Dear Family,
Again, a pretty hard week. It rained nearly all week when last week was at least nice and clear skies, so as such, it was a lot harder to go out and work, but nonetheless, we went out and tried talking to people. There wasn't a huge selection of people to talk to. We couldn't really go tracting, most people would be at work. While we were out, Elder Vomocil would say jokingly, "Take it in Elder, every drop of rain is another minute your wife spends in the gym." He said that his brother's mission would say that. Yes, he served in the Amazon. Yes, they loved working in the rainy season. Just little stuff like that keeps you going sometimes. It's silly and you know that it's not true, but it's fun to think about. Get's your mind off the depressing fact that it's raining a lot, it's annoying, no one's outside, the ones who are outside don't want to talk to you; takový je život (such is life).
We found a couple cool people this last week though, however they didn't show up to their follow-up appointments. Perhaps they just need time to think and "brew" for a while and then they'll be more ready next time they run into missionaries. We also finally caught Ari. She came home from Brno, with Bayar, because they're doing a census here in the Czech Republic, so she came home to be there for that. She's returning sometime today.
Sadly, there's not really a whole lot to write about. I guess I could tell you one interesting story that happened this last week. On Wednesday, we were out contacting, it was raining and we didn't really want to be outside, but we were anyway. We had been contacting and it hadn't gone that badly. We stopped at one point because we were both just kind of dragging, and it was only 2:00 or so. So we made a goal to contact for another thirty minutes and talk to ten people. We knew it would be hard because of how scarce people were at the moment, but we were determined and we set off. Not five minutes later I heard the phone ringing in my pocket, so I took it out to see who was calling. It was a number that we didn't have, so I picked it up, said hello and said that I was Elder Monk. The lady on the other end didn't even say hello and started accusing me of calling her son. We had done callings the day before to try and set up with investigators and less actives, but I didn't remember calling a young boy. I asked her what her son's name was and she said Roman. I certainly didn't call anyone named Roman. This entire time she's just laying into me, letting me have it saying that calling over and over is harassment and that she was going to call the police next time we call because it's illegal. At this point, I was very confused. I kept telling her that I was sorry, but I didn't call any person by that name, but she kept accusing me of calling anyway, she just wouldn't let it go. She said that she was looking at her son's phone and she could say the time and the number that called. Then she also told me that there was another number too who were probably our friends, that was calling him too. She accused me of passing out his number and then harassing him with it. Needless to say, I was extremely confused, but I got the fact that she didn't want us calling her son, so I finally butted my way into the conversation and asked her to send me her son's phone number so I could look through my own phone and delete it if I had it, and also send me the number of the other phone that was calling so I could call them and ask them to delete the number, too. Once she could see that I was confused, but I wanted to help, she completely changed and I could tell that she was just looking out for her son. She was just scared because she didn't know who we were. By the end of the conversation, she was thanking me for being helpful and I kept reassuring her that I would help get it resolved. We said good-bye and hung up. A few minutes later I got a text with her son's phone number asking me to delete it from my own phone and then a minute or two later I got another text with the other number that had been calling. I called that one and it turned out to be the missionaries from Jihlava. They picked up and I asked them if they had called a Roman recently and they said yes. They also said that the lady on the other end threatened to call the police if we called again. This made me curious how she got our number because the kid was only a potential in the Jihlava phone. That didn't matter. I told them to delete the number, and they said that they already did. That was that with them, so after I called the lady back and told her that I got it all resolved and figured out, and that they wouldn't call any more. She was really grateful. I told her that if they called again, for her to call me and I would fix it again. Afterward, needless to say, I didn't have much of a desire to contact people, so we went home and sat there for fifteen minutes or so before going back out into the rain to work some more.
That was our interesting story for the week. I'm glad to hear that all the hardships I'm going through here aren't in vain. At least I'm growing. I definitely learned to think under pressure from that phone call. It was only 8 minutes and it was over the phone! I have a lot to learn still, but I'm learning. :)
Love you all and hope you're all doing well.
Starší Monk