Well, hello family! Elders Dietrich, Shumway, Meiling, and I are all sitting here typing to our families in the office. It is such a cool opportunity to serve here.
What a fun week you must have had all together! It sounds and looks like Landon had a blast (almost as much fun as his parents, Marmee, and Tata!) And while part of this Disney fanatic uncle wishes he could have been there to share in Landon's first Disney experience, I know that this is where I need to be, and even better, where I WANT to be. Your questions cover a lot of what I'd want to say this week, so I thought I'd just start out by answering those!
How is it serving in the office? - It is wonderful, stressful, rewarding, uplifting, tiring, and did I mention wonderful? I love it here.
What are your main duties? - K, theres a lot of stuff I keep up with and monitor, but some main responsibilities include: monitoring, ordering, and shipping missionary and office supplies for each companionship and the mission as a whole, fleet manager for all mission vehicles, incoming and outgoing mail (organize, ship, pick up, etc.), monitoring the phones at the office for when someone calls who can't speak english, and running/monitoring the phones and phone plans of the mission. Other than that, I have a bunch of little side jobs and duties that I take one at a time. Its a lot of work, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. It helps that I can call Elder Coleman (the last office manager) whenever I need, and that Elder Meiling is serving as an AP in the office (he was the office manager before Elder Coleman) - they're willing to help train me on things when I have questions. But I think I'm handling it pretty well - you know me, one day I'm feeling on top of everything, the next 5 things come up at once and I feel overwhelmed. But that's life, and I still love it!
How is your new companion and how are you getting along? - Elder Dietrich is my new companion and is a hoot! Like I said, he's from Germany and loves to play the piano and soccer. His English is very good and we have gotten along great so far. So yeah, I'm one of 2 missionaries who have now served with both of the German speaking missionaries haha! (The other is Elder Uremovic)
Did you get our birthday packages? Is there anything else you would like to have? - I did, and I got them on my birthday! (since I came to Prague Sunday afternoon). Thank you so much! Still the only thing I can think of is some Tea tree gel (don't know if you already sent that). But one major perk of serving in the office is I get mail right when it comes! I've already received some recent letters and figured it takes about 9 days to get from the post office in America to my hands in the Czech Republic. How cool is that? What a blessing it is to serve here!
Do you get to proselyte at night and on the weekends? How do you proselyte after dark there? - This is the only downside of the office - we don't get as much proselyting time. Actually, we get a lot less. We looked through our average schedule and figured we get about 3 solid hours of proselyting time a day, as long as something urgent doesn't come up in the office (which has already happened haha....) Our average day goes like this:
What are your main duties? - K, theres a lot of stuff I keep up with and monitor, but some main responsibilities include: monitoring, ordering, and shipping missionary and office supplies for each companionship and the mission as a whole, fleet manager for all mission vehicles, incoming and outgoing mail (organize, ship, pick up, etc.), monitoring the phones at the office for when someone calls who can't speak english, and running/monitoring the phones and phone plans of the mission. Other than that, I have a bunch of little side jobs and duties that I take one at a time. Its a lot of work, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. It helps that I can call Elder Coleman (the last office manager) whenever I need, and that Elder Meiling is serving as an AP in the office (he was the office manager before Elder Coleman) - they're willing to help train me on things when I have questions. But I think I'm handling it pretty well - you know me, one day I'm feeling on top of everything, the next 5 things come up at once and I feel overwhelmed. But that's life, and I still love it!
How is your new companion and how are you getting along? - Elder Dietrich is my new companion and is a hoot! Like I said, he's from Germany and loves to play the piano and soccer. His English is very good and we have gotten along great so far. So yeah, I'm one of 2 missionaries who have now served with both of the German speaking missionaries haha! (The other is Elder Uremovic)
Did you get our birthday packages? Is there anything else you would like to have? - I did, and I got them on my birthday! (since I came to Prague Sunday afternoon). Thank you so much! Still the only thing I can think of is some Tea tree gel (don't know if you already sent that). But one major perk of serving in the office is I get mail right when it comes! I've already received some recent letters and figured it takes about 9 days to get from the post office in America to my hands in the Czech Republic. How cool is that? What a blessing it is to serve here!
Do you get to proselyte at night and on the weekends? How do you proselyte after dark there? - This is the only downside of the office - we don't get as much proselyting time. Actually, we get a lot less. We looked through our average schedule and figured we get about 3 solid hours of proselyting time a day, as long as something urgent doesn't come up in the office (which has already happened haha....) Our average day goes like this:
6.30-8:wake up, get ready, etc (same)
8-9: Personal Study
9-10: Comp Study
10-12: Office
12-1: lunch
1-3: Office
3-5: Proselyting time (finding activities, lessons, etc.)
5-6: Dinner
6-7: Calls/additional Proselyting time
7-8: office
8-9: Language study
9-10.30: plan/prepare for bed/sleep
So yeah, that's an average day for us now. It's for sure a different type of missionary work. But I know it is important and that I am here for a reason. The lyrics of the song "I'll go where you want me to go" come to mind: "It may not be on a mountaintop, or over a stormy sea, it may not be at the battle front, my Lord will have need of me." That really spoke to me with the change this transfer. I love being here, and I'm doing what the Lord wants me to be doing.
Where did your MTC friends end up? Are there any in the Prague Area with you? You should ask Elder Meiling if he knows Randy and Carolyn Johnson. We used to be in the Encinitas ward when we lived in San Diego. Small world huh? - the only MTC friend who is in my district now is Sister Bean. The Prague district has 8 missionaries: us, the assistants, Starsi Ingalls and Stradling (Yeah, Elder Ingalls is back in my district!), and Sister Bean and Dolinar. It is a wonderful group and I am so excited to serve around them all.
How is your apartment? - our apartment is a lot smaller than the one in Olomouc, but is pretty nice and has a beautiful view of Prague. It is everything that a missionary apartment needs to be.
Do you need us to send you your adobe software? - OOH! I'll ask! good idea!
What scriptures are you studying now? Any favorites that you've shared with investigators? - Right now I have a new years resolution to do every personal study activity in Preach My Gospel, so I'm doing those in a special journal, and that involves a lot of scripture reading. I recently finished reading through the entire New Testament, which was wonderful. Definitely some of my favorites to share with investigators are 2 Nefi 28:30 and Alma 7:7-11, the first because it lays out so clearly how the Lord teaches us - little by little - and the second because of how beautiful a description it contains of the atonement and how Jesus Christ suffered not only for our sins, but also our pains and weaknesses. It is a beautiful verse that explains this beautiful principle.
And, despite the severely reduced amount of proselyting time we had this week, we still had some wonderful experiences. We talked to this lady in the metro stop and she is so funny. She is a self proclaimed "stara baba" (old gramma), loves to talk and has a TON of questions that she really wants answers for. We agreed to meet at the building on last Thursday and she came! It was really nice - she loved seeing the chapel and we had a good first lesson with her. She told us at the end that she felt very very good with us there and would like to come to church as long as she isn't outside of Prague this weekend.
We also had a cool experience finding people on the namesti yesterday - we talked to this girl on a park bench for a while. We taught her about God and Jesus Christ - it was so great.
I love you so much! The Gospel is true!
S laskou,
Starsi Mullen
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