Ahoj!!!
Shoutout to Corona for giving me some solid content for my email haha. This week has been pretty wild. Every morning we woke up with some new news/restrictions. It's been a pretty fun game of "guess when we're gonna get quarantined."
We've actually seem some pretty cool blessings from everything.
The schools here were closed, so all the students had a lot more time to meet up. On Tuesday and Friday we went to Kroměříž to hang out with some of the high school students we teach English to. Tuesday they took us around the city and showed us some of the cool stuff there. Then Friday we had some intense rounds of card games. It was so much fun. It's always good spending time in good places with even better people.
We had district council in Trenčín, and it was one of the best ones I've had. We did it all centred on the First Vision, and everyone got to share their testimonies about different aspects of it. It's been so cool to study the Restoration of Christ's gospel these past few months.
We had exchanges this week!! I got to be with Sis Alvord again. It's so much fun to get to hang out with my mtc buds. I miss them. It was nice to just talk with her and get caught up with her. They were gonna go home Friday morning, but then Thursday night at 9:30 we got a call that the borders between Czech Republic and Slovakia were closing, so they had to book it across the border haha. Sometimes I love getting to serve in two countries. You get the best stories from it haha.
We worked in in a member's garden this weekend. I freaking love Czech culture. Everyone has gardens out in the middle of nowhere (fun fact: to say "in the middle of nowhere" in Czech you say "where the foxes say goodnight"). It's the best to just go out and work in the gardens. So relaxing and so good to just spend time in nature. Man I love Czech culture.
Here's a day by day play of how Coronavirus has affected us:
Saturday: We got two week food storage in case we get quarantined.
Sunday: There was a no touch policy at church, we weren't allowed to shake anyone's hands or hug anyone.
Monday: We got stopped at the border and was given a little talk about the virus.
Tuesday: Schools were closed, government banned activities over 100 people, we had to cancel all group missionary activities
Wednesday: Stake Conference was postponed
Thursday: Czech Republic declared a state of emergency, CZ banned all activities over 30 people, Church was cancelled, borders were restricted
Friday: senior couples in our mission have to go home, street contacting/public transport contacting banned
Saturday: Stores selling nonessential items closed, the Rollins (the senior couple in our district) are allowed to stay!! (Literally so dang happy)
Sunday: We had Sacrament meeting at a member's house. They had a meeting broadcasted from Prague that we watched from home.
Monday: The Czech Republic declared a nationwide quarantine.
Side note: I'm convinced that if you just put a ton of Czech babis (grannies) to work on the Coronavirus then they'll get it eradicated. They're pretty good when it comes to sickness haha. They'll get you cured so quick. Also, the Czechs (at least the Moravians) have been so chill about this whole thing. They're not too worried about it haha.
So yeah it's been a pretty insane week. We've had to get creative with finding ideas. We found a list of all the old missionaries who served in this area, and so we texted all of them asking them if there's anyone they want us to get in contact with. We got a ton of names back, and we're so stoked to start reaching out to them. It's also been really cool to see all the tender mercies that have happened through all of this. You guys. God is so prepared for this. He knows what is going on. He knows where we are. He knew this was coming. He's been preparing us for this for months. I've seen too much evidence of that to believe otherwise. We're all in the best hands.
Spiritual Thought:
I've been studying grace a ton the past few weeks. It's been on my mind a lot, and I'm just doing my best to try to understand it. It's been a slow process. But when this past Sunday came around, I learned more about grace than I have in all my studying of it. As we met at a member's home to have our sacrament meeting, a ton of thoughts were going through my head. Normally we take the Sacrament in a chapel, a place dedicated for that special purpose. It's a sacred place. But now here I was, sitting in a home in the Czech Republic, taking the Sacrament. The siblings were fighting 10 minutes earlier, the tray of sacrament cups was dropped resulting in a shattered glass (the second glass thing to shatter in the 30 minutes we had been there), the sacrament hymn was sung quietly and hesitantly with everyone trying not to let the person next to them hear their voice. It was a pretty imperfect situation, yet despite all the imperfections, God viewed it as worthy enough place to let the Sacrament be passed. And that's what grace is all about. God wasn't looking at the imperfections. All He could see was a group of people in their Sunday best dedicated to coming closer to Him. All He could hear was a group of people bearing their testimony of God's love and the Savior's atoning sacrifice. All He cared about was that we were gathered together to worship Him. We aren't worthy of God because of anything we do or don't do on our own. We're worthy of God because Christ's grace makes us worthy. His grace has the power to transform our imperfect lives and our imperfect offerings into sacred things. We bow before Him with the shards of a shattered glass, and He accepts it wholeheartedly. So even though we're imperfect, as long as we're trying and moving in the right direction, He takes our humble sacrifices and transforms them into something we would never be able to create on our own. And it's all because of the Savior's grace. I'm just really grateful for Him.
So we'll see how this week goes with the quarantine. It's gonna be cool to see what kind of ideas we come up with. We're definitely gonna have to get creative. I'm excited to see the miracles that come from it.
Have a great week!!! Thanks for all the prayers and support. Remember that God loves you so much!!
Sestra Lewis
No comments:
Post a Comment