Truly a Week of Miracles

March 17th, 2012

Hi, family! This week was absolutely wonderful - truly a week of miracles. I'm so excited to tell you about it!

Yes, Elder Medonich is in my District! I love having him here - he's a blast to be around.

That's great about Merideth - I'm gonna have a lot of promised dances when I get back I think, haha, and I'm gonna be absolutely terrible! But that's ok - my dancing shoes can wait for a while. Is Merideth still planning on doing a study abroad here? Just curious!

How exciting about your new calling, Marmee! You will be such a blessing in the lives of those girls. I sure do love you!

And that is so exciting to hear that we will be having a baptism this week in Granite Bay! Elder Oaks taught us that the doctrinal basis of missionary work is found in John 3:5, and it is absolutely wonderful to hear that he is making that step to come closer to our Heavenly Father. How grateful I am for the miracles we have seen throughout our lives and in the lives of others - "God has not ceased to be a God of miracles!"

So now for some answers for my favorite family!!

1.  What will be your new responsibilities as District Leader? There is only one district in Prague, and it is humongous. We have 10 proselyting missionaries and 2 senior couples in the district, totaling up to 14 people. As district leader, I do all the things explained in the white handbook - present a weekly district meeting training, call-in reports, conduct exchanges with companionships in the district, organize district activities, etc. I'm super excited - I talked with President Irwin and he has approved for our district to go to a classical concert on April 28th! They'll be playing Franck, Mozart, Bach, and Dvořak (Duh-vo-*the crazy sound in czech that you thought sounded like a sneeze over the phone at Christmas time*-ahk). I'm very excited for our district to really shine this transfer. We have a lot of special, hard-working missionaries, which I'm stoked for.

2.  Were you able to see your contact who had been out of town?  We did and had a meeting set up, but the dad got sick and then travelled to Germany for work and I haven't been able to get a hold of him since. I'm going to keep trying, though - they are an amazing family!

3.  Were you able to see any of your friends from your past areas at the conference?  One of our investigators couldn't come to the conference, but we did have 2 other investigators there!  We continue to pray for our investigators with all our hearts that they will be able to continue to accept the gospel as they would wish it. I did get to see members from Olomouc - oh, it was so good to see them! I called them my Olomoucká rodina. It was so, so good to see all of them - almost every faithful member there was at the conference. Absolutely wonderful.

4.  Any pictures?  See the previous emails - sorry I'm so lame!

5.  Tell us about your new companion...Starší Gleue (Glow-ye) is awesome! He is from Salt Lake City but studied at West Point for 2 years before he came on his mission. He's 22 years old and has been in the country for 4 months, so this is his 3rd transfer. One thing I love about Elder Gleue is he has initiative - he will just go for something and get it solved and done. He likes to have fun and joke around, but knows when it's time to be serious and focus. We have in the past couple days totally cleaned and transformed our apartment and we're doing great teaching and doing missionary work together. It'll be an awesome transfer with him.

6.  What did you enjoy most about the District Conference?  What I was most impressed with Elder Christofferson is the calm spirit of assurity he left with us. During his training, we asked him if the promised and foretold success in the Czech Republic would come because of what we are doing or just on the Lord's time. He left us an apostolic blessing that "the day will be hastened by our faithfulness and diligence". The Czech Republic will one day be a thriving powerhouse in Zion - we already have the loaves and fishes gathered. Now we are just working faithfully and diligently until they begin to multiply and fill the country. 

So now for the miracle of the week. One of our investigators is having miracles in her life happen right now leading her to the gospel. After the conference, we had a lesson with her on Monday before FHE, which was amazing. We were talking about the restoration and at one point in the lesson, she just asked us - "guys, how does somebody join this church?" We explained baptism and confirmation to her again, and she said OK. We set a date with her right then for April, and the spirit was so, so strong. We talked about the blessings of the gospel and she left saying she felt good about it all. Tuesday evening, I get a call from her - she said that she talked with her family about baptism, and they feel they can't support her. She said that she didn't know what to do. She said that she started reading the Book of Mormon and felt good about it but didn't know if she could handle continuing right now while she was getting opposition from her parents. She agreed, however, to a meeting on Wednesday so we could talk about it face to face. We set up for members to be there and ...

Sorry, out of time!!! Sports day went long...I'll finish the story next week - it has an awesome ending!!!!

Love you,

Elder Mullen