Dear Family,
This week was fairly busy, but we just had a lot of little things. Perhaps first off, the APs made a challenge for the entire mission to speak at least one hundred hours of Czech/Slovak. Well, given that we're only awake for one hundred twelve hours, we had to speak a lot of Czech. Elder Betts and I didn't make it, but we did get ninety six. Our Czech has really made some improvement. At least for me, it's feeling a lot more fluid, even though before, it was pretty easy to just speak. The things that got us the most were when we were around the other missionaries and when we taught investigators that like to speak English with us. Those were our weak points.
Other than that, we had some miracles! We finally set up with one lady that was contacted last transfer by Elder Peterson (a missionary who's now in Plzen, whom I replaced) named Margit. No, that's not a typical Czech name. Not really sure where it's from. We didn't have a terribly long time with her because we had another meeting afterward a little ways from where we were (at the building and we were on the namesti). Elder Betts didn't know what she looked like, and neither did I so we just went to the place we had arranged to meet at and hoped that someone would come up to us and introduce themselves. Well, we got there and two ladies came up to us and one introduced herself as Margit and the other was her friend who's also interested in this kind of stuff, named Marcela! We had a really pretty good chat, in which we set expectations from our meetings. They told us that it would be better if we could just sit down for four hours and talk about everything, because it's hard for them to find time, but they seemed like they were really excited to meet up with us again. Margit works as a secretary in a law firm, and Marcela works as a lunch lady (here it's a really big job because Czechs have bigger lunches than dinners, and lunches actually have to be cooked from scratch here and every day it has to be something different - pretty serious job). We're pretty excited to meet with them again.
Then we had a meeting later on in the week with Jiri, the guy who told us that we can just meet over drinks or something - we're still not completely sure what's happened, but the meeting really reassured us that he's not been "anti'd" or anything, but that he's just getting a lot of pressure from home, perhaps from his wife, about getting baptized/meeting with us. We're not quite sure what it is, but we were really straight up with him and asked if he'd still like to meet with us, and in kind of a round about way, he said yes, because he really likes when we pray and talk about this kind of stuff. It still interests him. So that's good.
Then on Friday, we had a about three hours of finding, and I wasn't feeling good that day. Like, I just didn't feel right about missionary work for some reason that day. I wanted to work and I wanted to be really enthusiastic about it, but it felt really forced and I knew that it wouldn't seem sincere if I were to force it, so I just kept praying that something would change. Later we saw this one kid on the street; he was asking for donations on behalf of a charity for training seeing-eye dogs. We started chatting with him and eventually he told us that he had a break and that we could sit down with him for a little bit and talk about God and religion. He's a believer, and he believes in Christianity. He seemed to really like the things that we were talking about, but he liked to talk more than listen to us, and I'm not the kind of person to butt in and cut someone off, so I let him talk. While he was talking to us, this old man came up and stood right in front of me, and stared at my name tag really closely, so I turned it so that he could see better, and then he looked at me and said, "Are you the Mormons?" I said, yes we are. He then went in to tell me about how we're good people and that there need to be more people like us in the world. He was just complimenting us over and over. Elder Betts kept conversation with David, the kid we had been talking with, and I spoke with the old man. He said that he likes talking about philosophy with people, but almost everything that he was saying was in accordance with what we believe and teach. He already knew us because there used to be missionaries in his town, and he really seems to like us. He said a few things that I had never thought before, that really seem to make sense and I agree with now. I can't really think of what they are at the moment, but they were things said in such a way that it's changed the way that I think about a few things. I felt that while I was talking with that man, God had answered my prayer to make me feel better. All I needed was a person to be grateful for what we're doing, a person who really valued who we are. I knew that God heard me and wanted to help me, so he sent that man. Too bad that when I asked him for his phone number, he said that he doesn't have a phone; when I asked him for his address so that we could visit him, he told me that he's homeless (which he didn't look like); so I gave him a pamphlet and told him that he's welcome to come to our church meeting when he's here next. He agreed with that and said that he would.
Today, we went out to one of our investigators' cottage and had lunch and spent some time in their cherry tree, picking cherries (thus the pictures)! So we have fresh cherries.
Everything's going great here. Elder Betts and I don't see eye to eye all the time, but we're both trying and we solve things and get things done. One of the biggest things that I've learned from the mission is that I'm not always going to get along with everyone perfectly, but despite that, I can work with anyone and be happy.
I love you all and hope that you're doing fantastic. I also hope that the weather's doing better. It's gotten a little rainy here, but it's not too bad.
Much Love,
Starší Monk