Well, I have two stories to tell you all, and they're both the kinds of stories that you tell when you come back from the mission. It just seems that I'm having alot of those this transfer, huh? Strange. Anyway, so remember how I've been telling you that I'm a terrible missionary and that I don't really follow the rules? I have another one to add on top of that. I hadn't cut my hair for about two - two and a half months, so it was a little bit long, and it wasn't mission standard by any means. So this week I decided to get it cut, and another thing driving me was that we had zone conference on Monday, so I wanted to look good for that. (Zone conferences are the fashion shows of the mission - everyone wears their best, or the weirdest, just because they can.)
So last week, toward the end of the week, I saw zone conference coming up and so I kept bothering the other elders to bring their clippers because I wanted to get my hair cut. I could have just gone to a barber shop, but I wasn't really feeling like explaining a haircut in Czech, so no bother, I'll just get the clippers, right? Also, like half way through last week, we heard from President that he was going to be in Olomouc Sunday evening so that he could have interviews with us before zone conference. Because of special reasons, there were going to be tons of people there, so it would be very difficult to get everyone's interviews done the day of the conference. So ours were on Sunday. So now I had even more reason to get my hair cut early. I finally got the clippers from the other elders on Sunday, and then after church we went home so that we could have studies and lunch and that fun stuff. We had personal study and language study, and I decided that I would just cut my hair myself during language study so I wouldn't waste any time. The clippers had a guard on it, so I put it at the max (8 - but it's still not very long) and just ran it through my hair. I wasn't really caring about having a nice looking hair cut, as long as it was just shorter and mission appropriate. So, I got it all done, and I was looking at the tub where I cut my hair and it looked like an animal died in our tub there was so much hair. It was terrible. Anyway, I took off the guard to clean the clippers and then I put some water in my hair and started standing it up so I could see if there were any long spots. Alas, there was a long spot in the back and so I took the clippers and shaved it off. When I pulled the clippers away, I thought to myself, "that was an awful lot of hair," and then I realized that I didn't have the guard on the clippers! I froze because I realized what I had done. I felt my head, and sure enough, I had cut all my hair off in that place. Not knowing what to do, I went to Elder Kreitzer who was doing his language study, and said, "Dělal jsem chybu" (I did/had a mistake) and showed him my head. He was basically horrified. I couldn't see it, but I knew it was bad. We both started brainstorming about what we could do, and he thought, maybe if he colored my head with a Sharpie. I didn't want him to do my entire head, just in case it didn't work, so he did just the corner, and sure enough, the Sharpie turned purple, so that was out of the question. To make things worse, we were going to have our interviews with the president in just two hours. At this point I was freaking out not knowing what I was going to do, but I finally came down to the decision that I needed to call President and tell him before he came to Olomouc. So I called him, but his wife picked up, because he was driving. I told her what I did and she started laughing hysterically, just like a mother would if her son had done something really stupid, which is basically what had happened. So she told me to bring the clippers and that she'd try and even it out, but I assured her that she wouldn't be able to even it out. She said for us to come and they'd assess the situation. That walk from our apartment to the building was probably one of the most self-conscious moments of my entire life. Of course there were a lot of people, and I had a spot light on the side of my head. When we got to the building, the other elders were there and Sister Slovackova had already called and told them, so they were patiently anticipating the train wreck. When I got there, they looked at me and said, "turn your head to the side," and so I did. Both of them lost it and started laughing, Elder Anderson because he was shocked and embarrassed for me, and Elder McGowan because he thought it was truly hilarious. Ever time that he sees me now, he asks me how the bald spot is doing. Anyway, President and his wife showed up a little later and when they saw me, they asked the same question, and I showed them, and you could see that they were surprised and horrified at the same time but tried, like good parents, not to show it. So they came in and we had some talking time, we had interviews, and sister Slovacek had the great idea to run to the car and get her mascara. She came back in with it and she painted my head, and surprisingly, it was very good. So I've been putting mascara on my head every day so that people can't see the big white spot on my head.
Then there was the next day when we went to zone conference. I had to wash the mascara out so I could cut my hair shorter (a 5 on the clippers - Elder Kreitzer did it this time) to try and make it not quite as noticeable, but that meant I showed up to conference with the spotlight showing. It was quite humiliating. I showed Elder Lance, and his was the best reaction by far; I was talking to him, making sure that he didn't see it, and then I turned my head on purpose and he lost it, the big gasp, the hand over the mouth, and the, "Oh no..." It was wonderful. So, the entire conference saw that I had done something stupid to myself and Sister Slovacek applied the mascara right there in front of everyone, but at this point, it didn't even matter anymore. It was a pretty good joke for the whole conference. So that's for my embarrassing story for the week.
Then on Wednesday, we had a really cool contact. We were out and about talking to people, and we were already having quite a bit of success. We had had finding exchanges with the zone leaders earlier and that went very well, but later, toward the end of the day, we were walking across the namesti and I saw one kid in particular sitting on a bench next to the sloup (tower thing of the Trinity - missionaries have named it the "Pillar of Apostasy"), and I thought that I was being silly, but I kept getting the feeling that we needed to talk to him. I looked at the other benches and none of the other people were sticking out to me like this guy. Well, we didn't talk to him and we went up a street, up to the main road, talked to a few people there, nothing, and came back down the same road. Well, when we returned, the guy was still sitting there, but for some reason I was still hesitant to talk to him, so we just kept walking on by. We were a little way up the road and I told myself, "I'm going to regret it later if I don't talk to this guy." So I made a very blatant turn around and started walking right toward him. I get up to him and see that he's Asian, and I said hi and introduced ourselves. He looked at me with a really blank look. So I said, "Já jsem Starší Monk." (I am Elder Monk) and he responded and said in really slow broken Czech, "Já jsem He-oo." Success! He understands what I'm saying, so I kept pursuing it. He also told us that he was Vietnamese. I tried really hard to speak really slowly and clearly, and said that we were here as missionaries. He didn't understand the word missionaries. So I said that we were here for our religion. He didn't understand the word religion. So said that we were here for our church. He didn't understand the word church. So we said good-bye and made it really obvious that we were leaving by waving really big and shook his hand and I thought that was that. So we went away. It was about 8:00 o'clock at this time and Elder Kreitzer was wanting to go home because he had a lot of things that he needed to catch up on, and for me too, there were things that we needed to. But I really wanted to just stay out and work for a little while longer; I felt energized for some reason. So we looked at the plan and we saw that we were supposed to be at a park a little way across town, so we started heading in that direction. On the way, not even off the namesti yet, we ran into Lucka (an eternal investigator) and we spoke with her for a little while. After speaking with her for a little while, we were interrupted by someone and I looked and it was a kid about 14-15 years old, and Asian! I looked next to him and there was the Asian guy that we had talked to on the bench!! Basically, that gave us a good reason to stop our conversation with Lucka and we started talking with these two Asian guys. We spoke to them for quite a long while, just talking about anything and everything. We spoke a little about our religion, but not really as much as I would have liked, but at the end I asked them if we could meet with them again, and they said for sure! We had another meeting with them and we can see that it's going to be hard to keep the younger kid under control because he just has so many questions he wants to ask but we can see that he's sincerely curious about our message. Turns out that the guy we contacted (He-oo or Ondra; 28 years old) has only been here in the Czech Republic for 2 months and his cousin, the kid we spoke with (Michal; 14 years old), has lived here his entire life, so he speaks perfect Czech. Michal translates for Ondra, and we have another meeting set up with them. I'm really really excited for them both.
I know that the Lord has so many blessings in store for all of us, we just need to be attentive and listen to his still small voice and understand enough to go and do what he has asked, but if we don't do it the first time, he will give us a second chance. Life is full of second chances, but how great are the blessings we'll get if we do them the first time? I'm still trying to be an obedient missionary and do what the Lord asks when he asks it, and I know that the mission will turn around for me. This works in real life too I'm sure, so go out and try it. I dare you. I love you all and pray all the best for each one of you, but my prayers don't do anything unless you are all willing to show the faith to let the Lord help you.
Love you all and miss you all muches,
Starší Monk
PS - Photo one is on Tuesday morning, but it's almost still as fresh as when it happened and then photo two is the mascara job that sister Slovacek did for me on Monday during zone conference.
