Mercedes On A Mission: Starting to See Flowers

Good morning everyone!

This past week was pretty crazy. Sestra H and I already always work hard, but this week we decided to try and push ourselves and just get work done, and it's finally started to pay off! The work here in Liberec has always been kind of slow for us. We'd work really hard, and then still not have any new investigators and we'd work really hard, and then everyone would cancel on us. This transfer has been really rough, of course we've been planting seeds everywhere we go, but this week we finally started to see some flowers.

Last Monday we didn't really do anything spectacular. We just had a relaxing P day and did some shopping and cleaned the apartment. We also taught Natalka (our 14 year old investigator) English at her family's apartment, which was really good because we were able to meet her mom, who doesn't want Natalka to be baptized. So we met her and hopefully we'll be able to work with her too.

Tuesday was good, we had a ton of lessons and meetings planned so we were running all over town. We got to visit this awesome family who sometimes have a hard time coming to church. The mom is single and she just had a baby girl, so they are kind of struggling, but the youngest boy just turned 8, and pretty soon the oldest boy will turn 16 so he's going to baptize his brother. That's such a cool experience for their family and the branch.

Also on Tuesday we had our "Culture night." We get one culture activity to do per transfer, and we decided to go see Popelka (Cinderella) in the form of ballet. Turns out it was actually a super modern version, where Popelka was a drug addict, the ball was just a birthday party, and the "prince" found her by her old clunky cell phone. It was really interesting, but I would never want to see it again. Memories am I right?

Wednesday we got to go visit this really awesome family that lives and works in a hotel on a giant horse farm! They live in a beautiful countryside and they have everything they need right on the farm! They just go to town to by some groceries every once in a while. They are so awesome, the mom was converted and baptized when she was a foreign exchange student in America. The dad has a strong testimony too and their two little boys are so cute! The mom played volleyball at BYU-Hawaii, and she's also a professional singer! They are all so cool!

Friday I had a really cool experience. We had a surprise lesson with a man we had met on the street over a month ago. His name is Ivan and he's actually from Ukraine, but he's live in the CR for 5 years now. He is a really strong Christian and for the first half of the lesson he was convinced that we believed a lot of the same things, but the things that we believed that were different than him were wrong. He was not buying it at all for the first half of the lesson. Then we were wrapping up and Sestra Hamblin asked me to say the closing prayer, and I didn't say anything special, I didn't do anything amazing, but the spirit was there and after the prayer he was a lot more open to what we had to say. So we talked some more and he was definitely more willing to listen and he actually committed to read the Book of Mormon and pray! We're pretty sure that if we had asked him to do that before the prayer he would have said no. But, the Holy Ghost works miracles!

Saturday there was a huge celebration here in Liberec called Jarmark. We still don't know what it's for exactly, but the naměstí gets filled with just shop after shop, and they set up two giant stages and there was so much going on! It was so cool! People were dancing and singing, there were tons of people selling homemade items, it was a lot of fun! It wasn't our P day so we couldn't stay long, but we went during lunch and then came back during dinner. It was so fun!!

Sunday I gave a talk in church. That's right I spoke in church my first transfer. In other places in the world that wouldn't be a big deal, but the language is so hard here, I think it's a miracle that it went well. I just spoke about the Holy Ghost. It was supposed to be 8-10 minutes, but then I got nervous and talked so fast that it probably only took about 5. Oh well, I think I did a good job.

Well I hope everyone is doing well, I hope you're all enjoying summer break. Fun fact, kids aren't even out of school yet here, they still have like 2 more weeks!

The work is hard but it's moving forward here in Liberec. We've been pushing hard and now we're starting to see results and it feels good. The transfer ends on Monday, so we'll see if I'll stay here in Liberec, or if I'll get shipped off to another area.

The church is true, this is the Lord's work, and I know that I'm where I need to be right now. I love you all and hope you have a great week!

S laskou,

Sestra Schaerrer