"It's A Red Dog Day"

 Zdravím! 

How's it going? We're pretty stressed. We have like 20 hours of stuff to do and only 10 hours to do it in the day. But that's life haha. 

We've gone back to doing a lot of profile finding on Facebook. I was messaging this one dude, and he wasn't having it. He was just saying he doesn't need fairy tales and stuff like that. I was gonna stop messaging him, but then I remembered I should probably ask him if he knows anyone who would be interested. I figured he would say no, but then he goes "oh yeah. You definitely have to talk to my coworker about God." So I messaged his coworker, and we had a super good conversation about God and how to recognize when God is talking to you. He had a super cool story about gaining a testimony of God. 

We started making a plan and getting things ready to post Christmas content on the country Facebook pages. I'm excited. Weird that it's almost Christmas time though. 

We had dinner with this member, and it was so good! She talked to us the whole time about her mission in Korea, and she made us some Korean food. The members here are some of my favorite people on the planet. 

Stake conference was this week. It was weird doing it over Zoom. It just felt like normal church but a lot longer haha. But President and Sister Gehring spoke  at it, and their talks were super good. I love them so much. 

We watched Prez Nelson's message, and holy cow if you haven't seen it go watch it. I'm obsessed with that man. I'm convinced we were best friends in the preexistence. It was definitely the highlight of my week. 

Today we took a trip to the middle of nowhere and went to Hrad Gutštejn. It was these castle ruins. Walking up to it you're just surrounding by some super loud cows. And then we walked around a bit. We ended up going right as the sun was starting to set, and it looked SO COOL. Pictures don't do it justice. 

The Czech Republic came up with a new system to lift restrictions. They call it PES. It's short for some longer name, but pes in Czech is "dog." So basically they have different colored dogs for the different levels of restrictions. It's been a purple dog day for a week or so, but starting today it's finally a red dog day. That means we can meet with people in groups of up to six people. I'm excited to get to see the district again. And the Czech grannies. I've missed my Czech grannies. 

Spiritual Thought:

We talked a lot this week in our social media calls about how to move forward when you're stuck. It turned into a super cool study for me. A lot of times in life, we get frustrated with our situation because it isn't giving us the results we want. But then we just keep doing what we're doing and hope that it somehow changes. But that doesn't work. If you want different results, you have to change something. You have to do something differently. Here's some steps I came up with to help figure out what to change. 

1. Know the results you want. Define what it should look like.

2. Evaluate what you are currently doing. Is it bringing you the results you want?

3. Look at what things you can change. Which things aren't bringing you the results you want?

4. Make a new plan. How will you change those things so they bring different results?

5. Implement the plan with confidence

6. Repeat. It might take a few tries to find something that works.

Anyways I recommend changing something if you aren't happy with where you're at or the results you're getting. 

Have a great week! Enjoy Thanksgiving. Love you guys. 

Sestra Lewis

                                            

                                             

"We Are Family"

 Zdarec!

We had a good week. We're still in quarantine. The Czech Republic came out with some system that is supposed to start loosening restrictions soon, but we probably won't have Christmas markets this year which is super sad. 

We ran an ad this week all about how the energy that a lot of people here believe in is actually God. It was super fun to make. We got a few responses, but no one who is actually solid. So that's kinda annoying, but I'm hoping the ad will do well in other areas. We're currently trying to run an ad a week. 

We've been calling members every day this week. Mostly we've just been calling the babičky. They're my favorite to talk to. You don't even have to say anything. You say hi, and they go on a long rant for 5 minutes. Then you agree with them, and they go on another long rant. It's so much fun. I love them so much. It also just helps for the members to get a call from someone. It's been cool to see how something as simple as a phone call or text message can make someone's day. 

We had a random dude call us and ask us if we could meet with him. We called and talked with him, and he seemed cool. But then we noticed he was marked as "do not contact" in area book. So we reached out to some past missionaries, did some digging, and found out he's a creeper and we should block him. So that was exciting. If there's one thing a mission has taught me, it's how to deal with creepy men. 

Highlight of the week was Zone Conference. It was all over zoom which was a huge škoda. I miss seeing everyone in person. But it was still a good meeting. It was about 5 hours scattered throughout the day. I love this mission. They're my second family. Perks of having a small mission is that everyone gets super close with each other. It's seriously the best mission. 

Also for the last session of zone conference Prez surprised us all with a video. He had all of our families record videos of themselves giving us encouragement. It was super cool. I was way grateful for it. 

Today we went to these castle ruins (Valštejn Hrad). These ones were cool, cause normally castles are closed on Mondays (and cause of Covid), but this one is open 24/7 and is free to the public. So we just walked around for awhile. It was just in the middle of this tiny town. The castle was just a little guy, but it was fun to see it. The history in this country is insane. 

Spiritual Thought:

We were talking to our friend, and he was talking about how during Communist times, it got rid of the "casual Christians." The people who just said they were Christian but picked and chose what they wanted to follow. Because no one is going to casually claim that they're Christian if the police will detain them for worshipping. Those who were really devoted continued to worship, even though their life was in danger for doing so. I don't really know where I'm going with this, but I just thought it was a cool idea.  When you're really converted to something, even if it's not religion, but a certain belief or hobby or něco takového, you're willing to practice that belief even when it's hard. Even when others try to tell you not to believe it. It takes little effort to be a casual believer. What really makes a difference is believing all in, no matter the cost. 

Have a great week! Just love others, and remember that relationships are the biggest blessing in life. Love you!

Sestra Lewis