This Last (couple of) Week(s)

Our District trip to Kroměřiž last week. A super pretty city, Moravian town. Ice cream.

Elder Gaudlin and Elder Raines in Kroměřiž (photo: Elder Raines)

Hello everyone.  I have not been sending home my regular weekly news for the last couple of weeks, but this week I will try to make it up to you, and remember what the heck we did.  Time moves fast out here in Zlín.

3 weeks ago:

• The main thing I remember from this week was our exchange with the Zone Leaders in Brno. It was a great exchange. I was with Elder Lovell, who is in the group below me, and an awesome missionary. We taught a really fun lesson together, did a bit of finding, and visited a member family for dinner. It was a great exchange. Also I kind of fell in love with the city of Brno. It is a big city, and a total college town. There are students everywhere. It has a really fun atmosphere, it is a pretty city, and I was just a big fan of the whole thing. So if you are considering a semester abroad and you are looking at the Czech Republic, keep Brno in mind.
• We also found P. this week. I know I did describe that last week, but it was a highlight that needed to be mentioned again. We ended up having a great discussion and set up a meeting with him. It was an awesome finish to the evening.

Shave ice that we found in Zlín.

• I am very positive that other things happened this week, but for the life of me I can't remember what. This is probably why you are supposed to just report on one week at a time and keep up with things. Whoops.

2 weeks ago:

• We had a training in Bratislava. So for the first time in my mission, I went to Slovakia. We had to wake up at 3:30 in order to make all of the train connections, but we got there when we needed to. We also had 4 elders together, and not one of us had ever been there. We had a little map I took a picture of from an email, and from that we found our way through the streets of Bratislava towards the building. Also, in Slovakia we lose cell service, so we were pretty much on our own. We took several wrong turns, and after some fun detours we finally saw some missionaries walk down the street we were looking for and found the building. We had a training there with President Johnson, the Area President. It was awesome.

And us in Bratislava trying to find the church building.

• Again, I can't really remember what else happened...

Last week (all caught up):

• This last week we had some good finding, and a big project in Brno. On Saturday was the Wallace Toronto Foundation project, and lots of members and missionaries were there. It was great.

Look close in the middle of both photos to find Elder Pickett!

Sestras Ludlow & Hayden in Brno (photo: Elder Raines)

From the Wallace Toronto Foundation: IQ Roma Services is an intermediary that supports the Roma people on growth and social agendas, protects rights and dignity within society.  The service project will include painting classrooms and the building, artistic work, decorating the entrance, window cleaning, cleaning the café & recording studio, outdoor working with chopping, cleaning and landscaping.

• We came in on Friday to Brno to have interviews with President and also got to do some finding as a big group at a singing display. This also included me running with Elder Chadwick to buy him a tram ticket. And I am being very literal with that running. It was a good time.
• We also got to do service for a member whose apartment burnt down last transfer. We are scraping all of the damaged wall paper off of the walls. It is a big job, and we will be returning probably every week for a while to keep helping her.
• We also got have another lesson with P., which was awesome. We got to talk about a lot of good stuff and he is going to start praying for himself, to see what happens. We expect lots of good things with him. He is good, but wants to go nice and slowly. Which is a little tough for us, but we will work with it.
• Things are going well with the language training and the district is doing pretty well too. We are all a little sad for transfers, because we really like our district, but it is always good to get a new, fresh start. Elder Robinson is probably leaving, and I am almost certain I am staying here.

My spiritual thought for this week is about perfection. I have come to the conclusion on my mission that being perfect is really, really difficult. Actually, alone it is impossible for us. This is sometimes very frustrating for us, because we feel like we need to be perfect before the Lord will bless us. But I have found that that isn't at all true. The Lord will bless us as we try. He doesn't expect that we are going to wake up one morning and suddenly know and understand it all. He wants us to work and to get better, step by step. And as we are patient with that, we see blessings, and we will see progresss. And the Lord will help us, every step of the way. So keep that in mind this upcoming week. Thanks for all the prayers and support!

-Elder Pickett