6 Months Down

Hey Everyone!

6 months down!!!! Crazy right? I'm already 1/3 done?! Time is seriously flying by!

It's been a super good, long, week:) so we had transfer calls this week and Sister Kauvaka and I are both staying here in El Dorado Hills! YAY!! So I was pretty excited about that. On Saturday night we got together as a zone at an investigators house and got transfer calls. Our Zone Leaders are super fun and had "Dundies" (if you've seen the TV Show The Office you know what the Dundies are) haha and we all got awards for the transfer! I got "I'm happy even when I'm mad" award hahaha because no one in my zone has ever seen me get mad! Hahaha crazy right? But this transfer has been so much fun. I love this zone and the opportunity I had to serve around these amazing missionaries! It's super sad to see some of them go:'(

Ok so the most embarrassing thing happened this week! So everyone I come in contact with asks where my name "Sobotka" comes from so this lady asked me that this week and I said "it's from the Czech Republic" and then we just kept talking about my mission and how everything has been going and she was talking to me super slow like I was 5 years old...so I was super confused and then she asked how long I've been out and I said 6 months and she said, "wow your English is sooo good" hahaha sooo she thought I was from the Czech Republic!

Anyway the rest of the week went pretty well! We added a few new investigators which is super exciting! One family who are friends with another family in our ward. We met with the mom and just told her what we do as missionaries and she was really interested and said we could come back in 2 weeks and teach her and her family the lessons! So we were super happy about that:) her and her family attend the "Rolling Hills Church" which basically EVERYONE in this area goes to. It's like this huge rock concert church?? I didn't even knew those existed #UtahProbz lolol I would say Rolling Hills is where 90% of the people around here go to church. Basically everyone we talk to say, "oh we already go to Rolling Hills" :(( the other night we went to a lady's house we tracted into a few weeks ago to invite her to the Pioneer Day BBQ & she was super nice....at first. She invited us into her house and gave us water and told us how she goes to Rolling Hills. Then she told us about how her family is super important to her and how her dad hates Mormons then she just wanted to start bashing with us!! She was just throwing all this stuff down & I just don't do well with contention! Soo I just bore my testimony, she invited us to come to Rolling Hills but we can't miss our wards on Sunday.

Rolling Hills has been a big thing this week. But last night we went to go see a family we tracted into the other day and they totally let us in and explained how they had been going to Rolling Hills, but they just felt it was missing something...(probz the spirit and doctrine) and they said they would come to church with us this Sunday!! It's a family with a mom, dad & 2 teenage boys!!! And they said we could come by and teach them the lessons this week!! So sister Kauvaka and I are just super pumped!!

On Sunday the 3 Sorenson boys came to church! So that was also super exciting:) the oldest one is 14 and it was his first time coming to church!! He went to efy a few weeks ago and loved it:) so good things are happening here in El Dorado Hills.

Anyway I hope you all have a great week! CTR
Love,
Sister Sobotka

Sister Sobotka and Kauvaka at the Sacramento temple

The Folsom Zone

The Dundie Award "I'm Happy even when I'm Mad"

My most prized possession is my Testimony

Hi Everyone!

        So it's been another good week in the mission field! Monday we had dinner at our Bishops house and they invited 3 other families over for family home evening! One family got baptized last year and they were wondering how they should do a family home evening so the bishop and his wife decided to have them over to have FHE:) also another family that just moved into the Ward came and the wife isn't a member! The bishop and his family are such good people and are always reaching out to people. This week we did a lot of service projects, on Tuesday we helped a family in our Ward rip out their deck and that was just a big project but it was pretty fun and they bought the Zone Costco Pizza for lunch so that was pretty nice of them.
       On Wednesday we went to this older widowed lady's home for dinner. She reminded me so much of my great grandma Paul:) she was super sassy but super fun to have dinner with. Something that really stood out to me was on her fridge she had a saying that said, "my most prized possession is my testimony" and I just loved that. That this 80 something year old lady really treasured her testimony. And how I treasure my testimony and I love that I have the opportunity to share my testimony every single day!
       On Thursday we had district meeting and talked about how to be bold with the people we are teaching aka my biggest weakness! Haha but I'm working on it:) then we went to lunch with our zone at some Chinese place. Then Sister Kauvaka and I volunteered at this old folks home and played Uno with a bunch of old people, they are hilarious! I told them my favorite movie was Sound of Music and then a bunch of them started belting some Sound of Music songs haha it was pretty funny! That night we had a Ward Correlation meeting with the Ward Mission Leader and the Ward Missionaries. We just got a new Ward Mission Leader and he is awesome! We got together and talked about new ways to get the members more pumped about doing missionary work. The Silva Valley Ward is different because the whole Ward boundaries are in a gated community, where you aren't allowed to knock on any doors and no one is ever outside, the only way you can talk to people is through members! We have such an awesome ward, but they just need to be reminded it's their responsibility as members of this Church to be sharing the Gospel with everyone! So we are really excited to be working with him and coming up with new ideas:)
          Friday we tracted like all day with Shaye. We went and tried to visit all the potential investigators in our area book, but 98% are never home. I swear nobody is home in the summer! At least in this area. But we did add a new investigator, Chris. Then we went to the park to try and find some people to teach and there is this sick skate park there so we started talkin to all the skater kids, and invited them all to the big stake party for the 24 of July! And they all said they would be there, then we showed them the "because he lives" and talked about how much their Heavenly Father and Savior love them. It was a really cool lesson because all the kids just stopped skating and came over to listen to us. Sister Kauvaka, Shaye, and I all bore our testimonies and I realized how sad it is that so many kids don't even know they have a loving Heavenly Father. But we invited them all to come to church:) then I asked if I could borrow one of their skate boards and basically did a bunch of sick tricks for them!! Hahaha and I didn't even fall down:)))
         Anyway I hope you're all having an awesome week and having a fun summer! We got some new referrals this weekend so hopefully we will have some more people to teach this next week! Also HAPPY EARLY BIRTHDAY MOM!!! I LOVE YOU!

Love,
Sister Sobotka

Sister Sobotka and Sister Kauvaka Sharing the Gospel with Skateboarders

Sister Sobotka and Sister Kauvaka Sharing the Gospel with Skateboarders

Fat Kitty City

Heyyyyy family & friends

This week has been another awesome week in the Sacramento Mission. Oh yeah happy 7-11 I hope you all got free slurpees because we didn't because there is no 7-11 in our zone!!! Anyway...this week we have been tracting like crazy and just tryin to find some people to teach! Most people are really nice while tracting but have their "own religion" :(

On Tuesday we went to this place “Slide Belt" it's this LDS guys company that he started and it's just basically these cool belts & they give away 2 free ones to every missionary! So we went over there because a lady in our Ward works there & then she took us out to lunch at Chipotle so that was super nice of her! Then we went and tried to visit every single former investigator but basically no one was home:( then we tracted into this one guy who just wanted to argue everything about the Book of Mormon! He said his best friend is a member & he has tried to read the Book of Mormon but he says it doesn't match up with the bible & I didn't want to have any contention so I just listened to him, but my companion just started arguing with stuff him and they got all heated haha but I just said we weren't there to argue and tried to calm things down. That just got me a little discouraged, I don't understand why people have to act so rudely :( but then the next morning I read the talk by Jeffrey R Holland "The Cost--and Blessings--of Discipleship" and it talks about how we should always stand up for our beliefs even when it's hard.

On Wednesday we got trained on our Area Book App thingy on the iPad...basically we have to take both of area books and enter every single paper into the area book app! & it takes forever!!! & we have 2 area books! Most missionaries aren't very excited or happy about this haha & the app is just super confusing & overwhelming, but I'm sure it will all work out:)

Our Ward mission leader, Brother Anderson taught us how to make Italian soda lol I'm learning how to be a great bar tender. Hehe. Ohhh on Friday we went to this NASTY cat place to volunteer...it's called "fat kitty city" & it's basically this huge cat sanctuary! There are over 200 cats there and our zone leaders signed us up to volunteer there...we picked up cat poop for like 2 hours!!! It was sooo disgusting, just imagine all these nasty cats walking around trying to touch you and ew it was just so nast. So yeah sister Kauvaka & I probably won't be going there again any time soon.

Sister Kauvaka's parents sent her an iPod this week so we have just been jammin out in the car! (To church music of course) most the songs are pretty lame like 90's seminary music or something, but there is one song I love! It's like an upbeat version of "have I done any good in the world today" & I really just love this hymn, I especially love the 2nd verse where it says, "There are chances for work all around just now, opportunities right in our way. Do not let them pass by, saying sometime I'll try, but go and do something today" I've realized that there really are opportunities to do good right in our way every single day & Heavenly Father puts those opportunities there for a reason & it's our job to do something :)

I hope you are all havin a fun summer & gettin super tan for me. I love you, choose the right.

Sister Sobotka

Happy 4th of July

Hi Family & Friends! HAPPY 4TH

This week has been so much fun!  We have been doing a ton of service projects and volunteering around the community! We volunteered at the Folsom rodeo for 2 nights this week which was soo much fun! We got to talk to a bunch of people and watch the rodeo, definitely made me miss home but I wouldn't want to be anywhere else! On the 4th we volunteered at a 10K run in Folsom which was super fun, we just handed out water and cheered people on. We had zone training on the 4th as well, sister Kauvaka and I were late to zone training and guess who was there...President Jardine hahah oopsies! But zone training was really good. Elder Wright and Elder West are my Zone Leaders and they do an amazing job teaching and bringing the spirit. We talked about 1 Nephi chapter 17. This is one of my favorite chapters of the Book of Mormon where Nephi is commanded to build a ship and he seriously just puts all of his trust in the Lord. I love verse 9 where he recognizes his calling to build a ship, but doesn't try and go build it by himself, but asks the Lord how he should do it. We related it back to missionary work how we know we are called to preach the gospel, but we should always ask the Lord for help and remember that it is His work and we need to do it His way:) to put our trust in him and realize, THE LORD ALWAYS PROVIDES A WAY:) President and Sister Jardine brought lunch to the training so that was really nice of them to do. I really love my zone, there are only 10 missionaries in my zone, I think it's more fun to have a small zone. After our training the whole zone went around busy places in our area and street contacted, it was really fun but WAY HOT! Our car said 113, so after a few hours of that we went to get ice cream! A member owns the Baskin Robbins we went to so we all got free ice cream! The members here are awesome. After that we had preparation day! President Jardine didn't want us out proselyting at night on the 4th so we just went to a church building and played games with the zone!

Anyway it has been a really fun productive week! We were able to add a new family to our teaching pool! They have been to church a few times in another stake, but are super interested! They have 3 daughters and one is engaged to a Denver Broncos player, so we got to meet him...I think his name is Peyton Manning? Lol can't remember though? Hehe

Yesterday at church the funniest thing happened, so it was fast and testimony meeting and some guy just totally broke the pulpit hahahahahah! Like it was just all crooked and messed up for the rest of the meeting and the Bishop got up to close the meeting and he just started laughing, it was pretty funny!

Anyway I hope you all had a fun, safe Fourth of July. We are so blessed to live in such a a beautiful country!! Even if the laws are changing and things are getting pretty crazy we are so blessed to have this Gospel and the freedom to practice whatever religion we choose. I am so grateful and blessed to be raised in the United States. I realized I'm a big baby when it comes to singing the Star Spangled Banner at rodeos hahaha I definitely teared up and got the chills. I've realized how significant it is that Joseph Smith and his family were in New York living in a country with religious freedoms and everyone had different religions that sparked Joseph's question of which church to join. It's amazing to see how the Lord works and how he has a much bigger plan for each and everyone of us! And the Lord is in everything we do! Hope you all have a great week and choose the right

Love Sister Sobotka

Sister Sobotka and Shaye Bastian (Member in El Dorado Hills)

Sister Kauvaka and Sister Sobotka