Dear Family,
So this last week, I was on exchanges with Elder Thomspon. It was really weird, but really satisfying and cool to work with him again. We had another lesson with Marta while we were on the exchange, and Elder Thompson, always knowing what to do, spoke very minimally during that lesson, just so that I would have to get over being intimidated in front of her. I wouldn't call it very nice, but the lesson went fairly well. We spoke about praying and reading as how we talk to God and how we hear what He has to say to us. She understood it really well, and at one point I asked, "What kind of relationship do you have with God," and she thought about it for a long time and then after thinking, she said, "Probably none." It was cool to see that she knew that she had a reason to try these things and that we were just there to give them to her. I finished the lesson in about five to ten minutes, because I didn't know what to say, so I guess I just said things very consicely and quickly. She didn't have a backpack with her at the time, so we didn't give her the Book of Mormon then, but we set up a little time the next day so that we could just meet up and give it to her.
Also, we had a great lesson with Renata. We finally got a member lesson with her! It's not that members aren't ready to help and that it's hard to schedule with her, but it's just that we couldn't think of whom we wanted to teach with. Renata's around our age and there's just not that many people in the branch who are around that age as well, so we've been having a little hard time thinking of who, but eventually we decided to teach with one of the older ladies in the branch, who's named Sister Renata, funny enough. Sister Renata is really upbeat and energetic, which we think Renata really liked, and Sister Renata really liked that Renata is humble and willing to listen to the things that we speak about. We had a really good lesson about the Holy Ghost and how we're supposed to learn to recognize how he speaks with us and what we should expect. Everything just seemed to work in that lesson: Renata learned about how she's supposed to expect answers, Sister Renata learned more about how the Holy Ghost worked, and a great friendship was made. After the lesson, we got a text from Renata asking for Sister Renata's number, because she felt that they had a lot of the same interests and that Sister Renata would be able to help her out.
This Saturday, we also had two more baptisms! One is named Jirka, from the sisters' area. He's nineteen years old and super solid. He's thinking about going on a mission, and that would be fantastic! The other is Kristyna, from the other elders' area. She was dating a member here in Ostrava, Ondra Tomsik, who has just recently left to go on his own mission. Kristyna didn't tell Ondra that she was getting or even got baptized. She wanted to send him a letter with a picture and suprise him. I'm sure that it will! Jirka asked for Elder Blair, one of our zone leaders from Olomouc, to come and baptize him (they met while the zone leaders were here on during the interviews and street display - in which Jirka participated by contacting with us) and Kristyna asked for Elder Thompson to baptize her.
This last week has definitely had it's ups and downs, and we actually just had an investigator drop us today through texting because he asked a really weird question. He asked, "I found Jehovah under the J's in the index in the Book of Mormon. Can you tell me what kind of connection you have with this religion?" I texted back and told him that Jehovah is just Jesus Christ from the Old and New Testaments and that, if I understood the question right, we have nothing in common with the Jehovah's Witnesses. He wrote back a little while later and said that if that's Jesus Christ, he wants nothing to do with us, that he's sorry that he wasted our precious time, he doesn't want to get baptized, he's going to go back to having sex, and that he's erasing our number right after he sends that text. I was sorely confused.
Other than that, I don't think there's a whole lot of other big things going on. Things are interesting, as always. Life as a missionary is never boring, and if it is, I know that I'm doing something wrong. Love you all lots and hope that everything is going well for you as well.
Tons of Love,
Starší Monk