Merry Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas Eve everyone!! This week has been great, we got our flight plans so we are leaving Monday morning as long as we all get our visas in time. We also had our infield orientation yesterday to help us be a little prepared to get out in the field. We have had really good devotionals about burying your weapons of rebellion in order to really serve the Lord and become more Christ like. I am super excited because tonight and tomorrow we have devotionals and we get to hear from Apostles so I can't wait to see who it will be! We also get to do some really cool things on Christmas so it will be a really cool experience to be here during Christmas!
Sorry it's short I don't have much time because we are trying to get everything packed since today is the only day we have time to pack!
Love you all!

Another fantastic week here in the MTC!! On Sunday there was a devotional and there was an guy that just got back from his mission in the Czech Republic 6 months ago so after the devotional we went and talked to him for a while. It was super cool to hear what it's gonna be like. We have had three people talk about our mission in devotionals so far one was the old mission presidents there and they talked about how the missionaries got the church started in Slovakia, the second was in one of the video devotionals from Elder Holland about how Preach My Gospel basically came to be because of a couple of missionaries in Czech and the third was the Elder that just got back so it has been really cool to hear all of these stories about our mission!
Our lessons have been going really good lately! We got one of our investigators, Martin, to commit to being baptized next month and we had our last lesson with Petra because of the Holidays but we were able to help her with her smoking addiction and she is doing a lot better now. I'm doing well with the language too, I had coaching time with one of our teachers and he told me I am doing great with the vocab and grammar I'm mostly just working on reading out loud from the Book of Mormon in Czech so I can get smoother and quicker pronunciation. Then for our service day we were cleaning residence halls and we heard a rumor about a "pillow room" so we asked him about it and he took us in there! It was so cool a room just full of pillows so we got to mess around in there for a while. Yesterday we got to Skype again, we were lucky enough to talk to the same girl as last week so we got to know her more and since we already kind of knew her we were able to teach more to her needs so it went really well! We got 6 new missionaries in our zone going to Poland and they are all really cool! Me and my companion got asked to be the example missionaries for all of the new missionaries coming in that day so we did two examples of how to get to know new investigators. That was a cool experience! If any of you want to see a cool Christmas video look up "A Savior is Born" on lds.org and you can also change the language to Czech if you wanna know what it sounds like! I hope you all have a great week, I love you all!
Veselé Vánoce,
Starší Paxton

Dobrý den!! This week has been really good!! We got Chick-fil-A for the third time here!! Crazy!!! Then we got to Skype people in the Czech Republic. We Skyped Gabriela, it was really cool! People in Czech love hockey so when I told her I play hockey she started freaking out and asking me all the questions but I didn't understand her so I just kept smiling and saying Ano! haha It was so awesome to get to know her and teach her more about the Plan of Salvation.
Then half of our zone left this week so it was kinda sad cause our zone is really small now. But I got a ton of stuff handed down to me like a mini fridge, a balloon animal kit, and so much more! I already made like 3 balloon animals! I'm getting really good!
Me and my companion got to leave the compound twice this week! So that was exciting! And we have had some really good lessons this week! Our language is getting a lot better, I still sound like a caveman when I speak in Czech but at least they understand me! haha One of our investigators has a problem with smoking so we are trying to help her quit smoking. It's hard trying to help someone break a habit especially in a different language but I think it is going well and we are really helping!
I'm doing great here! I hope you are all doing well! Love you all!

Starší Paxton

Week 5 or 6...

Another great week at the MTC! I am finally past half way here! Thanksgiving was really fun here, Dallin H. Oaks came for the devotional and me and my companion got to sit on the 3rd row! Then we did our service project and make around 357,947 package dinners, that is the record in the MTC ever since they started doing this service project! It was really cool! On Sunday my companion and I taught President Yost, he is in the MTC presidency and use to be the mission president for the Czech/Slovak Mission a few years ago! We hosted the missionaries from out of the country on Tuesday so that was cool to meet some new people! Our lessons have been getting a lot better, yesterday we had two lessons and both investigators told us they would get baptized so we just have to teach them the rest of the lessons. They language has been crazy, they keep throwing all the curve balls at us but I'm getting the hang of it, I taught a lesson with no notes or anything yesterday. I'm sure it wasn't too clear but they said they would get baptized so it couldn't have been too bad! haha Well nothing new really happens when you've been in the MTC this long so I don't have much to write about!
Love you all!! Mít dobrý týden!!

Thanksgiving 11/25/2015

Happy early Thanksgiving everyone! So I don't get a PDay this week because of Thanksgiving so they are letting me email for a little today! I'm super excited for tomorrow because we get to hear from an Apostle which is going to be so cool! Then we are making packaged dinners for 320,000 families in need! It's gonna be crazy!
This week has been great! On Sunday we had our normal Sunday devotional by Stephen B Smith, he was way funny, but about half way through he pointed at me and told me to come up to the pulpit. I was like freaking out because there were 1,500 missionaries plus all of the presidency there! So I get up to the pulpit and he asked me what I gave up to come on my mission and I told everyone that I gave up my 3 cows! haha He was pretty shocked! And I told them how I had bottle fed them since they were a couple days old and everything! Everyone laughed and randomly I will be walking around and people will come up to me and say "I hope your cows are doing okay" So that was probably the highlight of my week! On Monday they gave us Chick-fil-A again which was awesome! Yesterday an elder in our zone lost his key to his room and I found it so I went into his room and covered everything in sticky notes! It turned out pretty great! But apparently you aren't allowed to pull "pranks" in the MTC so I didn't tell anyone I did it and they still have no idea!  So anyways its been a good week, the language is coming along great this week. We started a challenge to memorize 150 words this week and I memorized 75 in the first two days! Its crazy how much you learn here! I also started Jesus the Christ which is amazing and I recommend that you read it if you haven't already! 

Starší Paxton

MTC 11/19/2015

Hey everybody! This week has been great! We started TRC's which are basically home teaching with people that speak Czech and in two weeks we do it over skype with people in Prague! I'm way excited for that!! We've been doing really well with our lessons for our two investigators, Petra and Martin, lately. On Sunday we had an amazing devotional from Greg Droubay who is incharge of the media for the church. He told us about all of the really cool campaign things they are doing for Christmas about Jesus and to focus on him during Christmas. It's called A Savior is Born and they made two new Mormon Messages that are really good. They also have an Instagram page, a website, pass along cards, they rented out 400 taxi toppers in New York and rented the electric billboards in New York that you will be able to see on the Dick Clarks rockin new years or whatever it is.So it's gonna be pretty cool! We also watched a devotional by Jefferey R. Holland that was incredible! It was all about our missions and how it will end up being the foundation to the rest of our lives! It really changes the perspective of our mission. Monday we got to host the senior couples that got here and that was really fun! On Tuesday we had another great devotional but I wont go into depth on that one. Wednesday we got to host all of the new missionaries and it was a blast! So it's been a really fun week and I've learned so much! Thanks again to everyone that has helped me out here!

Love Starší Paxton

MTC Week 2 11/12/2015

Hey guys!! Week two is over! It's been a pretty good week, we got two new investigators to work with and practice the language! I feel like our lessons are already getting a lot better, it's just super hard to get the investigators involved because when we ask them questions we can barely understand them but I'm starting to understand more and more each lesson so that's good! After a couple of lessons with our first investigator, Terezie, she took some time to tell each companionship what they did good and what went bad, she told me and my companion that we were the least robotic and had the best personalities so I guess that's pretty good too!!

Me and my companion got bored so we decided to join choir, we suck really bad but we made it on the big screen during the devotional where Hugo Montoya of the 70 was speaking so I was pumped about that!! Also on Monday we got Chick-fil-A for lunch!! It was probably the best day I've had here!!! On Tuesday we did our weekly service and I got everyone to sing Christmas music as loud as we could. My companion broke a urinal and it started spraying all over this guy that was sitting in the stall next to him!! haha it was probably the funniest thing that has happened this week! But everything is going really good and the language is coming along really well!! Thanks for all the love and support!

  

Love, Starší Paxton

MTC Week 1 11/5/2015

Hello everyone!! I made it through my first week at the MTC!! Only 8 more to go. It's been great, the language is crazy and pretty hard to learn but I'm doing really well with it! The teachers have been speaking in Czech since day 1 and rarely speak any English to us. We taught our first investigator the second day we got here and had to teach the whole lesson in Czech so that was pretty interesting. The investigators name is Terezie she is from the Czech Republic and doesn't speak any English. I have no idea what she ever says to us so I usually just nod my head and smile. But after a few lessons we invited her to be baptized but she was baptized Catholic as a baby so she doesn't understand why she should get baptized again so we are trying to explain that to her.

My companion is great, he's from Idaho and we like most of the same things so that's good. Our district is really cool as well. There are 3 elders still here from the last transfer of Czech missionaries because their visas haven't come yet and they have helped us a lot! Everyone does really weird things here in the MTC but I guess after being here for 9 weeks you have to keep yourself entertained somehow!

We play sand volleyball every day that we have gym which is probably the funnest thing we do here! It's getting super cold though so it kind of sucks but I still play! Not much happens here though so I don't have anything really interesting to share.Thanks to everyone that has sent me stuff and helped me out with everything!! Love you all!!

Elder Paxton