Dear Family,
There's not really a whole lot that I can write about this last week. We didn't really have a lot of time that we could work in our area because on Tuesday we were pretty sick and were told by President and his wife to stay home and get better. President even described it as an assignment. So we stayed home that day and got better and then on Thursday we were in Brno for zone conference.
It's kind of funny, but we were told by President that we wouldn't have zone conferences as often because it's part of the new way that they're going to be running things (zone conferences were supposed to be once every three months or so) but for one reason or another, we've had one every month that President Irwin's been here in the country. I think that's a better rate than we had with President Slovacek - with him we'd have them about four or five times every six months.
This last zone conference we had Elder Teixiera from the First Quorum of the Seventy come and he spoke for nearly the whole time. He's also the president of the Central European missions, possibly Central and Eastern both - I'm not quite sure. Anyway, there was something he said that was really interesting. He said that the most important thing that we're doing as missionaries is teaching; then our second most important job is to get people to church - without that, no one will be baptized. He then went on about the importance of people coming to church and how we're supposed to get them to do that and it basically came down to the fact that missionaries have forgotten the important responsibility to bring people to church - like going out and get them Sunday morning and walk them to church if necessary. He said without that, even some of the elect will not come. Everything that he said made perfect sense and we're working very hard to conform to his vision. If we got it working that way, it would be amazing. He also spoke about referrals and how we can basically get an exponential effect going when we get one really good progressing investigator and then ask them to pray for their families and friends and then get them going and continue to have each of those do the same. He promised that within one month we would have more lessons than we could teach alone and that we'd be calling the branch mission leader for help to teach all the lessons. I'm especially excited for that one.
Other than that, we had some pretty "bipolar" finding this week. Sometimes we'd go out and teach four lessons in one day, and other days we'd go and see nothing. Let me tell you about one really cool contact that we did have this week.
On Friday, we had a pretty good day of finding and it was the day right after zone conference, so we were both fired up and ready to explode on the area and make some things happen. So we went out and worked really hard all day. The first hour of finding, we taught a lesson to a man on a bench but at the end, he said that he didn't really have any interest and that he didn't even want the Book of Mormon. Then the second hour, we had about the same except he accepted the Book of Mormon but also said that he didn't want to set up a follow-up appointment. These two didn't put us down so we kept going and during the next hour, in a rather obscure park, we found a girl and taught her a lesson too but she didn't want to give us her number or a follow-up appointment or a Book of Mormon, but she did take our card, and she said that she'd drop in on church meeting sometime; let's hope that that happens sometime, however we're not getting our hopes up about it too much. So, at this point we were getting a little fed up with teaching people who don't want to do anything! We then sat down and prayed, asking where we needed to go and we decided that we needed to go to a particular park, so we headed in that direction. Right as we entered the park, we approached the first lady that was sitting alone on a bench and began talking to her. She was really nice and we introduced her to the Book of Mormon, read a lot with her and spoke about how the Book of Mormon supports doctrines that we learn from the Bible. She was already Catholic but she said that everything she was reading in the Book of Mormon agreed with her beliefs. We read the entire introduction, 2 Nephi 31 and Moroni 10:3-5 with her. She just seemed to be eating everything up! She was the lesson and the person that we had been waiting for. I also remembered the prompting of Elder Teixiera about being brave and exercising our faith to ask people for referrals instead of closing them off and putting them on a pedestal to protect them from any bad influences that could drive them away from us, so I asked her if she knew anyone that would also be interested in these kinds of things or in the Book of Mormon. She said that she didn't really know anyone, however, as conversation continued, she mentioned that she was married and so I asked her about her husband. She said that he wasn't really a believer but he was looking. So I promised her blessings if she would read the things that she had read with us with him and that he would come to find faith and how they could be stronger because of that faith. She really seemed to like the sound of that, so we got her number and we challenged her to talk to her husband about these things and told her that it would be better if we met with her and her husband together and she agreed right off the bat. She said that she'd talk to her husband on Saturday (the next day) because he was at work all day Friday and then she'd send us a text to see if we could meet on Sunday. It almost seemed too perfect.
Then on Saturday, probably in the afternoon sometime, we sent Alexandra (that's her name) a text asking her if she had read that chapter with her husband. We didn't get anything back. Then Sunday morning we got a text back from her saying that her husband didn't really have any interest in religion and that he doesn't have any time for the things we were talking about. We thought that was okay, and that we'd just keep her going. So we sent her a text recommending Alma 5 to read and we gave a little bit of background and said that we could meet to talk a little bit about it afterward. Then she sent another text saying that her husband didn't want us meeting with her and that she'd just have to perfect her faith on her own at home and the cathedrals. GAH! So, we're a little stumped with this situation but we'll figure something out.
After this had happened, we figured that we had to go and find someone else that was ready to be our hope and dream for the next week. We only had about thirty minutes left to work and so Elder Pearson said that we needed to sit down and pray about where we needed to go. So we sat down, made a few goals about how we could work better (basically Christ-like attributes) and then I told Elder Pearson to pick a place to go and then we'd pray about it. He said that he wanted to go to the town square, so we prayed and didn't feel anything in particular, so we headed off.
On the way, right before we entered the town square, I stopped this one girl who I probably wouldn't have stopped at any other time and we started talking with her. It turns out that she had just barely came into Olomouc but she's going to be studying here. She said that she didn't know anyone and barely knew the city so she said she wasn't running anywhere, so she stood and talked with us for about twenty minutes. That was quite refreshing. So we spoke and talked about the Book of Mormon. We bore really good testimony and promised blessings that she could find things out and that she could find out if God existed. She seemed really open and she said that we could meet sometime when she gets her bearings around the city and her new schedule. Her name is Kristina, and she's kind of our new hope.
That's how things are standing in Olomouc South here in the Czech Republic, but things are really taking a turn and we're feeling that things are going to be great this upcoming week! One thing that we've done is we're really focusing on turning ourselves over to the Lord and being his disciples instead of being people that go around talking about Jesus Christ. We're striving harder to be led, instead of wandering; we're trying harder to testify of Christ, instead of telling people about Christ; and we're trying to live more like Christ, instead of just being here with his name on our suits. I think that this has really made the difference. When we give ourselves completely over to the Lord, He gives us an image of Himself back in return for it. It's only after we make the sacrifice of ourselves, that the Lord can make us more like Him.
I love you all and pray for you. I know that the Lord is among us, but we just need to be faithful and hopeful enough to see His mighty hand in our lives.
Starší Monk