Joseph with first snow - Winter 2010-11

Joseph and companion overlooking white city

Joseph and snowy tree

Cold morning

Joseph by cool (cold) monument

Joseph (close-up) with rocks

Joseph with cold pile of rocks

Elders Schindler and Ingalls on snowy morning

Joseph by hole in rocks with snow

Joseph with snowball

Joseph in snowy park

Joseph NOT loafing!

Joseph's white town II

Joseph's white town

Joseph in front of big rock thing

Joseph armed and ready to go!

Joseph after snowfall

Letter dated 29Nov2010

[Dear family and friends, here is our letter that we received today from Joseph. I hope you enjoy it! I guess, from what Joseph says, we need to send MORE packages! I will be posting these pictures on Joseph's blog. I will let you know when they are up! BWS]

Dear everyone,

This week went a little slow, and it has only been about four days since I last talked to you so I do not think I have a ton of things to add, but I will try. I also can not type as fast as Elder Ingalls, so that is a problem too.

Well, first of all, it snowed a decent amount last night. Those pictures I sent were taken this morning, and that snow was not there yesterday. It looks like we will have a white December, which is pleasing to both Elder Ingalls and me. He is still a little perturbed that the Christmas lights are already up on the Town Square, thinking that they should wait until December first, which happens to be the day right after his birthday. It was was funny last week because it took him about ten minutes to notice all of the new Christmas wreaths on the Square, and that was then the topic of conversation for the rest of the night. Then last night, he saw the new, giant tree on the Square, and that caused a funny reaction from him.

I hope these pictures turned out. I decided that since I only have about a hundred pictures so far on my mission, I better start taking some now, or else mom will be very mad at me when I come home and say that I did not really take any pictures. I will try to send some more along in the near future.

Sacrament meeting yesterday featured a Children's program instead of talks from members. It reminded me so much of home. The girls were all well behaved, a couple of the girls were nervous, and the two older boys did not want to be participating. One just stayed off to the side and waited while the other boy took the opportunity to march up to the stand as well as to cover his face with his script. It was great. The Branch [congregation] here is awesome.

I heard from Dad that you read Helaman 3 last night, if it is okay, I will start in Helaman 4 tonight and continue reading with you.

So apparently Elder Ingalls' family loves him a lot more than you do, because he has about five packages already in our apartment. Just kidding, but seriously, he has a lot of stuff.

Well, that is all for now. Love you all and wish you the best in the upcoming month.

Love,
Elder Schindler

Happy Thanksgiving!

[Dear Family and friends, I hope you are all enjoying a day filled with friends, warmth, food and laughter. Joseph's preparation day was today - here is his letter. We are thankful for all of you and for the blessings of friendship! Joseph's editor - BWS]

Dear Family,

Well, I forgot to tell you, but today is P-day [preparation day] this week. I remembered about forty minutes after emailing last week, and while I was sad, I figured all individualy would survive back home. I should have told you though, it just slipped my mind. [Fortunately, the mission home let us know that Thanksgiving would be this week's preparation day!]

I do not have a ton of time right now, but I will try to fill you in on as much as possible.

Well, first off, here is a funny story. We were teaching a man on Tuesday named Pšenka, and while I was talking about when Lehi and his family came to America in the Book of Mormon, I accidentally said that they built a boat and then traveled UNDER the water, instead of sailing on the ocean, like in a submarine. He caught that, and was rather surprised, until we clarified that they had not traveled by submarine, nor by subterranian tunnels. It was rather funny, but I was way happy, because it meant he was listening to what I was saying.

Second, I have an idea that I want to run by you. I have been reading the Book of Mormon on Czech to help practice reading, pronunciation, understanding, etc... and I came up with what I think is an excellent idea. What if we started reading in the Book of Mormon together as a family? Every night we could read a chapter; you all in Michigan could read in English and every night and before I go to bed I will read the same chapter outloud in Czech. I was thinking that we could start Monday, and either start from the begining or from where you are in your reading. Then we could email each other about the things that we learned. Let me know what you think, but I think this would be awesome for us to do together. [What a great idea! I am glad we can read it in English! By the way, if anyone wants to join us, we are reading Helaman 4 tonight!]

Well, today is Thanksgiving, and also Pday. The Elders from Jihlava are over here in Třebíč today and we will be having a delicious meal provided by KFC. None of us know how to cook a turkey, and we did not feel like we really wanted to try to look for one and attempt the cooking of said bird, but KFC sounded good (Třebíč is actually too small to have a KFC or McDonalds, so the Jihlava Elders brought some chicken over with them). We will also watch the new District II film that misionaries received to help with training. It should be an interesting and good day. I may even try to make cookies, although I hope vanilla is optional, because we do not have any (I will let you know how it turns out)(by the way, I canu by vanilla here, I just have not been able to find it in Třebíč yet, and I forgot to ask the Elders in Jihlava to pick some up for us). [We should have let Joseph cook last year's turkey so he would know how! ]

We did a ton of finding this past week and a half, since all of our investigators were away. We saw some great blessings because of it though, and are looking foward to meeting with these new people. One of them even showed up to Church on Sunday. It was totally out of the blue, and we had never met him before, but he liked sacrament meeting and we taught him afterwards (his name is Martin by the way). As an intersting sidenote, almost everyone here has the same names. Although there are a variety of Czech names, almost every man is named Jan, Jiří, Martin, Michal, Lukaš, Tomaš, or Zdeněk, okay, there are more, but it seems like that sometimes.

It snowed here yesterday. Nothing stuck, except on cars, but Elder Ingalls and I were happy.

Well, I have to run, but I love you all and am wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving. Talk to you on Monday.

Love,

Elder J Schindler

Joseph's letter dated 15Nov2010 - Ides of November

[Dear friends and family, I hope this letter finds you well. We are still enjoying a beautiful November in Michigan -- without snow (yet!). At this Thanksgiving time, we are thankful for your support, love and friendship. I hope you enjoy this latest letter from Joseph! BWS]

Good Day,

Well, this week did not yield much more for me to write home about, but I will still strive to keep you entertained and updated.

We had some good success tracting last Monday. We were let into homes twice, one of which resulted in a return appointment for a date after November (it is far away, but at least we can return). It was a good experience, and was the only night we had to go tracting (on the other nights we managed to set up lessons with people, which in my opinion, is much better that climbing the stairs of towering, communist panaloks (they have elevators, but saying I have to climb the stairs just sounds much more dramatic and heroic).

On Tuesday we had exchanges with the Elders in Jihlava. Elder Vivona came to Třebíč and we worked together on Tuesday after district meeting until Wednesday afternoon. That was good, but it was hard because we are rather good friends and spent more time talking about things than we should have. We worked hard though, so no worries. Wednesday morning was a little interesting because some workers came to do something to our shower (apparently the drain needed replacing). However, Elder Vivona was still in the shower and I forgot he was there, so the workers just walked into the bathroom. It was a little funny.

We still have not been able to set up a meeting with Ochir and Aggy. They are putting in a lot of overtime from now until Christmas and as such, they do not have a lot of time for us. We went to stop by on Saturday, but they were sleeping, so we were not able to speak with them. However, Pan Novák (Pan means Mr. or Herr) is still liking the Book of Mormon. He will be gone for the next two weeks, but we are looking forward to meeting with him after that. We also had two good meetings with a woman named Dana Sladková. We met her first on Thursday and then had dinner at her house on Saturday (Czech gulaš is way tasty, by the way). We challenged her to read in the Book of Mormon everyday, which she accepted. However, she has been going back to school to get a degree, and she has tests this week (interestingly, the czech word for test is test), so we will not be able to meet for another week. We still have a lot of hope though.

On Fridays, we have correlation with the Branch Mission Leader at his home. His name is Jiří Červen, served a mission here in the Czech Republic, was married about three weeks after I got here, and is about six and a half feet tall. He is very helpful for us here, as we had a good meeting with them, and we were able to talk about the differences between how we celebrate the Holidays. I retold my favorite, family Christmas tradition that I share with people here, about the giant plastic rat that my family has wrapped under the tree during Chrismas time. I think it is hilarious and the members here think it is rather funny. [Our Wilson nieces wrapped this about 10 years ago. It is meticulously wrapped so it is the exact form of the rat -- just with wrapping paper on each part of its body. Each December, the "Christmas rat" goes under our tree. While I would have hoped Joseph would have more memorable and impressive recollections of our Christmases - I guess this works for him! (LOL) BWS]

Unfortunately, none of the people we are meeting with were able to make it to church yesterday. This was sad, but we are continuing to work with faith. It gets dark rather early here now, usually by about five o'clock it is dark, but that means that we get to go tracting more. This makes finding new people a little slower, but nonetheless, we work hard and continue in our work (smiling all the way).

Sister Červenová, Jiří's mother, said that she would attend church with us next Sunday. We have been meeting with her weekly ever since I got here, but because she has cronic back pain, doing anything is rather difficult for her. However, we got her to say she would come (mostly by just staring at her when she said that she would not promise). We really hope she will.

Elder Ingalls and I are doing well. We had a Czech Learning Week this week, and reported 105 hours of Czech this week. It was fun, and I think it helped people on the street be more friendly when they heard us speak Czech all the time and not just when contacting.

Well, that is all for now. I love you all and wish you the best. We still do not have any snow, and I hope to keep it that way. The Book of Mormon is true (do not forget it).

S laskou,

Elder Joseph Schindler

Joseph's letter dated 8Nov2010

[Dear family and friends, I hope you enjoy Joseph's latest letter. We hope all is well with you. Thank you for your love and your support! BWS]

Dear Family, Friends, and various zvíře kteří patři vám, [I am assuming this is a friendly term!]

This week went well. It is raining today (makes P-day [Preparation Day] a little lame, but I think contacting in the rain is worse, so I am a little glad it is raining today). Last week though, it only rained on Saturday night, about which I will talk a little more later.

Elder Ingalls is awesome. I have really liked my companions in the past, and he is no exception. I think that we work well together and it has been rather nice to work with him for the past week and a half. We both are working on speaking one hundred hours of Czech this week (that is all but about twelve hours of our time awake), so we should be working rather hard and seeing some extra help from above with that.

Ochir and Aggy did not come to church yesterday. This is rather sad, but Ochir had to work and they just could not make it across the city. While this was dissappointing for us, we are not discouraged and we are looking forward to meeting with them this week and during the weeks in the future. We also just started meeting with a man named Mr. Novák. We met him on the street by the chapel about three weeks ago and we asked if we could come to his home and share a message with him and his family (the people here are sometimes taken aback by that approach and usually do not accept, I try it though sometimes, especially with people who are in a hury). He accepted, and since he just lives around the corner from our chapel, it was easy to find him. Anyway, we just had our second meeting with him, and it went very well. He likes the Book of Mormon, especially the similarities between it and the Bible (I gladly explained that this was because it contains the same Gospel principles that the Bible does). He liked it and we will be returning this week.

So, now I will tell our Friday story. We received a referral from the Mormon Battalion center in San Diego that a man named David, who had visited there, would like to receive a copy of the Book of Mormon. So we found a map, found the city, rode a train the the city nearby, and then walked a little bit to his home city (these little towns are rather close together). It took us a little while to find the house (the Czech house numbers are numberd according to when they were built, not where they are in the city). [This is how the Japanese homes are numbered - which I experienced 30 years ago!] We found it though, after walking all the way across the area and taught David about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. He liked it and, though he studies in Prague, he comes home for the weekends, and we hope to see him at church in the future. Anyway, by the time we left his home, it was dark, so we got to walk to the train station in the dark and in the rain. Luckily it was not far, and it did not start raining very hard until we were in the station. It was a good experience for us, although if we did it again, I would try to leave a little earlier.

I really am trying to think of other things that happened this week that are worth writing about, so please believe me that I am making an effort to fill all of you in on my life here.

Oh, I just remembered something. Last Tuesday was district meeting, and while we were at the chapel, a Mongolian man came to the door and started to speak to us in broken Czech. After about eight minutes, we figured out that he wanted us to help a friend do something on a computer in English. So we set up a time to meet her (his friend) at the Library. We went there, helped her translate some text, and then invited her to hear our message. She accepted, so we went to a restaurant and taught about Jesus Christ and what faith in Christ means for us. We think she liked it, in fact, she definitely liked it enough to set up a time to meet again. That was a rather cool day.

We also were let in tracting (doorknocking) last Tuesday, an event that unfortunately, does not happen as much as we would like to. We came in and taught a woman named Pavla about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She really is not a believer, but we challenged her to read in the Book of Mormon, to pray and to meet again, all three challenges were accepted. Our meeting is for tomorrow, and we hope that it will go well.

I will try to send out some pictures of the city next week. I was going to today, but it is raining, so I will try to take some from a couple outlook points, and maybe even get in a few of them. I would also like to receive pictures from home. If you could, attach the picture file, which I can then save onto my thumb drive and print at a photo store (last time I did that, I forgot how many pictures of LeBron James I had accidentally left on it, and the store clerk had to cycle through several to find the actual pictures).

I am doing well. I am happy, I am healthy, I even take my vitamins (just for you mom), although I should probably stop buying pastries at the candy store right outside our apartment (they are really good though). I am still balding (not too bad, but still way more than I want to), my feet are all caloused over, and my calves are huge from walking up all the hills here. My clothes are still holding up really well. All my socks are good, my shoes actually are doing okay, my shirts still look good, my suit is snazzy, and only a couple of ties are coming unstitched (I am trying to learn how to sew them, but I still have a bit to learn and practice). I am trying really hard not to become vain (the clothes here are rather stylish, and have thus far I have only fallen into purchasing temptation a couple times (two sweet ties, two pairs of dress shoes (they were on sale though, so I am actually happy with that), and a pair of P-day shoes I definetaly did not need (they were also on sale, but they are already falling apart and I did not need them)).

Well, I love you all. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this letter, and remember I love receiving letters in the mail. I know the Church is true and I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God.

S laskou,
Elder Schindler

ps-I really want those pictures. Send a bunch. please.

Picture of Joseph's Christmas tree - by Aunt Marta!

Joseph and companion in Halloween costume!

Joseph wistfully riding a train!

Letter dated 1Nov2010

Good Morning,

Well this week is going rather well. I found my new companion, who was only a few hours late because his bus broke down outside of Prague. He had to stand during the two and a half hour bus ride, but he arrived in one piece and is way cool. I like him a lot and I think will will have a great transfer together. He is from Minnesota, studied at BYU, played tennis in high school, participated in Science Olympiad and is a really good missionary (his name is Elder Ingalls).

- Hide quoted text -

This last week was a little slow because of transfers and all of that, but we did see some good things. Ochir and Aggie are still reading and praying every day, which is very good, but they are having a really hard time making time for church. They work six days a week and so we know it is hard for them to take their day off and spend some of it at church, but it is just so good for their family and I know that when they do they will really start to feel why they need to attend church. We have a lot of hope for them this transfer and I am looking forward to working with them.

We had a Halloween party this past Saturday. Halloween is not a Czech holiday by any means, but we have had missionaries here in the Czech Republic for years, so it has become a regular tradition for missionaries and members to have a party on Halloween. It was rather fun. There were many children at the party and a good time was had by all. We, Elder Ingalls and I, were asked to be in charge of games. We hung apples from strings and also had cups filled with candy, which children could recieve if they were able to throw another piece of candy into the cup from accross the room. They had a good time, and I thought it was a success.

Daylight Savings Time just ended, and so now it gets dark very early here, at about 5.20. This means that we get to tract [look for people door to door] a lot more, which is not my favorite thing to do as a missionary, but we are starting to see some success from it and I think it will help us find some new people who are ready for the gospel.

I am sending a couple of pictures. One is a picture of me on a train and the other is a picture of my companion and me at the Halloween party.

I am probably going to buy a dictionary today. I think I am at the point where I just need to give in and buy it because my pocket one really is not enough any more. I think I have enough money, but I will likely ask for some in the future for things like that, although to be honest, I really do not think I will be needing anything else.

Well, thank you so much for reading today. I love you and wish you the best. Do not forget, the Book of Mormon is true.

Love,
Elder Schindler