The first letter from Prague

Monday August 4th, 2008

Hello family and friends. i bet you are all dying to hear from me its been an exciting two weeks here first off ill start out with my address
Pražska 16/25 460 01
Liberec-1 Czech republic

you can send mail here and my companion says it takes about 6 days for it to get here but if you ever send packages the mission home would be the best place, i get the mail from the mission home about once a month transfers are 2 months here. So as you can tell from my address i am in the beautiful city of liberec which is in northern Bohemia.

After i had talked to you on the phone we got on the plane to vienna which was a long flight but i had a cool kid named matok (mark) in front of me who was half american half slovak and was a funny 2 year old boy who kept us busy. We got into vienna in the morning and hopped on a plane over to prague i made it to prague with all my luggage and so did everybody else but elder briggs who lost both of his bags.

President and his wife and the two AP's picked us up and took us to the mission home where we had a nice lunch and the AP's took us on a prague walk around the city which is beautiful saw Prague Castle and went over Charles bridge saw the gate from the first mission impossible where the girl is killed.

We did some contacting for like half an hour which was an interesting experience and then had our first czech food which was good svedicka. We were all dead tired by this time and very hot and sticky since it was a very warm day in prague and very humid. We went back to the mission home and me and elder larson had interviews and then we all went to sleep for like 12 hours to get over the jet lag.

The next day president finished up interviews we had a orientation meeting where they told us about our debit cards and then it was upstairs to presidents apartment to find out where we were going. I got assigned to liberec and my trainer is Elder Andersen from Logan Utah i am his third trainee so he has got the training down pretty well and is doing a great job. There are 4 of us elders in the district here in Liberec.

My first full day here we had a lesson with one of our progressing investigators to teach the law of chastity to a 23 year old man so that was an interesting experience but it turned out great which was awesome, he has a baptismal date for in a month which is very exciting. Our other progressing investigator is from Bulgeria and is up here for work and the teaching is going great with him which i am excited about. We are doing quite a bit of contacting so we can get some more people to teach and i am able to do some of it and it helps me learn more czech. Some of the people are really nice and some arent but its all good.

Liberec is a beautiful city its up in the "mountains" which are kind of just big hills in the czech republic and there are trees everywhere and it is very green. Our apartment is on a busy walking street on the 4th floor right across from the Church which is a great location. We had an english class on thursday and i was assigned to the advanced class where they are basically fluent in english, i only had one student so we talked alot so he could practice his english and he told me alot about the history of the czech republik.

Saturday was sports night where we took our bulgerian investigator and his brother in law and played some volleyball.Church is at 9 and the branch is pretty small about silverton size there was about 10 members plus us four missionaries so we have alot of work to do but i am excited.

I just got back from a vylet which is an excursion to sykrov which is a castle out in the countryside we took a train too it was beautifull kind of more of a chatuex then castle but it had huge gardens and luckily i brought my umbrella cuz it rained pretty hard when we were leaving and i took alot of pictures, i have taken pictures of pretty much everything and ill send them to you sometime.

We do alot of walking so i dont think there are any worries at all of me gaining weight. My companion is a pretty good cook and we combine our groceries together and cook together so he is showing me some good easy meals to make, I have had a couple of czech meals now which are great the food is really good, we go to a czech restaurant before district meeting every week so we can experience the food. My companion has been in the country for a year so on his mission for 14 months the other two missionaries in our district are elder harris from idaho who has been out 8 months and elder crane from touilla utah who has been out 6 months they are both cool and we have fun together they came on the vylet with us.

it sounds like you are all doing great thats crazy that two of my roommates are going to the same mission. Well i hope i didnt overload you with information there i will fill you in on more next week i love you all and hope you are doing well thanks for writing and keeping me up to date on everything. The gospel of Jesus Christ truly is amazing.

Love
Jordan