This week was much better, I must say. We still didn't get a whole ton of lessons or anything of that sort, but each day seemed to have it's own special miracle. On Monday we had a meeting with a man named Vít and he's crazy. He's studying to be a lawyer and speaks English but it just seems that he gets so excited to speak to someone in English that his mind flies a million miles and his mouth has a hard time keeping up. He doesn't stutter, but he finds himself stumbling across his thoughts quite a lot of the time. I think that the only way that I can really explain him is that he's seems to be a little hyperactive and very happy all the time. We've spoken to him about the Book of Mormon and about praying and he's agreed and is doing both of them. We met with him twice this week, once on Monday and the other on Friday. We also seem to be talking a lot about the nature of God and how he's righteous and perfectly just, and then as soon as you say that he gets really philosophical. He agrees with what we're saying, but he also thinks that he has to get really deep by asking things like, "what is justice?" He's a funny guy and we like him a lot. We are steering conversation with him pretty well, but it just seems he takes between ten to fifteen minutes to explain anything that he wants to say, and you can see that that can become a problem. At least he likes to meet with us and he likes what he hears from us! Elder Pearson keeps saying, "well, he hasn't said anything contrary to what we're teaching, yet." So finally we have a progressing investigator! YAY!
Then on Tuesday we went out and were working around the town, but it was raining and there really wasn't anyone around town, but we stuck it out and kept working. While we were on the town square, there was one guy there and we went up to talk to him but we could see that he was probably a tourist and when he turned around so that his umbrella wasn't facing towards us, we saw that he was also Chinese. We spoke to him anyway and he spoke perfect English. We spoke to him for a second and asked where he was from. He said Shanghai and that they had a vacation in China so they let them go out to somewhere. He said that he was here with a couple of friends and that they were off somewhere else and that he had to go and catch them, but he asked where we were from and asked why we were here. We told him that we were Americans and that we were here as missionaries. He thought that was really cool and said that it was a problem in China that they don't really have religion. Then he said he had to run and so he did, kind of abruptly. We looked at each other and were kind of like, "Okay, that was interesting. Let's go around that corner there and keep working." As we walked toward the corner, we heard him behind us calling after us. We turned around and he was hurrying toward us and then asked if he could get a picture of us. He said that he wanted to get pictures of all the interesting people he met. Sure, why not? He took our picture, thanked us and then left again. Now we were even more entertained by the entire situation. After that we kept working and about an hour later, we were going through a hall that goes back to the town hall, and guess who we see. Yes, it was our little Chinese man and this time he had two women with him and said that these were his friends. He said that he had already told them about us and that he showed them the picture of us. We got talking about found out that they work for Intel and that one of the women was actually a recruiter. I had told them before that I wanted to study computer engineering and that peaked their interest. I told them that I wouldn't be able to talk to them for about two years, but they said that was okay. So... that was very interesting. They took our emails and we took theirs. I have no idea what's going to come of that if anything, but it makes for a good little spirit booster. :D
Then on Wednesday, it was raining more and we weren't really getting anything around the town. We decided to stop and pray and seek the guidance of the Spirit about what we should do. When I say that it was raining, I mean it had been raining for about two days now so nobody wanted to be outside, but I got the feeling that we needed to go to the park. Why? I wasn't sure why, but we headed in that direction. When we got to the park, there was one man walking down the path in our direction and Elder Pearson said, "perfect, just us," and then contacted him. He was really awesome. We found out that his name is Standa and said that he wasn't a believer, but as we testified of the Book of Mormon, you could see that something was turning in his head. We testified of the Book of Mormon and we spoke about how he could find out for himself. At the end of the contact, I asked why he had any interest about these things (I don't usually ask questions like this - but every time that I have, I've gotten a good response) and he said that he doesn't have anyone to talk with about spiritual matters. So we set up for the next day and we invited Brother Zatloukal to come and I must say, it was an awesome lesson. Brother Zatloukal immediately friendshipped this man and bore really awesome testimony about how the Book of Mormon helped him get through the tough time of when his wife was sick and then of when she died. I know that Standa felt the Spirit, even if he didn't know what it was. Then Brother Zatloukal asked him to come to church and he accepted (I had asked Brother Zatloukal to do that before Standa showed up). The meeting was short, powerful and simple. I wish that every one could be the same way.
However, despite these good meetings, you have to have your share of bad meetings. About two weeks ago we found a really cool potential girl named Kristina and we had kept a little contact with her through text messages and she was really awesome. Finally on Friday, we met up with her, and I have no idea why, but I couldn't carry a lesson/conversation to save my life and Elder Pearson said that he couldn't speak Czech nearly at all. I don't know what our problem was, but just about the entire lesson was a giant train wreck. She didn't seem engaged, we didn't seem to be giving good/solid teachings and overall I think it was just kind of creepy. At the end, we saved it a little bit just by switching back into BRT (build a relationship of trust - having conversation), but I'm afraid that the lesson beforehand may have ruined our relationship. We gave her a commitment and she accepted, so we're praying and hoping that she does it and feels something special and wants to meet with us again, despite this lesson. Luckily, later that night, we had a lesson with Vít and that went very well.
Saturday we had a really fun trip with the branch. Standa was supposed to come, but couldn't make it, so we ended up going alone with the branch and a few eternal investigators. But then on Sunday, we had a bunch of really cool blessings. On Saturday evening, we called Standa and told him that the branch missed him and that they were still looking forward to him coming to church the next day. We asked him for his home address so we could stop by his place and pick him up and so he gave it to us. Turns out that he lives just down the road from us! That made that easy. So we went to his place in the morning to pick him up and we didn't know what his last name was so we didn't know who to ring on the buzzer. We tried remembering, but just couldn't. So we started ringing people and they'd come to their windows to talk to us, because there was no intercom, and we'd ask if Standa lived there and a few said that they didn't know who that was, but finally one old lady said that it was that Navratilovi. We rang them and a lady came to the window, and we asked if Standa lived there and she said yes, and then closed the window and we figured she had gone to get him. Then the old lady came to her window again and asked if I had spoken to them yet, and I told her yes. Then she disappeared into her house again. (I just thought it was funny that she came to check up on us.) About ten minutes later, Standa came down and told us that he had been out a little later than he had wanted the night before (three in the morning) and that he probably would have slept through church if we hadn't come to pick him up. He came to church and had a pretty good time and the branch didn't really know how to react, because it's been such a long time since anyone has come to church it seems, but all went well.
There are so many more stories that I could tell you from this week, but I think that this letter is long enough. I hope you can all see that when we turn ourselves over to the Lord instead of resisting, He truly turns us into Himself so that others can see that there is something different about us: that we are followers of Christ. I loved this week and I hope that you have fun reading about it. Next week will be just as awesome, if not better! I love you all so very much and hope that you can all see the hand of the Lord in your own individual lives.
Much Love,
Starší Monk
PS - on the trip with the branch, there were mushrooms everywhere! The ones on the tree are good for eating, but the branch kept warning me against the red ones. I'm sure they were thinking something along the lines, "These silly missionaries. They don't know their mushrooms!" Czechs love going and hunting for mushrooms.
