Yes.

Another beautiful week has whizzed by without a regret (poetic sentence, však?)! I am in love with everything, yet again, and so grateful to be serving a mission. I cannot really remember everything I did and I do not have my planner so sorry.

I really cannot remember anything in a remotely chronical order, so I am just going to start from what I can remember. Which is YESTERDAY!!! Hahahaha

Yesterday was more eventful than not, because we got to go to a jarmok (Which is like, a market of handmade things that people are selling) in Trenčianske Teplice. Our beautful investigator was singing and doing a cultural dance, so we were permitted to go with her husband! And, wow, it was the most amazing thing. There were little stands everywhere, and people painting eggs with wax and crocheting their little doilies things and making trdelniks, and there was a man who had literally made a man powered amusement ride for children. It looked like the dumbo ride, but he sat in the middle of it and pedaled in order for it to go around. ANYWAY we so enjoyed the cultural show, with all of the different traditional dresses and dances from each individual village. We were just in joyland.

THEN we were walking away from the beautiful thing, when our phone started ringing and we got transfer calls! President sent Sister Eggers away back to Bratislava to be with Sister Russell, and is sending me a pretty wonder right out of the MTC! So I get to train, which will be slightly interesting and a whole lot of fun. I am too excited. I am not with her yet. Will be soon. I will let you all know everything about her next week.

Well, then, also, yesterday, we were contacting, and I see this little bird on the side of the street. And like always, I said ahoj to the little bird but it was so cute that I watched it for another second. Then I realized that it was hurt or something and was trying to get over this little ledge. For some reason, Sister Eggers and I felt such compassion for this little bird that we just could not leave it there, because it really looked like it was going to die. SO I pulled a piece of paper out of my bag, and after a couple of attempts, I scooped up the little bird and put it on top of this little ledge (probably only 3 feet tall). As soon as it was on the ledge, it could see the trees and it flew right into them! How incredible!

I thought it was really a wonderful metaphor for life. We also had training in Brno this week, and prezident talked a lot about having a vision, and seeing the bigger picture instead of getting disappointed in little moments. I thought about this little bird, and how the only reason why it could not fly was because it could not see over this little ledge! Sometimes we do not realize that the trees and safety are literally a foot away because we have something blocking our vision, and sometimes we just need a little help to get on top of the ledge so we can fly the rest of the way to the trees. Does this make sense? It does to me.

ANYWAY it was super meant to be, because as soon as he was to safety, we turned and talked to this dad with a little baby boy and another little 3 year old boy, and we are now visiting him next week. HOORAY FAMILIES

Sister Eggers and I had a wonderful last week together. Although I cannot seem to remember anything that happened, it really was wonderful. I know that we did a singing display, and that we rode a train to Brno with all the sestry, because we had training. Here is training.

I really like trainings.

We OH
I just remembered what happened one day this week. It was literally POURING rain and we had a bunch of contacting on plan, so we toughed out the wet feet and one umbrella situation and went out into the wonderful flood. And we gave away, seriously, I am telling you, in less than two hours we gave away five kniha mormonovas. It was pretty dang miraculous. SO with wet feet, then we went to Brno.

So. I am excited for a new transfer, and a new week, and I am really in love with life right now.

Nothing is better than this work! I have never been so confused at how I am so happy to serve others and to consistently be thinking about helping them. It is incredibly strange that in those moments when you are not thinking about yourself, you are truly the happiest. I am grateful for every opportunity I have, every day!

I read an incredible talk by Elder Holland that he gave in April of 2007 entitled The Tongue of Angels. I would really encourage everyone to read it (This is for you, brothers in my family), because I was amazed and feel so blessed for the gift we have to bless others with our words!

I Love you all and am grateful to you!
Sestra Abbott

tears

I hit my one year mark this week.

tears were shed.

BUT otherwise, it was a really really great week! Crazy things all the time everywhere. We started off the week with a really great family night, which included saying a lot of fruits with our lips over our teeth and eating probably 8000 plums.

pictures 1 year mark planner art

OH SPEAKING OF PLUMS

Reason number 860 why Slovakia is amazing: Everyone loves fruit. There are fruit trees everywhere. I have never eaten so many apricots and mini apricots and plums in my entire life. They are in every cake, at every gathering. I live in the garden of eden. You will be walking down the road, and there is a fruit tree that has just grown, so you can just pick a plum and eat it. Same thing with raspberry bushes. But also, the city, when it is really hot, starts to really smell like rancid fruit. But that is okay! Because everyone makes us jams out of these fruits. Right now in our fridge, we have two full jars of apricot jam (one vegan, one not), and one full jar of plum jam. But you have to be careful. One of our investigators uses rum instead of preservatives in her jam...

Anyway, things got pretty exciting on tuesday when we got to go to Nitra to have a concert! Oh
beautiful city! It took us forever to get there. We took a bus in the wrong direction for two hours, then got off, then got on a train, and then on another little train, and then we were in Nitra. They have a new, beautiful space for the church building and we were lucky enough to sing there! We sang successfully and they had a huge investigator turn out!

Anyway, we got to go to this older couples home this week, our investigators, and they were so sweet and fed us banana poppy seed bread (the poppy was not so bad in this. usually the poppy filling is very strange and I do not understand why it is a dessert) We had a fantastic discussion about the priesthood in the home. She loved that we in the church can have a priest in the family, in the home. She was impressed and was interested to hear about how the priesthood influenced our families. I so happily testified of the power of the priesthood in my own family! How grateful I am to have been raised in a family surrounded by the priesthood. It has always been there for me and I am sorry for the times I took it for granted. It is really the power by which we build our foundation on Christ in families.

We had a movie night with one of our investigators. She speaks fluent english, so we watched the Joseph Smith movie with her. The whole thing! it was a spiritual experience for all of us. The movie ended, and we tentatively asked her what she thinked. She said "Well, I kind of had a spoiler already because I have already read that first part of the Book of Mormon." Our smiles were as wide as the tatry mountains are tall. I was so impressed, as I have been in the past, by the prophet Joseph Smith and by his faithful, incredible example. We have been listening to the lectures by truman g madsen during our meal times, and I cannot help but testify that I know Joseph Smith is a prophet. I seriously cannot deny it. The more I learn about him, the more my testimony is solidified. I continue to be amazed by his life, his example, his works, his prophesies, and his calling. I am grateful to be a member of the restored Church of Jesus Christ!

So, anyway, then we had a culture night! We went to this little town called Nemčova to go to a little fair. How fun! And our district is so much fun. The elders came down from Nitra and we went and ate trdelniks and bought some cool slovak stuff. Okay, well, I bought an awesome stuffed cat head magnet for the fridge here in trenčin. Will buy slovak things in the future. My favorite part was riding on the crowded bus home with everyone staring at us, asking us who we were, and fanning us with fans and giving us unflavored giant puffed corn things that taste like styrofoam. That, my friends, was a real culture night.

Oh, also, it rained. Incorrect.

It flooded.

Which was actually lovely, because it has been drier here this year (according to everyone on the street), but it did not make for the best contacting weather hahahahah

Lastly, we went on sunday to visit our 80 year old investigator, and we brought our 81 year old member. Surprise! They already knew each other , because the investigator had been taught by missionaries fifteen years earlier with her husband and with this same investigator.

COINCIDENCE?
I THINK NOT

They were so cute. They kept saying, "We are not old, we are just more experienced."
Love them.

Thank you and lovely summer and lovely school I wish you all!

s laskou, sestra abbott

ps transfers are next week

I spoke czech better this week.

how i think i look when i travel

Well, this week started off with a fantastic tuesday and a wonderful concert. It was so successful and so fun! The theme was "finding happiness" and I sure hope everyone who came found happiness because it was really a fun time. We had not ever really all practiced together before, because we are hardly ever with the elders from Nitra, but everything came together so nicely. It was a little hipster-mumfordandsonsish with the ukulele and guitar and egg shaker. We had such a fun time and we are really REALLY excited to go to Nitra tomorrow to do one there as well.

Also, I made slovaks peanut butter fingers. Hee hee. They have expressed to me so many times how disgusting this sounds. Because they all hate peanut butter. So for the concert I made a huge batch and put them out and did not tell anyone what they were, and I had SO MANY people asking me for the recipe and I felt SO sneaky and so happy that slovaks were able to experience the joy that is peanut butter fingers. Thanks mom for the peanut butter.

Also, this week, well on wednesday at least, IT RAINED. We did such a marvelous chalk display with the elders that really turned out so well and was so bright and fun and readable..and then an hour later the world was washed with water. Seriously. Poured.
Shortly afterwards we needed to get on a train, because, well, we had MLC in prague and had to stay the night in Blava to make it there on time. And the train ride was one of the best I have ever had!! We got on the train and it was SO crowded. There were people everywhere and not a single empty seat in any car. So sister eggers and I camped out in the middle of two trains and tried to make some phone calls in the noisiness of it all. When we saw two people coming out of a car, we jumped at the chance and ran in to take their seats. We had such luck because we came to find that we were in the cabin with a grandma and her three beautiful grandchildren. And as soon as we sat down, she started asking questions...

And we were more than willing to answer! We taught them the plan of salvation, and although the grandma was a firm atheist "I have taught these kids since they were little that there will be nothing after this life! Nothing!", the kids had hopeful eyes as big as saucers. We also gave them gummy bears and saved the little boys flip flop when it fell in between the tracks in Bratislava.

Then, after a quick halušky in Blava, we headed to beautiful Prague where we had a really wonderful training and got to see the McConkies. They are so wonderful and inspiring. They told us the story about when they received their call to be mission presidents and I was pretty much crying because the spirit was so strong and I was thinking about how incredible they are for moving their whole family to prague so suddenly! Ah. it is so awesome. They are really the best.

Then, after a wonderful time in Prague, we went directly to Brno to go on exchanges!! Yay! Sister Eggers went back to Trenčin with Sister Holland, and I stayed in Brno with Sister Scherrer. It was so much fun! I love LOVE Brno. So many trams and busses. I forgot how fun big cities are. I was just so excited because there were people to talk to everywhere! Every tram and bus and street--it was way too good. And the city is so prepared--they have a really strong branch with a lot of YSA in it, and people are so elect and open to the message. I loved it. Plus I actually am beginning to understand czech. I just had to get over their really strange R.

how i really look when i travel

Then, sister scherrer and I came back to Trenčin to do the switch with Sister Holland and Eggers, and it was so fun to show them slovakia and make them Halušky (YAY TWICE THIS WEEK). They are really cute and are really great examples for us.

The rest of the week, was, to say the least, very miraculous. The law of compensation is so real! We seemed to meet every one of our investigators on the street and less actives, and never stopped moving. We are tired, but tired never felt so good.

We also have a huge spider living outside our window now, but we cannot bring ourselves to destroy its beautiful web it has made, and it only comes out at night and looks like a brown black widow with a black hourglass. I will take a picture this week. Her name is Charlotte and I will take a picture of her this week and send it home.

So, in short, I am just so full of happy spirit ness. I cannot describe how it feels to have the presence of the spirit with me, but it is a really good feeling to know that you are doing what the Lord wants you to do. When we live worthy of our covenants, specifically baptismal covenants, the Comfortor will always be there when we need him. I know that the reason why I feel so uplifted and strengthened all the time is not because of some secret food I have found--wait, no, just kidding, it totally is! Haluš--I mean, the gospel! (I am really cracking myself up over here, I know that this is really lame and not funny, but to me it is funny). But really. The gospel really can lift our pains, weaknesses, and worries. I am grateful for that in my own life and what it has done in others lives as well.

SO, until next week,
s laskou,
sestra abbott

PS year mark on the 13th boo.

TOP SPEED WE ARE GOING ROUND THE WORLD

I live on busses and trains! I never thought I would say this but life is too exciting for me! I am consistently on a grand adventure. We started this week quite well with a wonderful pday of cutting my hair--you have all heard the deets on that whole story, but seriously, it was the best decision ever. Nothing like having my hair off of my neck.

SO monday night, we headed over to a members house to eat. Always a fantastic idea. There was a wonderful return missionary who had served here in about 1993 visiting with all of his kids at their house too, so the stay was a little bit longer than we expected. Not only did we visit with all of them, but they fed us two meals. So, we were completely, completely stuffed, and had to run probably about 7 kilometers back to our house to be home on time, and let me tell you, nothing was so physically exerting. We were carrying a bunch of bags and just were dying. I thought my whole stomach was going to explode with potatoes and roast beef and fried cheese and french fries and cake while the sweat was pouring down my face....

Long story short, we woke up the next morning at about 500 to very sore legs and to, yes, again, run

this is where I live!

to get onto a train to Bratislava for training. And that was an adventure. What a wonderful training we had. Full of spirit and full of happy smiles and just happiness because everyone was together. Sister Eggers and I did a training on Africa and now everyone is calling our branches tribes....so maybe that was a poor idea. Hahaha

So then, we are doing a lot of singing displays because we have a concert tomorrow. So, back to Trenčin, we did a singing display. And man, I love these things!! I have never done one before, but we basically, us four missionaries, go out onto the namestie, and sing, and one of us talks to people while three of us sing our little hearts out. BEST THING EVER I TOTALLY LOVE THIS. We got to do a couple of them this week and it just melted my little heart.

fried cheese

Also, we went to eat at sweet little Sestra Alžbetas, who is 80 years old and the best missionary in Trenčin. She invites everyone to everything. She fed us stuffed peppers and they were SO delicious. They are basically stewed peppers stuffed with rice and a little meat and drowning in this red gravy sweet sauce stuff. Okay, obviously, I have no idea what is really in it, but I was really in love with it.
SO

Thursday, was, well, the most eventful day of my whole mission. We were heading to do exchanges with the sweet sisters in a little town called Frydek Mistek in the Czech Republic. And, really, they have a transportation problem to this little town, and we really travelled the entire czech republic to get there. We had about four little connections in little baby villages that were each about 2 minutes long, so we were a little worried because usually trains are late, but we tried it anyway. The first train was smooth, then we got off, got on the wrong train, realized, ran to the other train and hopped on as it was pulling away. It crossed the border into the czech republic--which is seriously so weird because as soon as you cross this border, the language just changes. All of a sudden I felt like I was two transfers younger because I could only understand about ,5-,75 of what they were saying--anyway, so it dropped us off in this little teeny town. Then we
found the next train quickly, and it seriously looked like we were on a disneyland safari ride. It was the smallest little train in the whole world. We were going through the forest--so pretty--when all of a sudden the train stops and the director tells us we have to get off and go on this bus! So we are really confused

BUT

The train ticket man looked a whole lot like dumbledore, with really nice eyes, so we believed him.

So then we went and got on a bus which drove through every little village in the czech republic. Best thing ever for me but worst thing for Sister Eggers who gets really car sick. Everyone on the bus was very kind.

THEN we got on two more trains and eventually arrived in Frydek Mistek, which is so pretty. We did a chalk display there with four sisters and then the next day Sister Andreason and I went to Ostrava to teach some inactives and investigators there. Also an amazing city. Slightly strange because I could not understand as well in Czech, but I renewed my testimony of the gift of tongues. The Lord had to remind me that I DO need to rely on the spirit! Sometimes I forget now how powerful the spirit can be in missionary work!
Plus everyone in the czech republic thought I was a slovak so that was a plus.

WELL after an incredible exchange with some really yummy pizza, we headed back to Trenčin. The trains were long and included a very friendly drunk man and some spanish boys. We had a really long connection in žilina, so we got to get off the train and go get some breakfast and study on a park bench underneath their most beautiful cathedral!! We were dying it was so pretty there! And clean! I want to serve there.

Then, when we got back to Trenčin, we got back home and were doing some planning, and the most traumatic thing happened where there was a

HUGE
GIANT
GINORMOUS
SPIDER
IN
OUR
APARTMENT

and we both just about died, trapped it under a cup, and named it Aragog. Taught it a few lessons, and when we got back that night, we had to really wear all of our winter gear, build a barrier around it, and kill it with a mop and cleaning supplies after saying a very sincere prayer. It was traumatic.

Anyway, we also got to got to the Trenčin castle! Not too much travelling, since we live directly beneath it, but it was so fun! They had their town celebration this week--kind of like the Highland Fling, so awesome and medivalish--and we got to go with some members and watch their reinactments and buy some yummy fried cheese with preservative fruit on it. So pretty.

Then We had church and I felt the spirit.

Then today, we had cleaning checks, so the cottles came down from Bratislava, So we got to go to the čachticky castle. SO AWESOME
There is a story, that the woman who was the lord over the castle after her husband died, used to kill young girls and her maids and bathe in their blood, or drink it, so that she would stay young. She was tried and was put to death, and two of her assistants were burned for witchcraft. One story says that they found 650 bodies, and another says they found 20-1200 bodies, so... nobody knows if the legend is really true because it was 13th century but STILL AWESOME

So, in short, this week was the best and strangest week ever. I am grateful for the Lord for helping me maintain my energy in time of great physical distress. I dont think any of this energy is my own but I sure am grateful that I have it! The Lord CAN make our weaknesses strengths if we rely on him. I absolutely love Slovakia and these people here, and would seriously do anything to help them. I never realized how strong they really are. The members here build the church like no other! We are incredibly grateful for their work and their faith.

us in zilina posing classically in front of the statue of the
first two christian missionaries who preached christianity here in slovak and not latin

Something I am thinking about--what does it mean to be a christian? I read this week in Acts 11, 26 And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass, that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.

and today in Alma 46
14 For thus were all the true believers of Christ, who belonged to the church of God, called by those who did not belong to the church.

 15 And those who did belong to the church were faithful; yea, all those who were true believers in Christ took upon them, gladly, the name of Christ, or Christians as they were called, because of their belief in Christ who should come.

What does it mean to take the name of Christ upon us? Something I am still working on...I hope that

day by day, as I use His atonement and remember my baptismal covenants, I will be able to be a better Christian!

s laskou,

sestra abbott