Keep Working Hard, Not be "Trunky", and Eat Lots of Czech Food

Service and eating in the forest

My Mom asked what I am focusing on as I end my mission… As far as things to do...Keep working hard, not be "trunky," and eat lots of Czech food. Nothing very special. Just be a missionary for as long as they will let me. I will send a good final email with my testimony, don't worry. I might have to send it the week before I go, since I am not really sure that I will have a lot of time that last Monday for emailing. I have to travel to Prague and whatnot. 

• The work is going well. We are still struggling to find, but we are seeing little things, and we are working with a lot of less-actives and our few recent converts. J. had to reschedule for this Wednesday, so we will meet with him then. It's going, slowly but surely. Elder Schmutz is doing good. Still adjusting, but getting there, slowly but surely.  

Our District

• We had a good District Meeting this week, and did some finding, and some emergency service for a social services center for families with a child with autism. It was fun, we got to help unload a truck full of furniture.
• Here are pictures from a Halloween party we had on Thursday. We went to UH and had a singing display with the APs, who were here on exchanges. Then had the party. Lots of kids running around, some fun "minute to win it" style games, and a piñata to finish. It was a good time.

 Elder Chadwick on the guitar, Sestra Dance and Elder Pickett right behind!  (photo from Elder Raines)

• We will be watching broadcasts of stake conference next week. Which will be good, although we wanted to all go together as missionaries, because it is always a fun little reunion. 
• The weather is getting cold now. We went tracting in the cold wind last night, which was an adventure. We didn't find anyone, but it was still a memorable and good evening serving the Lord.  And there has been a lot of wind yesterday and today.

From the forest

• From Jaroslav Kvasnička:  Here are pictures of our other brigade in the forest. Thank you very much for the excellent service and advice. Without you I would not have a chance to make the fence. 

• We went out to dinner to McDonalds to celebrate my 2 year mark on Saturday. (We had coupons)

• Yeah, the cottages are adorable (pictures last week). They are right at the edge of the city. Take a bus and then a 5-10 minute walk to get there. And actually a lot of Czechs have cottages. And they frequent them throughout the entire year. Even in the winter. They have a nice wood burning stove for heat in the winter. The member owns it with her daughter and son in law.

• (Mom attempting to get some feedback about post- mission plans…specifically where to live at BYU) I don't mind walking, even in the snow, I have a lot of mission experience with that, so it won't kill me. I don't know if that offers any real clarification...

Thanks Dad for the spiritual thought as well, we actually watched that talk “Do We Trust Him? Hard is Good” by Elder Stanley G.Ellis in Priesthood meeting yesterday as part of the lesson on trails. It was a good lesson, and a great talk. “...The question “Do we trust Him?” may be better stated, “Do we have the faith to trust Him?”... Do we trust His commandments to be for our good? His leaders, though imperfect, to lead us well? His promises to be sure? Do we trust that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ do know us and want to help us? Even in the midst of trials, challenges, and hard times, do we still trust Him?”  My Dad encourages me to do my best to cherish the hard times because that is what will make me more into a disciple of Christ than when times are easy. I am working on having that good perspective, and I think it is going pretty well right now.

Have an awesome week!  

Love,  Elder Pickett

From Elder Raines to illustrate the challenges of the Czech language:  “This week I made a quite funny Czech mistake. I was trying to tell a member about how I cut down a tree during a service project. The correct way to say it is "Pokacel jsem strom". Which means "I cut down a tree" but what I said was "Pokecal jsem si strom", which means kinda like I was trying to eat a tree but as I was eating the tree the tree fell and spilled on me and got all over my clothes. The whole family started to laugh, but also was a little considerate that I actually tried to eat a tree and really hurt myself.”

We Have an Appointment with an Investigator

 Zlín in the fall

Things that happened this week:

• The district is doing well. We were all in Zlín last week for some coat stuff. Elder Schmutz found a winter coat. Also I bought some jeans, because they were having a good sale. So I actually might be good on pants. I don't remember though, we'll see once I get back. I might buy one more suit, and a new pair of fancy shoes, and that will probably be it for clothes shopping. Anything more and I might run out of room in my suitcase. Our district is going to play squash together today in UH. I will take a picture.

Most of our district (photo by Elder Schmutz)

• Elder Schmutz is doing good, he is coming along. I am remembering my training experience a lot. It is interesting to look back on. Zlín will be fine without me. Good news! We also found a new investigator on Wednesday evening next to the main square. His name is J., and we have a meeting with him tomorrow. It should be good.

 Elder Pickett & Elder Schmutz

• We try to offer service for people, but a lot of them say no. Czechs have a culture where they don't feel like they can just take free service, they feel they have to repay you in some way, and for some people that is too much to repay Mormon missionaries. But we have some opportunities, and always keep looking for more. Sometimes we go service tracting on Saturday mornings, dressed in normal clothes and offering to just help people out.
• I saw Sister (Roubicek) Godfrey, one of my MTC teachers, in UH for sacrament meeting yesterday, so that was cool. I went on an exchange with Elder Jarvis this last week, he is doing awesome. I will have an exchange with Elder Raines at the end of this transfer, because it will mean leaving Elders Schmutz and Jarvis together on their own for a day. We are letting them learn a little more Czech before that happens.

Elder Schmutz & Elder Jarvis - our district greenies

• And there will be stake conference November 5th in Brno, but we may watch it as a broadcast, I am not sure. And then the last training for me will be November 10th. Which is when I will give my farewell testimony.
• We went to a funeral of a member who passed away. It happened in the church building, and we ended up being pallbearers. He was from a city outside of Zlín, and I have actually never met him. He has been sick for a long time, and he hasn't been to church since I got here.
• The Czech Republic actually just had elections for parliament this last week. It is interesting to see how politics here are very different from American politics.  According to my Dad’s current events updates, sounds like politics are still a mess. 

Spiritual thought for the week is the same as my Dad’s spiritual message to me.  The focus of our mission right now is actually on the light of Christ, and so President Pohořelický absolutely loved the talk from LDS General Conference from President Dieter F. Uchtdorf where he talks about “If you open your mind and heart to receive the Light of Christ and humbly follow the Savior, you will receive more light. Line upon line, here a little and there a little, you will gather more light and truth into your souls until darkness has been banished from your life. Every time you turn your hearts to God in humble prayer, you experience His light. Every time you seek His word and will in the scriptures, the light grows in brightness. Every time you notice someone in need and sacrifice your own comfort to reach out in love, the light expands and swells. Every time you reject temptation and choose purity, every time you seek or extend forgiveness, every time you courageously testify of truth, the light chases away darkness and attracts others who are also seeking light and truth.” So keep working on having the light of Christ in your life. Pray, read the scriptures, give service, share your faith. 
I will keep working to the end of my mission, don't worry. Love you lots!

Love,

Elder Pickett

We helped a member at her cottage 

Zlin Questions and Answers

 The Czech Fall is incredible. I can't fully do it justice with a camera, but it is beautiful.

Not a lot of time and we had some technical difficulties here, so I will be brief, but informative.

• Training is going well. Elder Schmutz is doing good with stuff. Slowly but surely learning Czech, and everything else. Best thing about training is probably having a cool greenie to train, and getting to remember my early days, and also getting to show him how awesome Czech culture is and get him to try new things for the first time. I have never trained before, and I don't really remember how long it was until I started understanding stuff.
• Zlín. It is an interesting city. It's weird being alone in a city (meaning only one companionship of missionaries). I am not used to it at all.  It feels like more of a thing here that people know the missionaries, because there have been missionaries here non-stop for the last 20 plus years. We still meet people who don't know us, a few every day usually, but there are a lot of people who reject us right when we start talking to them, because they already know who we are and don't have interest.

Some food that a member made for us when we went to visit her and 

show her General Conference.

• We have had a few good contacts with people, but nothing has come of it. This transfer has been really rough, we actually still have yet to find a single new investigator(someone who gives us a name, sets up a return appointment, and gives us a contact) , and I don't know why. But we will see what happens. We saw P. two weeks ago on Monday and talked with him a little bit, but he is not looking to continue yet.
• We do a lot of walking, and take the bus to UH (where the church building is and the other 4 missionaries in the District). The bus station is a 5-10 minute walk from our apartment. There is only a metro in Prague in the Czech Republic. We don't do a whole ton of tracting (door to door contacting) in our mission in general. We are mostly street contacting. We do some bus contacting as well. We also draw on the ground and do chalk displays.
• The district is doing awesome and Elder Raines is doing a great job training. Elder Schmutz and Elder Jarvis are doing well. Hardest part of being new missionaries is that they don't really know what's going on most of the time. But they are learning all the time.

The Elders doing some service for a woman whose house burnt down a few months ago

• For exercise we do some running, some inside stuff, a little bit of everything. I haven't learned how to cook a whole ton of things on my mission. Cooking food just hasn't been a big enough priority.
• And the pictures from last week are from our service in the forest with Brother Kvasnička. We are helping him to build a fence. We roast špekačky over a fire for lunch. And sometimes hunt for mushrooms if they are around.

Interesting Czech fruit

Love you lots!

Elder Pickett

TRANSLATION: "Sorry, my one love is the library" (from Sestra Sadler’s blog)

We Watched General Conference

From Jaroslav Kvasnička: “I'm sending you a promised photo of Pitina. Please send this to your companions.” Waiting for an explanation of the service, mushroom hunting, and roasting food! 

Elder Schmutz,  Jaroslav Kvasnička, Elder Jarvis

Hello everyone! This last week was a great one, and this upcoming week should be great too! Funny how that seems to work out. Here are some updates:

• We will be going over to send pictures today, don't worry.
• Elder Schmutz's Czech is coming along well, he understands more and more every day. People we meet want to know if he is German when they first meet him. It's pretty funny, because almost no one has ever heard of Nebraska. They are always confused when he tells them that's where he is from.

First Kebab!

• A couple weeks ago we had Progressive Training  in Brno. It was for all the new missionaries and their trainers. The STLs/ ZLs prepared the training with us doing role plays to practice teaching.  Companionships that travelled in longer distances stayed over at the ZL’s apartment, so about 10+ missionaries. We didn't crash overnight after Progressive Training, we are really close and have lots of nice travel options to and from Brno.

Elder Raines is training Elder Jarvis… Elder Pickett is training Elder Schmutz

• We got to do some good service this past week on Tuesday, helping a member whose apartment caught fire a few months ago. We are helping her get all of the burnt wallpaper off of the walls and ceilings. Which has pretty much convinced me to never have wallpaper in my house.
• We also had a great exchange with the Zone Leaders in Brno. I was with Elder Brockbank and it was awesome. I haven't gotten to serve around him for a while now, and it was fun to catch-up again, and talk about mission experiences, old and new since we have served together. We also  had some good teaching and contacting together. It is always fun to work with someone you already know, because you tend to teach better together.
• The other big news was the baptism of a girl in the ward here. Her whole family is in the church, and it was fun to go to a baptism like that and just get to watch the whole thing when it was all planned out. We also got to watch General Conference on Saturday, and spent the night at the other Elders house in UH in order to be on time Sunday for the rest. It was great.

General Conference party in UH. This is the English listeners room.  
Elders plus Sister Dance & Sister Hayden

• We went to a tiny village to visit a recent convert, and we missed basically the only bus option back to Zlín. So we got to walk a few kilometers back. But here is the view of where we were, in selfie format. 

• Things are progressing slowly but surely. The district is doing really well here.  We are going to have zone training this week.
• The weather is good. It's been getting colder and colder these past few weeks, but nothing crazy yet. Just a light jacket over the long sleeve shirt when we go out proselyting. We went looking for a coat today and need to find one for Elder Schmutz. It is not snowing, we still have a while for that. It snowed for the first time last year in the middle of November, so I won't have to deal with any real snow on the ground here. 
• As far as clothes shopping, don't worry, I have been doing that. I have my new grey light jacket, and today I brought a heavy navy blue winter coat for snow and cold. It was on sale for 60 % off, because it is "Last Year's Collection" so I got for around $70 dollars from an outdoor sports store. It is a nice heavy duty Columbia brand jacket. And last week I bought a suit for about $100. And I have purchased 5 long sleeve white shirts in the last 2 transfers. I also bought a nice, non-mission sweater today for about $17. I am thinking about a 2nd suit, but I haven't decided if I really want one yet. Also I will be getting another pair of nice shoes. But don't worry Mom, I am getting some good European clothing shopping in.

My spiritual thought actually comes from conference. It isn't from a specific talk, but from the experience of conference in general. Going into conference I didn't think of many specific questions that I wanted answered, but I was certainly looking for guidance (Mom note… especially as he is coming to the end of this amazing missionary experience!). As I watched the sessions, it helped to rearrange things in my brain. I am not sure how to describe it very well, but basically I felt like it unscrambled and reorganized my priorities and thoughts into what they needed to be. I have felt much more peaceful since watching it. I just wanted to bear testimony that I know that the speakers at General Conference have been chosen by the Lord to address us, and that their talks can have a valuable impact on our lives. I invite you all to continue studying, or read for the first time, the talks from conference and listen for the Spirit to tell you specific things for you to do or change in your life. As you listen to that Spirit, you will be led to greater happiness and peace. Thanks for all the support and prayers!

-Elder Pickett

One of my all time favorite quotes "Wherever thou art, act well thy part."  -President McKay

Pictures from last transfer- Elders Gauldin, Raines, Robinson and Pickett