So last week I couldn't really stop saying that this week was going to be an amazing week and that we were going to see many blessings. Well, I've got news! We did have an amazing week and we did see lots of blessings. However, here's the sad part: there weren't really any amazing stories to share. Perhaps I'll just share one or two finding stories that we had this week. So, compared to last week, we had four lessons and we got one new investigator, but this week we had twelve lessons and got four new investigators! So, the ratio that we've been taught over and over is true! It's about every three to four lessons that you teach, one will become a new investigator. That's really cool to see that it's true! Also, another really cool thing that we did this last week was that we spoke one hundred hours of Czech. We're only awake for sixteen hours a day, so that means that we only have twelve hours through the week in which we can speak English (we can actually speak English when we're talking about grammar or how something would be said, atd... (ATD is the Czech version of ETC and means "a tak dále" which means "and so further.")
So this week we went out and hit it hard and we saw some really cool blessings from that. One of new investigators this week was an Indian guy (from India not Native American) who had been taught by Elder Rigby and Kreitzer and then by Kreitzer and me and even had a baptismal date, but then he went to India for his sister's wedding. Sad to say, we lost contact with him after that and we just barely met with him again this last Monday. He counts as a "new" investigator because we haven't met with him in over three weeks. So that was cool. The meeting with him was really good and I tried to give him his baptismal date back and he refused, so I kept pursuing it. After the second attempt on my part, he kind of accepted, but nothing certain, and I backed off because I could see that he wasn't ready yet. It made me think back to last transfer when we gave him his first date to see if he was really ready then. I don't know, but I do know that we're going to continue meeting with him again, and get him that baptismal date before the end of this transfer.
Probably my favorite contact and new investigator this week was a guy named Jan (Yawn). It was a little towards the end of the week, and we had just finished transfers with the zone leaders, so we were on fire. Exchanges might be one of my favorite things to do right next to zone conferences because they just get you so fired up and ready to work and you come out of them feeling refreshed and ready to take on the Czech Republic again. Anyway, so we finished exchanges and we went out finding for an hour. We spoke to a lot of people but no one wanted to listen. So we came back to the building for a break, sang a hymn, read the scriptures that were attached at the bottom, prayed and went out again. I knew that something cool was going to happen. Anyway, we left the building, went straight to the park and while we were walking up one of the paths we saw a guy sitting on a bench in front of us. He wasn't wearing a shirt but as soon as he saw us, he started putting on the shirt that he had next to him. Once we got up to him, we could see that he was probably homeless and that he had everything he owned with him right there on that bench, which fit inside of a grocery bag. We went up and said who we were, that we were talking to people about happiness and then I asked him what brings him happiness. He told me that work, family and a place to live bring him happiness. I asked him if he had those things and he went in about his life and told me that he used to have those things but that he doesn't any more. When he was 40 he had those, but something happened and he lost it all. I don't know what it was that happened, but I felt that it wasn't my place to pry. So I told him that there was a way to be happy even when we don't have these things and that we can all change. He had us sit down and we started talking. We bore testimony of the Book of Mormon and the Restoration and that because of these we have the opportunity to change with the help of Jesus Christ. He seemed really engaged in everything that I was saying. I pulled out the Book of Mormon at one point and I said, "Right here on the front it says that the Book of Mormon is another testament of..." and before I could finish saying the whole thing, he had read it out loud to himself. We also had him read the promise of the Book of Mormon (Moroni 10:4-5). He read it to himself in his head, but when he got to the part about the Holy Ghost at the end of the fourth verse, he started reading out loud, still to himself, but nonetheless out loud like he was really thinking about what it meant. I was just so amazed to see that someone could be so humbled and ready to see and hear the message that we have. The entire lesson that we had with him, he would answer my questions exactly right and would be concise and then he would stop talking so that I could continue. He was so cool. We gave him a copy of the book, assigned him 3 Nephi 11 to read and then set up a meeting with him the next day at our building. He readily accepted to come and meet us saying that he had nothing else to do. However, unfortunately, he didn't come to his lesson the next day but there is still that homeless man running around the city with a copy of the Book of Mormon, so he's one little bit richer and one step closer to our Heavenly Father.
Even though I didn't really have any fun or particularly impressive stories to share with you, I hope that you can see that the Lord is here and that He is with each one of us even though we cannot see His hand every moment. Just have faith and know that He IS there and that He WILL help you. I've really come to know this this week. Have meaningful prayers. He loves to hear you. Speak with Him often. He loves to hear your complaints. Thank Him often. He loves to hear your gratitude.
I love you all very much and miss you sometimes, but I know that I'm here where I need to be: serving as a servant of the Lord.
Starší Monk
PS - The picture was taken in Přerov which is a town a little ways out of Olomouc. We went there with some members from the branch so that we could have a street display - singing and talking to people. It was quite successful. We four missionaries decided to take a little walk around the town afterward and on some random little náměstí we found this fun little apostate statue/monument thing. On the book that he's holding it says "Česká Bible" which means "Czech Bible". So, that's that. Oh, also, I am not getting shorter. I just look a little shorter in this picture because I buckled the waist strap (which is quite thick) on my backpack right above my belt... so that's why it looks like my pants are up really high.