change is possible, and it is achievable. If there is anything you have wanted to change, I invite you to do it. Take advantage of the gift we’ve been given, and become a little bit better today.

Have a wonderful week! Enjoy the nice Spring weather if you can!

Starší O’Barr

It has been another glorious week here in Prague. Elder Williams and I have been hard at work in the office. Visa offices are not open, but we are really laboring to get everything ready for when they do open again. There is a lot of busy work involved in filing visa requests, which is requiring a lot of patience on our parts, but we’re making it through. We found time to have some good lessons this week. Nobody we’re teaching is quite ready to be baptized, but we are hopeful for the next couple of weeks. We also began teaching a young boy and his family. His parents are members of our church, and now their son also wants to be baptized, but they want us to teach them all together as a family before he gets baptized.

Happy mother’s day to all the mothers out there! We spent our mother’s day with a member couple and all of their friends from the Philippines. We got to speak to them a lot about the gospel and even ate a good bit of Filipino food. It was a wonderful time, and we will hopefully be teaching some of them soon.

I love all of you! Přeju vám hezký týden!

Starší O’Barr

Howdy everyone!

We had an incredibly busy week in the office. In preparation for the reopening of the visa offices here, we need to prepare a lot of papers for those who are due to renew their visas this summer, including me! It feels weird to think that I have been out for almost a whole year now. Time is starting to fly! We spent a lot of our time in the office working on those and paying rent and getting things ready to replace a lot of our cars. It has been a lot of work, but we’re helping keep the mission going. It unfortunately didn’t leave much time for us to talk to people this week, but we still squeezed in some good lessons on Saturday and Sunday. We are excited to have all of our new friends join us at church when we can start meeting again. 

On Sunday we had the wonderful opportunity to fast again. Fasting is where we voluntarily refrain from eating or drinking for the purpose of drawing closer to the Lord and requesting His blessings. We regularly fast once a month on, usually on the first Sunday of each month. It is a wonderful opportunity for us to draw closer to our Heavenly Father, and to receive answers to the questions of our souls. It has come to mean a lot to me on my mission. 

This week, we went with some other missionaries to a park I visited my first transfer here in krasná Praha, back in February, called Divoká Šarka. It is mostly these big cliffs and hills on the outside of the city. It was a lot of fun to be out in the ‘wild’ again.

That is all for this week! I hope you all have a wonderful time!

Starší O’Barr