"The MTC loves the mission presidents more than us..."

AHOJ!

Jak se maš?! Be prepared for another long as heck email haha. It's been a pretty eventful week here at the MTC. I mean...as eventful as the MTC can get haha. 

There's been some protestors that keep standing right outside the MTC, and they like to talk to the missionaries as we walk by. Rather than talking to them, we just smile, wave, and yell "činte pokaní!!" They think that we're saying hi, but really we're telling them to repent. Gets them every time haha

So last week we had another lesson where we taught an interested person, and it didn't go too well. So my companion and I were just not feeling it for like 2 days. Well apparently in class we were being unintentionally super passive aggressive towards everyone. Our teacher had to pull us out of class and give us a long talk. I couldn't stop laughing all day about how ridiculous it all was haha. 1 week in and I already started a fight and had to have an intervention.

I slaughtered all the elders at four square. They're scared of me now. It's chill. "She just slowly makes her way to the king spot and then destroys all of us."

Our zone more than doubled last week. We got 29 new missionaries, and I know none of them. The missionaries from our zone that we're close with leave in less than 2 weeks, and honestly the zone is gonna fall apart without them. Since the MTC is getting a huge amount of missionaries in the next few weeks, they're taking our classroom away from us and putting us in one of the old buildings. Everyone keeps calling it the dungeon, so we'll see how that goes. We're planning to go on strike and stage an MTC walkout until they give us our classroom back. I'll keep you updated on how that goes haha

The language is still going pretty well. We learned casing and past tense this week. Casing (basically conjugating for nouns and adjectives) isn't too hard, it just takes a little bit of time because I have to look at the case card and figure out what the correct ending is supposed to be. I feel like I haven't made much progress with the language in the last week though. My problem is I can look at a sentence and translate it on paper, but trying to do it quickly in my head and trying to interpret what other people are saying is a mess. It'll come though. Overall the language is still super fun.

Alright now for the highlight of the weekend. This week was the Mission President Seminar. So all of the new mission presidents were here this weekend for their training. That also means that the entire First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles was here too. It was kinda cool to be walking and randomly pass one of them. On Sunday we got to have a devotional with all of them (Minus President Nelson and President Eyring), and Elder Holland spoke. He talked about the why behind our missionary purpose, and he tied it all back to the Savior. It was a super good talk. Having all of them here was a super powerful experience. I love those men so much and sustain them with all of my heart. They truly are called of God. 

It was funny watching the MTC get prepped for the arrival of all the mission presidents. They were deep cleaning and painting everything, even random staircases that no one ever uses. One of the nights we got super fancy desserts, and we were all super confused until we realized they just gave us the leftovers from the mission presidents haha. But we did get Taco Bell and Chickfila all week for lunch. You really are blessed for serving the Lord haha

The ultimate highlight of the week was getting to meet our mission president and his wife. Our mission gets a new president in July, so he was here for training. They're super cool and super in tune with the Spirit. You could tell they really care about us, and they would come by our classroom everyday during their breaks just to say hi. I can't wait to serve with them. 

Props to you if you made it this far in the email. My future emails will probably be way shorter from now on, but I'm not making any promises haha. I'm getting so stoked to get to the field and begin serving the people of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. If I'm this excited now I can't wait to see how excited I am on week 9. There's no other work I'd rather be doing right now. I'm probably happier now than I've ever been in my life, and it's all because of the work that I'm doing. I can't wait to get to the field and actually be a real missionary. These next 7 weeks better go by fast.

Love you all! Have the best week ever. Stay tuned for next week's installment of "Sestra Lewis pretends like the MTC is way more entertaining than it actually is."

Sestra Lewis

"Ahoj Everyone!"

Ahoj everyone!

Are you ready for the longest email of your life?!

First week of the MTC down, and I've never been so confused by time in my life. It's only been a week, but all the days blend into each other so it just feels like it's been one super long day. It's so weird being blocked out from the rest of the world, but it's also a cool experience. 

Before I even got to the MTC, I was so ready to have the Cookies and Cream Chocolate milk that they have here. After one of the longest days that I've had here so far, I finally went to get some and THE VENDING MACHINE WAS BROKEN. I'm pretty sure I cried myself to sleep that night. It was devastating. But then we got sack breakfast the next morning and they had some there! Tender mercies are real guys hahaha. My district is super chill. We're all super stoked to learn the language so we aren't scared to speak it. The amount of times I hear "SYL" (Speak Your Language) throughout the day is ridiculous. I'm convinced that one of the best ways to bond with your district is to learn a lanugage together. So many inside jokes. So many tears from laughing so hard. It's great. My companion is Sestra Johnson from California. She's so cool. We get along so well. Probably a little too well to be honest haha. I'm pretty sure our district is annoyed with us half the time because we are constantly joking around with each other and having way too much fun. It's such a blessing having a good companion because it makes the whole MTC experience a lot better.

My whole zone situation is so weird. Right before we got here, they moved our district to the Southeast Asian zone. So the Czech/Slovak speaking missionaries are with the Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Hmong missionaries. It's super weird. But our zone is literally so cool. I couldn't have asked for better one. I'm pretty sure at this point I'm learning more Thai than I am Czech, but it's the best haha. It's also weird because we don't have the same schedule as our zone. We are still on the same schedule as the Finnish, Danish, Dutch, etc. missionaries. We hang out with them more than we do our actual zone. It feels like we're living a double life zone wise haha. 

Learning Czech is so fun. It's crazy how much I'm learning. On our third day here we taught a lesson 100% in Czech. We got our investigator to feel the Spirit and we got him to pray for the first time in his life. After only three days of learning the language! The Gift of Tongues is so real. I definitely am nowhere near where I need to be to be an effective teacher, but I'm learning so much. I thought learning a language for 6 hours a day would be hard, but honestly the classes go by so fast. There's so much to learn, and it's so much fun. 

Spiritual thoughts for the week:

We were reading in Preach My Gospel about being set apart, and it mentioned how being set apart is conditional on your faithfulness. As missionaries, and with any calling in the church, we are physically set apart with the laying on of hands, but it's up to us whether we actually set ourselves apart from the rest of the world. We can be set apart physically, but if we're still trying to have relationship with the things of the world, we aren't actually setting ourselves apart from it. I don't know if that makes any sense, but we're gonna go with it. 

It's crazy how much perspective changes in the mtc. I'm learning more about the Gospel and in different ways than I ever have before. I'm having to force myself to change the way I think about things, and as a result I'm learning so much.

If you made it this far in the email, I'm impressed haha. You should get an award or something.

Love you all!

Sestra Lewis

MTC Drop Off

Being dropped off at the MTC. She couldn't wait to get her name tag.

Mission Call