TRAKTOVANI...

This week was INTENSE. We had a mindblowingly crazy spiritually uplifting zone conference. Our mission president changed a lot of the things... Then we had interviews with him and he asked if I would do whatever he asked and I said YES! I'm really excited to start doing everything I can to find people. One of the biggest pieces of advice he gave was to have in mind who we need before we go finding, and plan accordingly. The church in this part of the vineyard needs some extra TLC... we are so close to getting a stake. I WANT IT TO BE THIS YEAR. And we need families and strong priesthood holders. So we are thinking outside of the box and we are doing things that scare us. LIKE TRAKTING. I know I might sound like a horrible missionary to some of you who have served... like everyone in our family... but we don't do trakting really in the Czech Republic. Well... we do it's just really scary because the way that Czech houses were build is crazy. There is a front door, but you can't get to the front door with out ringing people the peoples zvolnek, then they have to come out and open the gate that is locked before you can even think about getting to the front door. Even with houses. EVERY HOUSE/APARTMENT BUILDING/SHACK/ANY LIVING ACCOMODATION has one. So there is no way to knock the door and people are just not super nice when you knock on their door. BUT Holla at 'cha girls. We got over our fear and we trakted. We are starting small... one hour a day of trakting and we are starting with houses and not humongous ponaloks (apartment buildings that were built during communism that are super scary and people threaten to call the police on you and yell at you). Baby steps. WE ARE BEING BRAVE AND WE ARE BEING BOLD because these people need it! People need us to tell them that their lives aren't ok without the gospel. They need the message that we are talking about! And we desperately need them to be our branch builders here in Plzen so that we can get a stake in the Czech Republic. It was actually pretty good. We talked to some really nice people, and we talked to some really not so nice people and we had one man who basically kicked us out of the neighborhood... that's okay, we'll get 'em next time. 

We also talked in training about becoming Czech... figuring out what they like, how they act and then using that to talk to people. I'm going to try to be better at that. I really want to embrace this culture. I want people to think that I'm Czech! It's gonna take some work.... hah Also we watched the Mormon Message "The Curren (sp?) Bush" The Lord is really the gardener in our lives and I really want to focus on being the person that the Lord wants me to become. Which is hard. Sometimes I don't know exactly what the Big Guy wants from me, but I'm working on that too. It's gonna be a good week. 

Wishing you health and happiness

s laskou

Sestra Bruno