Hi friends! These last two weeks were awesome and I have a LOT to update you on.

(Yes, it’s been two weeks again! You’ll get two blog posts this week to make up for it! This one is from two weeks ago…) so let’s jump in. 🙂

Figuring out my routine

I am getting used to the ropes here at Cumorah Academy. Marketing wise things are going great. I have a routine. The new mentors of the week arrive on Saturday nights. I make sure to sit by them at one of the meals on Sunday and ask them if I could interview them on Monday at 12.

(Usually, they respond with, “Uh, possibly. We don’t know the schedule yet.” The mentors have one-on-one meetings with students from 2 to dinner every day and do have a break at 12 on Mondays. So, I assure them they should be free and we schedule it.)

Sunday night the mentors have a meet-the-mentors meeting. We get to see who they are, they prepare a presentation about themselves and their family and it is a fun night. During that, I record parts of it on my phone, so I can use it in the written interview notes.

On Monday I interview the mentors and re-listen to it typing it up in a Google doc and send it off to the marketing team to be used in a blog about the mentor. (If anyone has any tips on how to make this process faster let me know!) It takes me a couple of hours at least to listen back through the interview and get everything down on the paper.

I LOVE this part of the job. Interviewing the mentors is super fun, and I learn a lot each time, but going back through the interview a second time (some sections a third or fourth time to get all the right words,) has been so cool and has deepened my learning and super connector-ing of the mentors and what they share and teach.

On Tuesday the written interviews should be done and I can start working on other projects, video scripts, blog articles, and helping film videos. I continue to work on projects like this throughout the rest of the week. (Check out this April vlog here!) If you’d like to see more of my marketing work follow Cumorah Academy on social media!

I’m figuring out my routine here at Cumorah. Things are going great.

Cool things that happened this week

One cool thing that happened this week was I finished my first journal here in the Czech Republic! I am so excited. It is big and chunky and makes me smile. There have been so many memories from the past month and daily drawings with the accountability program kept in this journal. I love it. A lot of growth in it. It is crazy that I’ve hit my month mark here.

The accountability challenge has been great! One more week to go! I am getting better at drawing slowly but surely! It’s been so nice to have a morning routine. This last week we started adding the three most important tasks we would do that day to our list of what we were being held accountable for. This week we added an evening routine in.

Another cool thing that happened this week was that Patrick Sedivy, the CEO of Cumorah Academy shared my poem on his LinkedIn! I’m BLOWN AWAY! It was super cool, and he is very nice. He said kind words about me. I am happy to be working at Cumorah. And love that I have time to write a lot of poetry. Check out his post on LinkedIn here. I’m still giddy and shocked it was posted!

Finally, the last cool thing that happened this week was that I found the pond behind Cumorah. There is a pond about 10 minutes away from Cumorah. It’s so calm and peaceful out there! I’ve recently started walking there every day to write poems, pray, and journal. It has become my happy spot. I love it there. It’s beautiful.

At the beginning of the semester, Patrick invited us to make Cumorah Academy our own “Sacred Grove.” This pond has become that for me. It’s only been a week but already God and I have had a few amazing conversations and prayers and I’ve had inspiration for my current book I am writing. (Stay tuned!)

Freiberg Germany

On May 15th we went to Frieberg Germany. Everyone at the academy got on a bus and drove for four hours.

This is crazy to me. Depending on what part of Utah (or any state, I’m just from Utah) you live in you could drive for four hours and still be in Utah. In the same STATE, not in another country!

I wrote a more general blog post about the Freiberg trip as a whole. It’s on the Cumorah Academy website, found here.

The bus ride

The bus ride was awesome. Paige and I were close to the back of the bus, and honestly, the first couple of hours were uneventful. Nothing to report on, as I was asleep. We left at 7 am and I was so tired. But, a couple of hours later I woke up and it was GORGEOUS! I don’t think I will ever get over how green it is here.

Germany is beautiful. I was a little sad we only got to spend one day there. I know I say this about every place I visit, but I want to return someday. Freiberg was delightful, and I have heard good things about other towns in Germany, like Berlin. It was very windy all day, but sunny and beautiful.

Freiberg

The town of Freiberg is quaint. It has giant buildings and cobblestone streets like in Prague, but is less crowded and feels cleaner and more cozy. I loved walking through the ADORABLE streets of Freiberg – there were a couple of people riding bikes, flower gardens on balconies, and some houses with laundry on clotheslines outside. It was so cute and felt like what I think of when I think of “Europe.”

Paige and I got pretzels and went to a bakery. We sat outside and ate our pretzels and apple strudel. It was delightful.

There are some churches and a museum in Freiberg as well. Those were fun to look at and walk around in as we were waiting for our temple appointment.

Freiberg Temple

The temple was AMAZING. Pulling up to it I mistook it for a stake center. Even after seeing Angel Moroni on the top, I was like, “There is no way that is a temple.” It is very small! It has one floor and really does look like a stake center.

Walking inside the temple though feels exactly like home. It feels like any other temple in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Everyone was happy to see us and have us in the temple.

Everyone at Cumorah did different ordinances. Paige and I did iniatories which was so good.

For any of my readers unfamiliar with LDS temples, the initiatory ordinances are rituals performed to prepare individuals for further temple ordinances by symbolically washing away the sins of the past and clothing them symbolically in righteousness.

During the iniatories, you’ll work with three different people. During my temple trip, two people spoke only German, and one person only spoke Russian. Could be a confusing ordinance! They gave us cards with everything written down in English so we could follow along with the ordinance. That was one of the coolest experiences of my life, for a couple of reasons.

1. The first reason: I paid more attention to the initiatory ordinance than I ever have. It is a wonderful ordinance. There are a lot of things said during the ordinance that are really powerful. Because it WASN’T in English I felt like I paid more attention and was more focused on what words I was reading and what I was feeling. It was more powerful simply because I couldn’t zone out, I had to pay attention to understand what was happening.
2. Second, the spirit was SO strong. Because I was so focused and because I couldn’t understand what the ordinance workers were saying, I had to look at their body language, their smiles, and eye contact. I still had a wonderful time at the temple and could feel the spirit, even though they spoke a different language. The worker who just spoke Russian gave me a big hug at the end and spoke to me. I had no idea what she said, but I felt love from her and felt like she was grateful I was at the temple.

After iniatories, we went into the Celestial room. It is beautiful. It was a small temple, but I loved it.

I want to comment here about the feeling of connection. That was one thing that impacted me from the Freiberg trip, and also from being here at Cumorah in general. Even in different languages and countries, the spirit, the temple, and the church are the same. I feel a sense of connection and belonging while at the temple. I was supposed to be there.

We sang hymns on the bus pulling into Freiberg and it was remarkable. Everyone sang in their own language. (We have students here from 16 countries and lots of different languages are represented.) I was one of the only English singers. (Paige and Laurel, while English speakers, served in a Spanish-speaking mission so they were singing in Spanish, and Faith, who also speaks only English was at the front of the bus.)

Even though I couldn’t understand what everyone else was singing, and I was the only one singing the English versions, we were singing the same hymns, and it was special. I felt connected. The spirit was there. Even though I couldn’t understand everyone else. I don’t know how that works.

Český Krumlov Trip

Wednesday was the temple trip and Thursday was a normal day, but on Friday, Paige, Laurel, and I hopped on a bus for a weekend trip to Český Krumlov.

You might be thinking “Where?”

Good question! I was thinking the same thing when Laurel asked us all a couple of weeks ago if we wanted to tour a castle in Český Krumlov.

Český Krumlov (pronounced “Chess-Kee Kroom-lov”) is a town in the South Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It’s about 2 hours south of Prague. (It was about one hour south of the academy, but with the bus and train we had to take it took us longer than that.)

Miracle time here- we sat at the second bus stop for forty minutes past when the bus was supposed to arrive. We got a little worried and if we sat there for too much longer we would have missed our train. Thankfully a Czech girl came up to us. She didn’t speak any English, but I’m sure we looked really confused and lost. Laurel said, “Tabor” to her, which was the town we were trying to get to.

The girl gestured to us to follow her and helped us get to the right bus stop which was a bit down the street from the one we were at. I’m grateful God is looking out for us. We wouldn’t have known any better.

We technically stayed in a neighboring town, České Budějovice (where I had the greatest pizza of my life), and rode a bus into Český Krumlov.

Český Krumlov

It is nicknamed the “Pearl of Bohemia,” and it is like an old medieval town. The town center is built around a bend in the Vltava River (the same river we took a boat tour on in Prague, under the Charles Bridge.) If you ever visit the Czech Republic, Český Krumlov should be on your list of places to see!

You may remember that Prague is known for being the “handsomest city in Europe,” according to one article I read. If I had to name Český Krumlov, I would call it the most “picturesque” place in Europe. I felt like I was inside a fairy tale. Just look at these pictures! It is breathtaking!

Český Krumlov castle

The main thing to see in Český Krumlov is the castle there. It was made in the 13th century and went through multiple rulers, with wars, gifting the castle to others, and more. It is up on a hill that is a LONG way up to the top. I felt like Po from Kung Fu Panda when he had to walk up all the stairs to get to the palace in this scene and this scene. (Okay… There weren’t that many stairs, but still a lot! And we went up and down that hill several times trying to decide where we wanted to go next. It was cool but exhausting.)

We went on a tour of the inside of the castle which was awesome.

There were a lot of cool designs on the carpet and ceiling and some furniture that is still here from centuries ago. The original family had a red five-petaled flower in their house crest and that flower is everywhere in the castle (and in the town.)

One of the queens in the castle’s history, Pertha, had an arranged marriage with the king of Chesky Krumlov. After their wedding and her moving into the castle, her father refused to pay her dowry.

Because of this her husband beat her and withheld food from her and was awful. Her story was so sad, and after she died, it has been said that she started haunting the castle and the people in it. Our tour guide said it is believed her ghost still haunts the castle.

A castle and a ghost story? Yep, I felt like I had stumbled into a fairytale. There were a bunch of souvenir shops that we had fun walking into. I got some postcards. There was also a candy shop and a gingerbread shop.

I tried German Kebab for lunch which was so good! Mine had falafel inside. Yummy! We also got Trdelník again! It’s NOT just in Prague! I got the Frozen Monkey flavor which was chocolate and vanilla icecream with bananas. So good!