Sunday, November 29, 2015

Tyler's Thanksgiving

Well we made it and lets just say this week did not let down nor stop!

Monday was not a p-day like normal so we worked hard that day and then were up at 2 in the morning to go to Prague. We met with an older woman who decided she was coming to Prague with us! It was pretty weird at first but also cool! We ended up giving her a tour of the Prague building before training! We brought our investigator all the way to Prague!

We had a fantastic training! a lot about how to teach with members, what our Christmas schedule will be, and then the sister training leaders trained about how to use time better. They ended up sending us on exchanges in the middle of training! Gave everyone bus tickets and a new companion and sent us out into Prague. I was with one of the Zone leaders and we had a great thirty minutes. We ended up missing our stop so we just rode the trams for an hour but it was great! After that we had a good lunch and Jesus thought and then picked up packages. My companion had quite a few packages that we had to get home. It was quite an adventure but it was a great day.

Wednesday was a normal day and It was cold this week. We did a really cool chalk drawing of Jesus's life but it didn't last long as it snowed a little bit.

Then Thursday was our p-day! We worked hard all morning until about 3 in the afternoon and went to the namesti and got some cool things and Christmas shopping done and then we all headed to our apartment and had our thanksgiving as missionaries. We had some ribs and 4 pies and a few other things to begin but it was all in preparation for Saturday.

We ended up getting a 15.15 kilo turkey. It was a monster and quite a difficult thing to get home. Then Friday we had district lunch with all out left overs from the night before, About 7 on Friday we started cooking. We were responsible for the turkey,stuffing, and two pies! I had 5 huge loaves of bread and i cut bread for hours trying to dry it out as fast as possible using a oven, microwave and toaster. It was quite an adventure. But we ended up with 4 HUGE pots of stuffing! It was pretty good.

We also had a banana and pumpkin pie using real pumpkin! Now we didn't have any room in our fridge so we used our one bedroom and opened the windows and closed the door as another fridge! At about 1 in the morning on Saturday we woke up and put the turkey in the oven! It barely fit. As we got back in bed we could here it sizzle and were pretty worried about the juice. We finally fell asleep and woke up to quite a bit of juice on the ground. But it all worked out. It cooked till about 8 and then getting to the church was quite an adventure. We barely made it. Both of us with about 40 pounds of stuff in very awkward sizes. But it all worked out. WE played some minute to win it games. It was fun but they didn't think they were as fun as we did! But still was great! We had about 15 pies and tons of food! People were so impressed we had about 35 people as well and 10 non members. IT was a great experience! We are pretty exhausted!

Sunday was also a crazy day! Our branch presidency was reorganized. Our ward mission leader was put in as branch president. He is only about 27. It was a pretty crazy day and the whole district presidency was there as well. We also went to the Zoo today which was pretty fun! This week will be another busy week! Tonight we are going to Hradec Kralove on exchanges and then on Friday I have visa work in Prague. WE had a great time! I hope all is well























Monday, November 23, 2015

Week 12 in Ostrava -- Getting ready for Thanksgiving

We Have quite a crazy week here this week! Today is not actually our P-day. We are allowed to email but the rest is a regular pros day. We have p-day on Thursday this week with 4 hours of pros. We can have a thanksgiving meal together as missionaries and maybe go see some place cool and have some fun on thanksgiving. Our mission president is great! Tomorrow we also have training in Prague!  Another early morning but it will be a great day to be around president. A funny story with that; about two weeks ago on a P- Day we were eating lunch in a mall here and this lady started talking to us! Since then we have gone to lunchwith her twice and given her a book of Mormon. When she found out that we were going to Prague she said she would come with us and now has tickets with us. Slightly humorous. There are not too many missionaries that have brought investigators to Prague! We will give her a building tour there and see how it goes! Saturday this week will be our big thanksgiving branch party! Thanks to dads advice we ordered a 14kg turkey last week! We are excited to get it on Friday! Not sure how we will cook it and if it will even fit but it will be pretty fun! Thanks for all the recipes! I will be doing the stuffing and the turkey! Hopefully things come out okay! Needless to say we already have a busy week on plan. we will also be doing some minute to win it games this week! 

We had a good week this week. Dad had written last week about praying for people to teach and serve. Tuesday we tried that.It was a holiday here as the 25 or 26 anniversary of the velvet revolution! Crazy to hear about. A quick side note; A member here wrote a book called "Beyond enemy lines" talking about being a member of the church during communism! I would love to read it but would encourage ya ll to find it! It was also a really rainy day. No one was outside yet we ended up teaching ten lessons that day! It was so cool to see that prayer answered. We also were able to help someone move a few things. We always offer service and help, but no one here lets us. It was cool to see someone let us as well that same day. 

They recently finished a sport court right by our house. Outdoors with a basketball hoop. we have started going there about three times a week. Every other day we go for a run. This week we had two good runs close to three miles! So we are picking it up! Christmas is coming! The namesti here has markets being built and stores are ready. There isn't really thanksgiving here to break it up. Saturday this week we did a singing display as a district. My companion started to not feel well again... more on that in a second, so it was just the two sisters and i singing. We sang love is spoken here in Czech. I rocked the men's part by myself.... Not sure how great it sounded but we just go and do. Just do it is what we have to do as a missionary. But my companion ended up getting sick at the exact same time and we had to go home again this week. Apparently we ate the same meal and it did not sit well with him. This time he was sick throughout the night as well! It was not good! I got to do three hours of calls though! I called up tons of old potentials some from 2011. I picked out all the families and now have a list of people! Sunday no church again for us but the other elders came and i got to go out for about 2 hours.

Other than that life continues to go on. This week will be pretty hectic but we are excited. I hope you have a great thanksgiving!

​It was cold for the Texans this week!

Monday, November 16, 2015

Week 12 in Ostrava - Homemade Tortillas

Well another week come and gone here in Ostrava! We have had a good week! We taught 6 lessons with a member present this week which was pretty cool and we had some great teaching! Things are going well!

Our investigator with a baptismal date is doing great. After a lesson this week she came contacting with us and bore her testimony on the street, asked people why they didn't believe and told them they could find it! It was a pretty cool week!

Happy Birthday to Carrie and Baba and others that have birthdays right now! Two weeks ago we started ponderizing! This week my verse was about god giving us the spirit of power love and of a sound mind. Some good principles! A couple of questions!

We heard about what happened in Paris but only a little bit? Are the missionaries there all ok? We hear about people every day on the street and people are worried about things here as well. It is truly some signs of the Second coming. Also I need your new address and stake and things!

Hopefully sooner rather than later! This week we struggled finding new investigators but this week will be the week! We had quite a few member visits this week. We are trying to get all the home teaching done or at least all the members visited. we planned 15 minutes lessons. Three of them on Saturday, Each was closer to an hour or so. The members love having us in their home. learning and sharing their experiences in the church. It is quite something to hear their stories of how they found the church here. This week we were supposed to have District conference. IT was in Brno and a lot of people traveled there. We were at the building here in Ostrava and we had a lesson but my companion was not feeling well! We ended up having to go home and he was pretty sick Saturday night. But got everything out of his system and slept till about 12 on Sunday. But we missed both sessions. Sister McConkie said she would tell us what she and President talked about next time we were together. As of yet I have not gotten any mail yet. But this week there is a chance and next week we have training! With my companion being sick I had about 12 hours of studies on Sunday which was quite fun.

I am caught up in the book of Mormon read quite a few ensigns and the Gospel of Luke! I also had some more time to cook so I had some fun. Saturday night I made tortillas for the week and fajitas! Sunday morning I made pancakes and then for lunch made chicken divan! It was pretty fun but have had enough for a few days and am ready to get back to work. I had the opportunity to give my companion a blessing Saturday night as well. It is interesting how the spirit works.

After the blessing there are immediately a few more thoughts that come. I always think man those are so good but the spirit didn't prompt earlier. It is a good lesson to how the spirit works. We will receive what we need right then! Also during my studies this week one verse was really powerful! It was from Jacob 5:42. God is talking about his vineyard and then asks what more he could have done for us and weeps. It is quite a powerful section but then the servant of the vineyard says I will go and take others with me. That is why I am here on a mission, We are finding the people that are ready. I hope things are going well at home and that you are ready for thanksgiving and those things coming up! I love you all Have a great week!











Monday, November 9, 2015

Week 11 in Ostrava - Preparing for Thanksgiving

Following our Halloween party a week ago, we are preparing for a big thanksgiving party! we are trying to get our whole branch here involved and it has been lots of fun! However we lack recipes for most thanksgiving dishes. Especially a turkey, stuffing, Green been casserole, dads jello salad, and pies! We will be grateful for any recipes you send! Hopefully next week we can print them out and have them! Thanks for all of that!

This week has been a really good week! Our one investigator continues to progress and we have pretty much taught everything now. She hangs out with church members and comes to most things. To most it would already seem as if she is a member! We are getting close with a few others and the other old lady we haven't been able to meet with in a while. We are out finding and have had some cool experiences! We seeded our neighborhood this last week and then tracted on Saturday.  Ten steps from our door we tried the first three bells of the panaloch. Third one down the guy says wait five minutes an then let us come up and teach his girlfriend and him. A really young cool couple! He knew about our church and had some funny questions and we ended up teaching the restoration! That was thirty minutes, left and went to the next one ten more steps away. third bell and the guy says no we don't have time my family and i are cleaning! We recently just received a new Mormon message all in Czech! It is basically a quick 3 minute film about meet the Mormons in the Czech republic. We took our DVD player with us and said can we just show you this quick film. He agreed and showed him and left him a plan of salvation pamphlet. It was a super cool experience and that was all the time we had that day. This week we will hope for more miracles. We also tried to find a new place to contact this week! We ended up walking all over the industrial sector which wasn't the greatest place to contact. We did end up by a college and set up a new investigator who we will meet with today. We met some really cool people last week and are excited for what this week has in store as we try and get our teaching pool built before the holidays

My companion bought a guitar last week too so that has been fun! We are looking forward to some good singing displays! We made tortillas last night (thanks Amber) and were really good! my cooking skills continue to improve and we eat really good! Halusky and Svickova are the Czech and Slovak dishes and they are the best though. We make halusky about once a week still haven't learned Svickova. We had two investigators at church this week which was really cool and they had an amazing time. There was also a really good relief society lesson that left them both in awe! super great! We got to go home teaching with one of President McConkies counselors last night. Just a great guy and a spiritual giant. It was a really cool opportunity to learn more. A couple questions. What is going on with the rest of college football? I love hearing about BYU though! Other than that we have had a good week and have a lot to look forward to this week. we are trying to get 100 percent home teaching this month and are really working hard with the members. The book of Mormon reading is going well. But we are so busy we spend most of our mornings reading. Other than that I hop things are going well!
Love Elder Hanis

My favorite place right now!
We found this little guy on our wall...
I love that Park!

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Week 10 in Ostrava -- Halloween and Fall

We are in the Fall season here. IT is gorgeous. The weather is cool during the day and cold at night and all of the leaves are changing. I have fallen in love with this one park in Ostrava. IT is beautiful. 

Things are going well and it was quite the week. Tuesday was the first day my companion and I were together and we had quite the day. We taught about 8 lessons on the street (Normally we have 20 lessons in a whole week) and had 5 new investigators. Since then none of them showed up to their next lesson, but still was quite the day. Last week at training I did get Shad's care package- full of medicine and fun things. I am getting a cold so that will come in useful this week. 

This week there were a couple of interesting experiences. We were doing a chalk display at this bridge and I saw a guy I had talked to before. Before I could talk to him he started saying thank you thank you. He proceeded to tell me how when he talked to me three or four weeks ago it was at the exact same time that his son was in a car accident. He showed me a picture and it was really bad, but that his son was perfectly fine. He said it was angels that had helped him and all because he talked to us. I told him that we had a book that if he read it he could see more miracles in his life and gave him a Book of Mormon but it was an interesting experience. 

We also had a Halloween party this week! We didn't know about it till Sunday so it was all on the missionaries. It was Friday and supposed to start at 6... at 6 it looked like it was about to be a disaster. But we ended up having a great time and it was a great event/ We had a lot of non members and a few members as well. WE had alot of classics such as Donuts on a string and bobbing for apples. I may have been the champion of the donut.. IT was quite a fun night and we had great things out of it.  Sunday was fast Sunday and was the longest fast I had done. We fasted until about 8:30 Sunday night. We also taught Our investigator Saturday, about tithing and fasting. She fasted with us to receive an answer. Sunday she was at church and we didn't have a meeting but she ended up hanging out with members all day and we taught one of them later that day and she was there. After, we followed up about fasting and baptism. and she told us how she knows its true and that it is what she has been looking for her whole life. It has been so cool to see. WE met her 3 or 4 weeks ago and has since been to church everyweeek. comes to every activity and loves the church. IT has been great! Such a cool experience and testimony builder about fasting and prayer. There has been a lot to learn and a lot more that this transfer has in store. Czech continues to come a long and i am understanding more and more. It is really fun. The people here are really prideful about their language that it is so hard. It is rather fun to see their shocked faces when we say i have been here for two months. There is no growing in a comfort zone and every day brings something new. IT has been a great week. I hope all is well.  Love, Tyler