I love you guys so much. Remember that!

 

 

What's up mom,

Turns out I was able to email from the church today.  Sounds like everything is going good back home. That is good that Nicole is going to be able to get into surgery tomorrow as was planned. I will pray that everything goes ok with that. I would have fasted Sunday too if I had known that all of you were doing that. That's what limited communication does haha.

 

It is way crazy that it's already September. I also found out that Elder C's sister got married while he was on his mission. They did a card board cutout of him and when you take the picture it has to be done with a profesional camera, otherwise it looks terrible. There is a member that he knows that does the pictures and sends it to you for free. I just need the wedding tie before I get transfered out of this area, which could be next month who knows. Just a thought.

 

That is good that you got the pics from the Myers. They are a really cool family and they took us out for dessert. I am glad I look good haha. What do you mean that you really mean it?

 

My week was pretty good. Monday we found a super awesome family from Ukraine. They have super awesome questions about the plan of salvation. Wednesday, we had a good lesson with a LA family in the ward. A couple weeks back we met with them and I felt like I should challenge them to read the Book of Mormon as a couple everynight and they have been doing it. They came to church yesterday too for the first time in a long time. Friday we had a zone breakfast where the stake feeds all the missionaries breakfast in the zone. It was super fun and yummy. One of the stake presidency shared a thought that I really liked on what he called the divine paradox. Missionaires come out to the field and time feels like it is super slow, but as we get older and wiser the time goes super fast. He related it to the scripture where the Savior says whosever will lose his life shall find it--if you know what I'm talking about. When we lose our life and stop caring about ourselves time just flies by. It is so true from what I have seen.

 

That is super cool that the nectarine tree is growing good. That sucks about the peach though. I really liked those peaches. I bet you're having so much fun canning all the junk that dad brings up too, huh haha.

 

That is super cool that you had a great experiance like that in the temple. Isn't the temple the best. That is why I am so excited for the 16th, because we get to go to the temple in the morning and I have the rest of the day to just have fun on my birthday. Awesome!

 

I love being able to email home and find out what's going on back at home right now. I hope you have an awesome labor day! You need to do something fun in the evening. You need it. I can tell. I love serving a mission right now! It is awesome. I learn so much everyday and really want to make my mission experience be the best I can. I know the Savior lives. He loves everyone of us and is involved in our lives. I know the atonement is real and its power blesses our lives. The gospel just wows my mind constantly. It's so cool!

Have a great week. Don't forget to send me a letter or something letting me know how the surgery goes. I will be praying for all of you guys and her. Tell her good luck for me and not to be nervous. I love you guys so much. Remember that! Talk to you guys soon

-Elder Jake Sedlacek

 

 

What's up dad,
       I had a good week. I already gave some of the updates of what I
did to Mom so I won't talk about those. You did ask about G and I
wish we were able to meet with him this week. His family is taking all
of his attention right now. He is still
reading and studing from the Book of Mormon though, which is really
good. He just needs to keep that up even if his life is busy. The La
family is still up in Seattle and their son isn't doing very well
sadly. He is stable but not improving like they would hope. I really
hope everything works out okay with them. It will be super hard on the
family if they lose the baby. Keep praying for them. They need
all the prayers they can get. I will be praying for you guys too with
Nicole's surgery going on tomorrow. I hope everything goes well!
       Ever since last week, which does to me feel like it was
yesterday, I have been working on that challenge you gave to me on
Mathew 19:20. I have really felt like I could be more centered on
Christ throughout my day so I have been working on that ever since
Monday. I really feel like it helped me. I studied up on Preach My Gospel ch 8
which is the Christ-like attributes chapter, and I have been working on
developing every one of those. It's just helped me realize that Christ
is everything in all that we do. We need to involve him in our life
and he will help us out but if we get selfish and think we can do it
all on our own we will figure it out the hard way soon enough. I think
that is what may have happened to me the past couple weeks. I found
that as I involved him more in every decision, my day went by so much
better and smoother. Pretty awesome huh.
       I am glad that work is going good for you. Seems like its
always busy which is a good thing I would suppose.
       Having withdrawals haha. I like the way you put that. I would
be having withdrawals too without Sunday football. We don't get ESPN on
the Roku? I would think that we would since there is a ESPN channel on
it. Maybe you should look into that, or maybe I have no idea what I am
talking about. I have mission brain so bad hahahaha. I am hopefully
not going to be too awkward though when I get home.
       I think that is awesome that Sarah is going to the Bountiful
games. Is Jared not going to them? if not he should be since it's his
last year of them. That is cool though
that Austin got some interceptions. He sounds like he is really good.
I like your spiritual thoughts from church and what not. They are
pretty good insight. I love the scriptures. That is one thing that I
have come to love on my mission. I really do everyday want to read in
them for at least 10 minutes when I get home. I will always be sure to do
that one. I have a testimony of scripture study. I love it and the
strength it brings. It's awesome! I love my mission as well. Thanks for
the sacrifice that you give up to keep me out here and going. Love you
guys so much!
Let me know how the surgery goes with Nicole.
Have a great week dad and fam.
Love ya again!
-Elder Sedlacek
 

 

This wasn't the crappiest week of my life....

Letter dated 4/14/14

What's up?

In my email, I probably made it sound like the crappiest week of my life, but I assure you it wasn't! I'm on a mission, so it can't be that bad, huh? Sometimes it is just harder than others. It really was an okay week.

I told you about a cool thing I had happen. Well, Wednesday of this past week, we were walking down the street and all of a sudden this car pulls up, and a lady gets out of the car. She was crying and said to us, "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, are you guys the Mormon missionaries?! I've been looking everywhere for you!" She then started to tell us who she was and why she was looking for us. She had been kicked out of her home and was really searching hard for God. We haven't been able to sit down with her and have a lesson yet, but we will soon. It is going to be sweet! It was the first time something like that has happened to me. I have had people find us, but not like that. It was awesome, and an answer to prayers that we would find someone that day who needed to talk to us.

We have been doing lots of finding, so we have given away a lot of Books of Mormon, so hopefully some of them work out this week. On Saturday, we were able to go to a thing called Loving Sunnyside Initiative, where we painted houses in Sunnyside with lots of other Christian religions. That was fun, to be able to rub shoulders with religious leaders in the area. People asked us lots of questions so it was fun. I even bought a shirt for it.

I liked Dad's, Mom's and Sarah's letters. Thanks for sending them! You guys are the greatest. To answer your question, Dad, about family history stuff, I can use it as long as it is a church website. It's just harder right now when we don't have iPads or the other tech stuff yet. I hope we get it soon. Family history is cool. Like it says in my blessing, I have been blessed with an understanding of technology so that I can do family history work. When I get home, I will certainly do more than I did before I left. I want the blessings promised by Elder Bednar. They sound awesome.

Well, this is probably the longest letter I have written yet. I love you guys! Thanks for everything.
Love,
Elder Sedlacek

Thanks for allowing me to serve a mission!

Letter dated 3/24/14

What's up family?

How have your past couple days been, even though you can't respond to this immediately haha? Hopefully, they have been good.

This past week has been great. There were some good meetings, like Zone Meeting, but we also had Stake Conference. It was cool because Elder Pieper of the Seventy came and spoke at all the meetings. The Saturday meeting was cool. They had a couple 3 panels of people come up and answer questions that Elder Pieper would ask about missionary work. So in the middle of the meeting, President got up and announced that they wanted to have a missionary panel. They hadn't planned on doing it until the last minute, so the missionaries weren't warned ahead of time. Of course, I got called up haha! It was interesting because I was the only missionary called up who is not in leadership. So I got to go up in front of the whole stake and answer questions from Elder Pieper. Kind of nerve-wracking, but kind of fun too! haha

As far as cool stories go, this week I have a good one. The ward was able to get back in touch with one of our recent converts. He is going to start coming back. He's been struggling lately, but he decided that he needs to come back. That was a miracle!


We have also been trying to do some finding. We want to rebuild our teaching pool to where it was before we baptized 8 of them haha. I've also been able to give lots of priesthood blessings, so I'm much more comfortable giving them now than I was before.

My mission is helping me so much! Thanks for allowing me to go, family. You're all the best!

Love,
Elder Sedlacek

A tough week, but still a couple of miracles happened

Letter dated 11/25/13

Family, what's up?

This week was honestly pretty tough. We have been working on finding new people to teach and getting the people we are teaching to progress. Every single appointment we had fell through--it sucked. We did get lots of contacting done, but nothing really that great. Great as in, will go anywhere, except for one. We were out to check on a less active in an apartment complex. She wasn't there, but when we were driving out of the parking lot we saw a lady sitting on a bench by herself, smoking. We got the impression to go talk to her, so we turned the car around and parked it. Guess who the lady was? She was a lady we have been wanting to meet for a couple of weeks but no one could find her! {miracle #1} We started to talking to her and about five minutes later a guy comes out and walks up to us. He was this lady's boyfriend and he is not friendly to the church.

This guy walks up and Elder S was talking to Rachel (the lady's name) at the time, so the guy started talking to me. It was my first time talking with an anti-Mormon by myself. It was pretty interesting! Some of the the stuff they think about Mormons is insane. This guy thought we didn't believe in gravity because we're devils and we don't need it to stay on the ground haha. Most get all their information from the internet, and everything you read on the internet is true haha. Antis are interesting to talk to. I was able to resolve some of his questions, but after that he wanted to bash so we just left. Bashing is no good and doesn't go anywhere productive. We are in the process of setting up a time to meet with Rachel. This was probably the most standout experience that I had this week.

It was a pretty tough week but I got through it, obviously. I even fasted yesterday when it wasn't Fast Sunday because I wanted to. Can you believe it? {this is a little miracle in itself! haha} Fasting brings spiritual power so much stronger. It's great, even though it's tough to do sometimes.

I hope your Thanksgiving is lots of fun! I love you guys so much! Thank you for everything!
Love,
Elder Sedlacek

A confession

Letter dated 11/4/13

Dear Family,

I figured that I would write you a letter now that I have time in the day. Things have been going good up here. As I said in the email, they split this area. We are now working more focused on the wards now, which is good. They really needed to do it officially and they did.

One thing I realized this week is that I have been trusting myself to know when people are ready for the gospel, not the other way around like it should be. I need to put my trust in Heavenly Father, who knows each of his children perfectly, to know when his children are ready for the gospel. I came to realize that in training this week. That is the big thing I am focusing on this week. We are going to try to visit all of our potentials, regardless of what I think. I don't know everything, but Heavenly Father does! Well, there's my big confession for the week haha. There is always room for improvement, and I'm going to improve on that this week.

It's crazy that I'm at three months now! I'm 1/8th of the way done and it feels like I got to the MTC yesterday. I can definitely do 7 more 3 month increments. Living the mission one day at a time really helps.

What's new about you guys? Enough talking about me haha.

Coming on a mission has really strengthened my testimony of the Book of Mormon. Reading it every day for an hour is great. If only there was time for that in normal life! (There is I guess, but it's so hard to make it.) It's great serving a mission. I would recommend it for all the younger kids. It's hard, but it helps you personally so much and others, too.

Thank you for everything. Every single one of you! I love you all. You should write letters more often haha. I love them. Talk to everyone later!

~Elder Sedlacek

A visit to the doctor

This is the birthday cake made by the other Elders in Jake's apartment from the mix and frosting I sent in his birthday package. They did it up right! They even got the right number of candles. :)

Here's Elder Sed cutting in to the amazing cake. He looks amazing himself!! I miss him so much.

This is the praying mantis that is a "guest" in the Elders' apartment, since they "can't have pets." Elder Sed says he can't believe it's still alive.

Monday 9/23/13 Email

The weather has been NICE this week. It's just cool enough to not be hot, but not too cold.

I went to the doctor down in Kennewick for my cough. I have bronchitis and swollen sinuses. I am doing good, though. I got a couple samples of an antibiotic but I don't remember the name of it.

It is really important that we pray everyday for missionary experiences. That is one thing we are challenging the members up here to do for 21 days. We call it the 21 Day Challenge. They read the scriptures with missionary work in mind, and then pray for missionary experiences. Trust me, the Lord will give you them if you ask. I have seen it bunches of times already.

It would be awesome if you guys did buy a cabin sometime--hunting land!! I'm glad you had fun and Craig and Shannon's cabin. It sounds like a good time.

Our investigator Jim drives a truck as you know, and he is really busy til Christmas, so he can't be baptized until after Christmas. There isn't a good chance of me still being here in Ellensburg by then, but it could happen. It really sucks though because he is sooooooo ready!  He was really excited, and then his work got crazy. He works two jobs.

We haven't met the 40 new investigators goal yet, but we have reached 28. Almost there! I know we can make it though. With God, nothing is impossible. We as a zone just put our faith in God and trust Him that it will work out, if we do our job.

I went to a member's house yesterday who are really big hunters. They have 4 Labradors, 3 whites and 1 black. They looked so much like Duke and Molly! It was fun to be able to pet them and pretend they were Duke and Molly haha. The dogs were so funny. They live on a big ranch, so the dogs just run around, swim and play in the mud. It was fun to watch them. I love Labs!

Well, I am doing good up here in Ellensburg WaRshington (everyone up here pronounces Washington as WaRshington). I hope you guys are doing good too! I love you guys!

Love,
Elder Sedlacek

Keep praying for all the missionaries

Letter dated 8/17/13

Family,

How is everything going?

Everything is good here in Ellensburg. It is so much harder out here than the MTC. It has been kind of hard, but good.

Ellensburg is a really small town. There is dog and horse crap everywhere, which is kinda gross. I don't think I would ever live here. There are lots of people to teach though! I have learned that success is mainly through members' help. Without members the work would be really slow. I would encourage you guys to help prepare others for the missionaries, because teaching is not exactly the best method. That is why the technology movement is happening. Here in the WKM we will get to use it, which will be cool.

The hardest part about being out here is not knowing what happens anywhere else. It helps keep me focused though, I guess. Keep praying for all the missionaries. It's nice to feel the support of the church behind us. I look forward to reading your emails and letters.

I love you guys so much!

Elder Sedlacek

Elder Sedlacek's 2nd P-day. Only 4 more days in the MTC to go!

This week has been good. I have learned a lot about the gospel and Jesus Christ. Dad had asked if me and my comp are going to the same mission, and if I have seen anyone I know here. Yes, we are going to the same mission with about 38 others who are headed to Kennewick on the same day. I have seen a ton of people that I know here at the MTC. I have seen PJ, and a bunch of other kids who I went to school with. It was cool because when I got to the MTC and went to my residence hall, I saw PJ outside and I was like, "PJAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!" It was awesome to see him, and I see him around once in a while. 

The classes are all about the Doctrine of Christ and it blows my mind learning about it. I don't have a culture class because it is the same.

P-day is like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing. It is amazing!! It is so great to be able to relax and do my laundry. I never thought I would say that, but I do like doing laundry. Gym time is also one of my favorite times of the week. It gives my brain time to un-mush and actually be alert again. 

Thank you for the package you guys sent me, and Mama, I will be expecting that Dunkin' Donuts package haha. My whole district would probably like one too--there are six of us. :)

I am sleeping like two hours a night because one of the elders is noisy. I am always tired but I pray for energy and I never seem to be dragging. The elder that is noisy loves to sing and hum while he goes to sleep, and after he is asleep he still hums, whistles and snores. He is pretty talented to be able to do that while he sleeps haha. Oh well though. The ear plugs are a blessing! I gave my whole district the idea to get some, and they love them too. 

The days here at the MTC seem to go by like weeks and the weeks seem to go by like days. We are in class all day and then at 9:30 we have time to get ready for bed. Besides gym time, p-day, and personal time, I really don't have a lot of free time. I am always having to go somewhere every second of the day. It keeps me busy! I haven't even been homesick since I got here. The hardest part for me is the long days, but it's alright because I learn a lot. I love the MTC, but I am anxious to get out into the field and teach real people. 

I am getting kinda tired of role plays and lessons, but I did have a cool experience in one of the role plays. My comp and I were teaching our investigator, Dave, and he wasn't getting why Jesus Christ had to die for him. I shared with him D&C 19:16-19. He read it out loud and the Spirit was so strong. He said he never thought about it that way, and how the Savior had his choice if he wanted to go through with the Atonement. He really helped my testimony of the Savior to grow. We challenged him to get baptized and he accepted. Even though it wasn't a real investigator, it was still a way cool experience. 

I love the MTC and I love being able to serve a mission. Keep writing me because I want to keep up to date on what's going on at home. 

Tell everyone I love them.

Elder Sedlacek

Dear Mom & Dad

Elder Sedlacek warned us not to expect much in the way of handwritten letters from him....

But then we got our first one today! (That good boy).

Dear Mom & Dad,
You said you wanted hand written letters. I know I said I wouldn't but they wanted me to send the little card with my address. I also don't know if you will have to have a translator to read my handwriting. Oh well.

My district is six Elders and four Sisters. The six Elders are in one way-too-tiny room. They are soooo tiny. We all get along well it seems. I am just excited to get out in the mission field. 

The MTC is fun, but it is a special kind of fun. 

Everyone likes the treats I had in my suitcases {jerky and Hi-Chews}. The food is also alright, but it's like Chuck-a-Rama and the chocolate milk is SO good! haha

So far, my MTC experience has been good. P-day is a nice needed break. Writing letters is a lot easier than emailing, but I don't know if you can read it. {note from mom, I did fine}. If you want some more hand written, send some stamps. 

Love you guys. (I can actually say "you guys" for once!) Here, if you say "you guys," it's drop and give me ten push-ups. I haven't had to yet, but I almost have!  

I will write to you again soon, probably next p-day. Talk to you later, parentals.