Hradec Krávolé

Hey Family!

That's exciting to hear about Joey going to Italy! He will be great!

So It's been a great first week. Hradec Krávolé is awesome. The first thing I learned about it...a lot of people speak English pretty well. Most all the ward members do, so I'm actually not pushed as hard to speak Czech. Kinda sad because I really need to more. My Czech is getting a little better though, and not all our investigators speak English so thats good!

So about church on Sunday. It's in the little square malé naměstí as they call it in Hradec Krávolé. It's in a rented, I think, building above a bank. I don't know how many ward buildings there are in the Czech Republic. There is the one in Prague at the mission home, and probably one in Brno, but I'm not totally sure where else. Apparently we need 10 more people to regularly attend our branch for like 7 months, I think it is, in order to get a building. I don't think it becomes a ward yet, because I think you need a stake to have wards. We have like 40ish members I think, but I'm not a super good estimator of people. It was good though! So I was supposed to get up and introduce myself during sacrament, and my companion said he would tell me when. We weren't sitting by each other because we were sitting by our investigators, so yeah, confusion happened, and I got up at the wrong time. That's all right though! Ha it was funny. Everyone was super confused I'm sure as to why I got up right then and introduced myself but oh well.

So as for our investigators. We have a few right now. There is Pavel, who is awesome! He is like 35 or 40 years old. He speaks English pretty well and he just likes to speak English to us a lot so our lessons are mostly in English. We're still trying to get him to read the Book of Mormon every day, which is hard. He comes to church every week for sacrament which is really cool!
There is Petra, a 40ish year old woman who doesn't speak English so when we met with her I didn't really understand anything. She came to church Sunday though!
Then there is Honza. He has been meeting with missionaries for over a year and a half and believes everything, comes to church every week, but doesn't want his mom to get mad at him so he won't commit to a baptisimal date. He says he knows he will be baptised, but wants to wait for his mom to be ok with it, or to want to take the lessons herself. He speaks really good English.

Elder Nielson and I mostly go contacting at parks which are really cool. I love the parks here. So many people have dogs in the Czech Republic, and so they all walk them at the parks. The parks are super nice looking though, and are just amazing.

Since today was p-day, we took a train to this other city with the other Elders and the Sisters in our zone, as well as Brother Schultz, this older man in the ward. It was really cool and nice, and we walked through this old cemetery which was really cool looking. It was fun.

Oh, story about yesterday. So on weekends, Czech go to their cottages as they call them. They are like one room shacks, and there are a lot of them all together. So they go there on the weekends and garden all day. Just what they like to do I guess. So yesterday we went to the before mentioned Brother Schultz', and helped him garden for service. It was really fun. Elder Neilson and I went as well as the Sisters and one of their investigators. So it was good. Oh later that night we also had sports night with the sisters and Honza. We played soccer and this one Czech guy there played with us too. So thats pretty much the week! It was good. Talk to you all next week.
-Starší Salas