Dear Family,
To explain why I didn't write last week, I need to explain a few little things. Well, these "little things" will probably not be so little. Tak (so)... Here in the Czech Republic, Christmas/Vanocé is three days long. The first day is the traditional "Christmas" as we know it, on which Ježíšek (baby Jesus) comes to give the presents instead of Santa Claus. And it happens during the day, so the parents have to be extra witty on how to get the presents under the tree without the kids seeing them. Whenever Ježíšek comes, he rings his bell and the kids come running, but when they get there, Ježíšek is gone! They say that Ježíšek is invisible, and usually comes when the family is eating dinner. In that case, the dad (or the mom - either one) sneaks off and puts the presents under the tree, and then rings the bell. Quickly the kids run in and the parents says, "Awww man! You just missed him!" Fun stuff. So this day is the 24th of December. Then the next two days basically consist of the family just staying together to have good bonding time. I felt really bad for the people who had to work the trams and the trains on those days. We used them a few times on those days, and they did not seem like the happiest people in the world.
So, Vanocé is from the 24th to the 26th here, and if you remember, the 26th was a Saturday, so President Slovaček made our P-day for the week that Saturday so that we wouldn't waste anymore time not being able to do work. So the next Monday was a normal working day instead of P-day. However, since Saturday was still a holiday for the Czechs, I couldn't write an email because the email cafe that we normally use was closed! So was the Library! So, this has been a very long week. My companion, Starší Price keeps telling me, "You had such a terrible birth (coming to the mission field). These few weeks are not normal." However, he also said that we did much better these couple of weeks than he did last year in Brno. There, he said, nothing was happening. They would walk around the ghost town and the few people who were out didn't want to talk. Their current investigators had gone home or didn't want to talk either. So, I'm ready for some normal weeks and see how normal missionary work goes. :D
So, a few realy cool experiences that we had. This week has been a week of a few firsts: I went tracting (knocking on people's doors), I rang my first doorbell to try and get into a building. Here in the Czech Republic, basically everyone lives in things called Poneloks which are basically really quickly-erected communist housing and are made of solid concrete. Fun huh? So it's like an apartment building, except not as nice. Some of them are pretty cozy/big, but others literally have one bedroom/living room, a kitchen, and a very small bathroom. When I say this bedroom, it's probably 10x12. That is tiny for a few couches to sleep on AND all of your stuff. It's nuts. So you have to have someone let you into the building, and you do that by ringing someone and asking them to let you in basically. That was an adventure. So, those were both really fun. Right after last time I spoke to you, Starší Price and I went grocery shopping! It was really fun seeing things that I recognized, but didn't know what it was. Like tomato pureé, but thinking it's tomato sauce because I can't read the box. Yes, it comes in boxes. So does the milk in fact. The milk is really cool... you can leave it on your shelf and then cut it open and drink it, and it's fine! But then after it's opened you have to refridgerate it. We got a loaf of bread and that was pretty cool. It wasn't anywhere near as good as the bread that we made at the bakery, but then again, this bread was well under one seventh of the price. Yes, a very large loaf of real bread costed only 15Kč (by the way, right now it's 18Kč to the dollar). So all-in-all, we checked out and it run up to 1010Kč and that's about 50-60 dollars.
One thing that I'm doing every Tuesday (Úterý) is teach English (Angličtina)! I teach the advanced class, so I speak English the entire time. However, it's hard to teach for an hour about something, when you don't know what you're teaching. This last time I taught about description and how it's important. Then we had an activity where I wrote a simple noun at the top of a page and wrote five words they couldn't use to describe it and then they had to write out a description, so that the other people in the class can guess what it is. That was fun. Basically like Taboo, except no time limit. They did really well with it, and then we played twenty questions because that's all about description too.
We have a few investigators that I'd like to talk about for a second. One's named Tomaš. Tomaš is a very smart guy, but likes to have five year plans for everything. So he has one for us/the church. He's a little afraid right now to join the church because he believes very strongly that if you surround yourself with a kind of people, you'll become like them, and what he's seen of the people in the branch here, is that they don't have any dreams. They have lots of faith, but no vision, no dreams, nothing that they're reaching for. Tomaš is very goal oriented. He's 18 years old, but he's already doing business consulting as a job. Yesterday he sat us down and explained it all to us. To be truthful, it doesn't interest me very much, but he knows what he's talking about and he seems to have a really good grip on it. Also, he speaks very good English. You'd know that he's a foreigner and that he doesn't know all the words to explain himself, but his English is better than my Czech! We meet with Tomaš about every other day or every three days, and we're really trying to get a good connection with him so that he knows that we care about him. I think that it's starting to work, because the other day in one of our meetings, he asked why we care about him so much. I think that was a break-through with him, because he can see that we do care about him. We explained that we love him because we love God, and God wants us to love Him back and to do that we love and serve everyone else. We then gave him 1 Nephi 8:11 and told him to watch for what Lehi does when he eats the fruit. We also had him read it because it's amazing. Anyway, that's Tomaš for you. He's making progress, but he's still doubtful.
Then there's Denisa. Denisa's awesome. 'Nough said. The last elders found her right at the end of the transfer while they were on splits and taught her at her doorstep. That was the only contact that they had with her. Then we took over and we have only taught her four times, but we already have a baptisimal date! She's sooooo golden. Two lessons ago, we started about the second lesson, and I can explain about the first half of it in Czech, so my companion had me do so. Then he said, "Can you list the frst principles and ordinances for Denisa?" (In Czech of course, but somehow I understood.) I pushed through those with difficulty. Then he went off about something and everything and I was very lost. I caught words here and there, but they were very random to me. Basically, afterward, Starší Price told me that he had basically taught her everything except for the law of tithing. He taught her the Word of Wisdom, the Law of Chastity, and "atd" (Czech equivelant for "etc" - means "a tak dalé" which means "and so further"). Denisa is so awesome, because she said that she already does those things! She only drinks fruit tea (Ovocné čaj), she doesn't smoke, she doesn't drink, she lives the law of chastity... how else could she be any better? I'll tell you one thing: she doesn't come to church, but that's our fault. We hadn't told her about it. So in that same meeting we told her that it was a commandment to come to church, to which she replied in Czech, "So that's why I went to the Kostel (Cathedral / big catholic meeting house) every Sunday when I was little." So we invited her to church and she accepted without hesitation. Yesterday, we were shocked to find that she wasn't there! We called her after church to see what was wrong, and she had thought it was in the evening. Guess we won't make the mistake of not telling them "rano" (morning) again. Anyway, she's got a baptismal date for the 6th of February. Sweet!
Hmm, what else. Oh, for new year, which they call Silvestr (which I will explain in a second), we had to be back in our apartments at 6:00 pm. The reason for that is because when you combine drunk people and fireworks, you get the Czech New Year. Basically, in some places they'll have things called Ponelok wars, in which they fire fireworks at eachother's buildings. Safe huh? Yeah, as I said - Drunkards + Fireworks =/= safe.
So about calling New Year "Silvestr," here in the Czech Republic, and maybe in all of Europe (I'm not sure), they have things called name days. Basically, whatever day your name is associated with, you get to celebrate on that day as your "name day." Some people think that it's bigger than your birthday. So, on the new year, all the people with the name Silvestr partied even harder. I was with some investigators and they figured that my name day was "Ondřej" (or the Czech equivelant for Andrew). However, people here in the Czech Republic don't have middle names, and when I told them that I do, one of the boys was jokingly frustrated with me because I have two name days. Anyway, I can't remember which days they are. I want to say that "Ondřej" is in November or September somewhere.
Anyway, I need to go. This is a sufficiently long letter for you all to chew on for the next week. :D
Have fun, and I love you all. Hope you all had a Vaselé Vanoce a Nový Rok (Happy Christmas and New Year).
Lots of Love,
Starší Monk