Morgan sent us pictures of his apartment and also of a few of his
companions who were going home this past transfer.
View from the apt balcony
Elder Nowland's study desk (below) - nice and neat.
Perfect for picture taking. Actually he is a pretty neat young man for the most part. Some of you remember I coordinated all of the colors of his mission items (orange) so it would be easy for him to keep up with. He got his call in October so everything was orange anyway. So you will see these throughout the pictures. My other mom friends thought I certainly had OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder - yeah so!)
Orange supply box with orange stapler, orange sticky notes, orange scissors in the box.
Bedroom Area - notice his orange suitcases.
Kitchen - pretty modern. They must have just cleaned for the apartment check or something. This is just way to clean for missionaries.
Entryway
Closets and his companions bed.
Here is Elder Nowland's bed. He asked me to
make him a lite weight spread for his bed with
the pattern of the Czech flag. I am happy to
see he is still using that. Under that you will
see his orange sheets and pillow case.
Study Area
Previous Companions who were
getting ready to go home.
Elder Chambers, Elder Nowland, Elder Wilding
Elder Chambers and Elder Nowland
they are great friends
Here they are again. They served in Olomouc
together in Morgan's 2nd area
and had great success together. They will remain friends
forever. Elder Chambers mom and I developed a great
friendship also. We love our boys. Aren't they awesome.
Now for Elder Nowland's letter for this week:
I just got back on Thursday evening from another week of conferences. It was a lot of fun! But I'm not going to lie about that fact that i was completely exhausted afterward. We started off in Brno, where i had some interesting feelings run through me as i watched Elders Guzy and Barker give their departing testimonies!!!! it was super weird!! because i remember serving with Elder Barker and him being scared because he had only 5 transfers left. Yeah....now he is in his last one. Our companionship study training got progressively better. Our best run of it was in Praha. We had this one training called the "silver bullet" which focused on the standards of excellence. For part of the visual aid we had a missionary shoot a silver birthday hat off my head with a Nerf gun. It was a lot of fun and surprisingly no one took advantage of the opportunity to shoot me in the face. Elder Strupp at the Prague conference nailed it first shot! I was impressed.
Cool story of the week was that we had been on exchanges in a little city called Zlin and then another little city called Jihlava. After these exchanges we were completely worn out. We had worked so hard and diligently to find people in those areas. We were in the car on our way home when i vocalised what we were both thinking. I said,"when we get back to praha we need to go out and find, the Lord has someone prepared for us." So we went. We took the metro to the stop Namesti Miru. We get out and make our way up the stairs, right as we were on the pavement Elder Briggs takes about two steps and contacts this guy that has an ice cream cone. The guy is interested and walks back to sit down with us on a bench, we talk about Heavenly Father, Prayer and the Book of Mormon. When this guy sees the Book of Mormon he got really excited. He said something to the effect that, patterns repeat in this world so often, just like when Christ came to the earth and started preaching something slightly new, and the pharisees and leaders of the church all denied Him and hated Him, even today people are still doing that. He said many wise things that were very impressing for a man that is not a part of any church. This man, whose name is Pavel (Paul), has clean cut hair, he is shaven, kind, intelligent, has a job, a home, a great desire to improve and progress, he knows the bible, he speaks czech and english, and is possibly a father (we didn't find out too much about his family) Pavel is what we would call a "Kingdom Builder" he could very easily become the next young mens president, or branch president. He could hardly wait for us to hand him the Book of Mormon. he opened it, closed it, then looked at us and said," I'll read it." From this experience i learned that for miracles to occur we need a few things. We need obedience all the time, we need faith that the Lord is watching over us, we must make sacrifice (hard work even when we are having little to no success), and then when the feeling hits us that we are ready to go in or to stop, we say a prayer asking for strength, and then go out fully expecting and waiting for the Lord to provide. It was a great experience, i slept well thursday night.
It was a truly great learning week. I had a lot of fun. Slovakia is absolutely beautiful. Rolling hills....It looks like the Shire from Lord of the Rings. Marvelous!
Momma, make sure to take care of yourself, lots of rest and patience.
(mom's note: I hurt my back (herniated disc) last week when we were in Utah for our son-in-laws graduation from BYU - but I am doing much better)
I love you all enjoy this next week!--
With love, Your son,
Starsi Morgan Nowland
