Can you say: New Investigators?

Dear Family,

Well, this week, as you can see from the subject, was an awesome week for getting new investigators. In weeks past, we've gotten between one or two investigators, and sometimes none, but this week we got three with two more that are very close to being called new investigators. Let me just tell a few little stories (which, knowing me, will probably be the entire email/post).

First on the list is Viktor. Viktor was a pretty interesting find. So, we had a meeting with someone and we were supposed to meet them outside of McDonalds. So we go there and we waited and waited but he never came. By the way, the meeting which we were supposed to have was another person who would have been a new investigator, but Karel (his name) never showed up. So we stood out there in the freezing cold for quite a while and we didn't really know why. I think it was something like negative twelve degrees Celsius which is about ten and a half degrees Farenheit, but when you throw in some humidity, it feels way colder... then just stand in it. Yeah, it's way cold. Anyway, we're standing out in this freezing cold for like twenty minutes or something and we look at each other and Elder Price says, "We're waiting for someone." Duh... Karel. Then he added, "We need to go find them. Now, who is it?" That was surprising. So we were standing in the cold until the right time to go find someone? Why not, no? (yes in czech - that brings up a fun topic... in Czech you have "ano" for yes, however sometimes they'll shorten it to "no" which is pronounced the same way as "no" in English. Then you also have "jo" which is pronounced "yo" which also means yes, but more as a yeah. Then you have, if you're from Slovakia, "hej" which sounds like "hey" and means yeah as well, but used after just about everything like a stereotypical Canadian. Then you have "ne" for no. That's about it for no.) So we went to the naměstí (town square) which was very close to McDonalds. We tried talking to a few people, and we got the normal "Ne mám čas" (I don't have time) and other such things. But then we contacted this one guy because Elder Price wanted to contact someone who looked like they were "chillin," but everyone's "chillin" because it's freezing and by this time, I thought that my sinuses would freeze over. Anyway, Elder Price stopped a guy who was eating a Subway sandwich and started talking to him. He was really awesome. We started talking with him, and he said, "Do you guys mind if I keep eating?" and of course we let him, but he was really open and I think he just enjoyed talking with us. We found out that he was a student at the university in town and that he was headed back that way but didn't really have anything to do that evening. So Elder Price asked him if he'd like to come watch a short movie with us, which is the Finding Happiness movie, and he agreed. So we walked to the church building from where we were, which is like a two minute walk. On the way there we figured out that he's studying physical therapy. I think. Not quite sure on that detail. Anyway, we got to the building and watched the movie and he really liked it. He also liked the church building because it was new and nice. I think he was thinking that we'd take him to a Kostel-ish place. We spoke for a while after the movie, and we set up another meeting with him. So we're going to meet with him right before English class on Tuesday. YAY!

Then there's Vilém and his family! Yes, family. Basically, they're golden. Last week when I was on exchanges with Elder Anderson from Olomouc and Elder Price was with Elder Hatch, I contacted Vilém and I just tried to be super, super friendly. I started off by saying that I'm Starší Monk and that I was with my friend, Starší Anderson. Then I asked how he was doing. I didn't tell him that we were missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ, because he could see that already. But he was super friendly back. As we kept talking, I stumbled a little and said, "Omlouvám se, nemluvím dobře," (Pardon me, I don't speak well.) and then he asked if we speak English, and we then found out that he speaks just about perfect English, too. Basically, he was waiting for his wife and daughter to get out of a store somewhere. They soon came over and they were super nice too. Their daughter is like five years old and she's so cute. She's really shy and she hid behind her mother the entire time. Anyway, he invited us to his house to speak with them some more, gave us his number and told us to call him on Monday. Sadly, we forgot to call him on Monday, but we called him on Tuesday. He said that he was looking forward to seeing us that day, but that his daughter was feeling sick. So, we set up for Saturday. When we went over, He and his wife sat through the entire meeting and we spoke about who we are and who they are. Basically, they've been looking for a church for a long time and they want to find a church together. They've tried doing some meditation sort of things before for "praying" and that was interesting to us. So we watched the movie with them and asked them to look for a question that pops out to them. At the end, he said that the one that popped out to him was the one about balancing life and finding happiness in everything. We then taught them that one way we can balance our lives is through setting apart just thirty minutes of the week for Family Home Evening and we taught them a little about that. So we're going to go to their house again this next Saturday to have an FHE with them. They're so sweet. We also taught them how to pray and asked them to try it sometime before we meet them again and they accepted to try it. They said, "why not try it?" That was in response to everything. They're very, very open to anything and everything.

Then there is Jarda. We found Jarda while were doing some finding right before Christmas, so that's crazy right off the bat. He had a little open stand in the naměstí and was selling little wooden toys. He was my contact so I went up to him and asked, "Co máte rad o vanocých?" to which he said, "I hate Christmas." After that I couldn't understand anything. Basically Elder Price told me that he didn't like Christmas because everyone's in too much of a hurry and they forget what's important. We continued to talk with him and we eventually got his number and promised to call him back. Finally, we called him back and set up an appointment to go see him. So this last Saturday, we hopped in the car and drove from Zlín to Vsetín which is a good thirty minute drive. Then up there we met up with him and, little did we know amongst the Christmas craziness, he's a really, really happy, nice guy. So we met up with him, and he took us to his shop where he and a few other guys make all these toys. I gotta say, they're awesome. The shop was incredible. So he gave us a tour of the entire place, and then we talked for a while. Basically, we got another appointment set up with him and his girlfriend at dinner! Yeah, he wants to get us dinner. Anyway, he let us choose a toy to take as a souvenir. So I picked a cannon because it's awesome. Also, I think, it looks alot like a little cannon that my dad has, except mine's cooler. It's big... and it's wood. My dad's is metal. And mine was free! Yipee.

Anyway, there's our three new investigators this week for ya. The work moves on, and the language gets easier every week. I love you all and hope to hear from each of you next week. I wish you all the great blessings that our Father in Heaven has for us.

Starší Monk

Awesome Week!

Dear Family,

Let me start off with this: I'm very tired right now. My brain wants to shut off for about a day. This last week the sisters in our district decided that they wanted to speak Czech for ninety-five hours during the week. I said to Elder Price, "We have to match them," and I'm sure he said something in his head like, "He has no idea how much that is." Let me tell you how much that is. Basically we are only awake for sixteen hours a day: we wake up at six-thirty and go to bed at ten-thirty. That gives us a max time to speak of one-hundred twelve hours. So to get a ninety-five hour week, you need to speak about thirteen and a half hours a day. That leaves only two and a half hours a day that you can speak English. However, personal and companionship studies are a pain if you do them in Czech. So there go two of our two and a half hours. Okay... then you have P-day, and you know it's going to be hard to speak all day when you're not out contacting people or giving lessons in Czech. So we ended up making our P-day an eight hour speaking day. So now, we have fourteen-hour days for the rest of the week. Basically, only Czech besides our study time. BUT THEN: you have some meetings that have to be in English like District Meeting (where the whole district gets together - all four of us / two companionships - and basically revitalize each other and get ready for another week of work), investigators who speak English (we only have two - a family and a girl who's going back to America this Saturday - but the family didn't meet with us this week because the father was sick), and a few other things that have to be in English. What a pain! So getting ninety five hours of speaking is extremely difficult. We didn't quite make our goal, but we did manage to speak Czech for eighty-six hours.

So as I said, I want to just have a break for a while, but I can't; we decided to have another ninety-five hour week. My Czech has increased so much this last week. In one of my prayers, I was tired and I wanted to just pray in English, so I did, but in the middle I couldn't remember the word in English but could in Czech! What's this nonesense? The word was zajemcí (investigators). I still can't understand or comprehend very well, but that'll just have to come with time. I know that it will. I've already started to become used to hearing Czech. Sometimes when Elder Price is on the phone, I'll zone out and could almost swear that he's speaking English. When I ask him about who he was speaking English with, he'll tell me that he wasn't speaking English. This has not happened only once. It's been multiple times. So my ear is growing accustomed, but I still need to work on being able to put the words that I hear with their meanings. Translating in my head is way too slow but I understand the meaning better, but by the time I've got one or two words translated, they're already two sentences down the road. So, that's not going to work. I'll just have to start trying to listen and kind of hear what the sentence means. I'm already starting to get the overall meaning sometimes. I can follow converstaions fairly well, but as soon as someone wants to talk with me, I give very noncommital answers so that the conversation keeps going without me having to really say much. Everyone keeps telling me that I speak very well, and I'm not sure if I want to believe them. I feel that I can get my ideas across, but I feel slightly handicapped when I speak. Many times I won't say something because I'm missing one or two words from what I want to say.

By the way, if any of you want a really cool way to say "hello" when you answer the phone, say "Zdar" (Zdaaar) or if you're a guy and you want to be really cool, say "Zdarec" (Zdaaarets). Basically it's a shortened form of the greeting "Nazdar" which is very imformal and can be kind of rude. It's kind of the American equivelant of saying "Sup" or "Yo." I love the Czech Republic because it's kind of like the 90's. Mullets and other such old things abound. I love contacting and you knock on a door, and a good-looking guy who could be very well respected answers the door and has a mullet. Bahaha. It's great. You get some pretty weird people when you go knocking on their doors.

Oooo, another weird Czech thing: come home and drop your pants. Many times people don't wear pants while they're at home. So, I've seen lots of people answer their doors without pants! You can kind of tell what kind of person they are by how they answer the door in this circumstance. There are two basic groups: the kind that hide behind the door, and those who don't care. The first will barely open the door and kind of peak around it. A few times we've contacted these kinds of people and they'll just stand there like that and talk to you for five to ten minutes. I can't imagine standing like that, peaking around the door, for ten minutes. And then there's the second kind of person. They'll open their door just a little to see who you are, like every one else, but as soon as they see that you're not going to hurt them, or whatever they were looking for, they open the door and just stand there in their underwear like it's no problem! One time we were at an investigator's home, her name is Boržutová, and were teaching her and she was feeding us like she always does. Then in the middle of the conversation, her son who's seventeen years old comes walking through the room in his underwear, gets what he needs and leaves. Not even an embarassed comment. Sometimes while we're at home, one of us will look at the other and say, "I'm gonna be Czech now," which basically means I'm going to get changed, but we start by getting rid of our pants.

These past few weeks, we've been meeting with Denisa a lot. She's had a few tough things, but she's doing awesome. She's just amazing. I'm not sure what we did to deserve such an amazing investigator. Basically, we've already taught her everything, and she's accepted it all. Once, after a meeting Elder Price freaked out a little because he was like, "It's supposed to be hard! You can't just say 'Okay' and be fine with it." This was after the lesson on tithing. Giving one tenth of your money to the church? She accepted it easily, as she did with the Word of Wisdom, law of chastity, and everything else we've taught her. We're running out of things to teach and her baptisimal date is still about a month in the future (it got changed to the 13th of February because of some difficulties). Gah, she's amazing. That's all I've got to say. I attached a photo of her. I'm not sure what the blog is going to do with it. I hope that it attaches it as a picture so you can see her. It might be sideways. Elder Price took the shot and he decided to be artsy because he was a photography major before the mission.

Anyway, my time is up. I enjoy hearing from all of you each week. By the way, I don't get snail mail until each large meeting because that's when they distribute mail from the mission home. So I usually don't get that until the middle or the end of each transfer. Email is much better.

Love hearing from all of you. Love you all and I hope that you're having as much fun as I am.
Starší Monk

The Mission Begins!

Dear Family,

So, I feel that I must explain my "subject" line. Starší Price has told me a few times that I was "born at a bad time" meaning that Christmas and New Years is a strange time to come into the field. I must agree. Now that Christmas and New Years are over, the real mission work begins. Looking back, those few weeks were crazy (šylený).

So I got a few questions from some people and it seems that you really want to know what every-day life is like here. Let's see if I can explain correctly.

Well, first things first, we wake up at 6:30 every day and then we have morning prayer. I, and perhaps Starší Price too, doze on and off through the entire thing, so they end up being anywhere from five to fifteen minutes long. But once we're up from that we do our morning exercises (Spelling? Not quite sure - Czech has thrown off my spelling so badly because everything's phonetic. Gah!) which comprises of us doing pushups to see if we can outdo the other. He wins every day. The other day I thought I'd have him with 74, but he ended up doing 104. I'll face it, he has two years of doing pushups on me. After that we do the normal daily things to get ready - shower, brush our teeth, eat granola with yogurt for breakfast, atd...

Then we have our studies which takes three hours. Won't go into detail about those, because I'm sure that I'd just bore you. Then we go out for our work! Let me just explain a few of the things that we do and perhaps a few little experiences that I've had with each. Most of our time is spent either in lessons with people or out trying to find new people that we can teach. We've got about four or five investigators who are "progressing" right now (which means they have met with us more than once are keeping their commitments like reading from the Book of Mormon, and possibly have come to church at least once). We meet with them as much as possible, but sometimes we can only meet once or twice during the week.

Something strange that Starší Price and I have found out is that people tend to open up to us much faster than they would to other people. I have no idea why. We went yesterday to this one lady's home just to meet with her. Her name is Magdalena Boržutová and she is probably one of the sweetest ladies we've ever met. She's super super Catholic and doesn't seem like she's changing anytime soon, but we keep meeting with her because she loves the Liahona and she's still keeping all the commitments we give her. Anyway, yesterday we went there and (at this time it was about 15:00 -- another interesting thing, they go on military time here instead of doing am/pm) were sitting on her couch talking to her. Then she stops and asks us if we've eaten yet. Without hearing our response, she gets up and says, "I bet you haven't." Then she goes into the kitchen and makes us lunch. Now, you must understand that lunch here is the most important meal of the day. Not like it is in America. So lunch isn't just a sandwich or something, it was gulaš. The Czechs here love their sauces. We, as Americans, love spices and flavorings like that, but here they just cover, and I mean literally cover, everything in sauce. So she gave Starší Price Knedliky with Gulaš and I had pasta with Gulaš. It was awesome. Anyway, after that we went back into her living room and we spoke for a while longer. I was zoning in and out the entire time because it's hard to pay attention when you can only understand about one of every five to twenty words. Anyway, a few times she looked at me and asked if I wanted to take a nap and that I could if I wanted to. She said this jokingly, not because I was zoning out, but because she knows I can't understand much. We were there for probably about an hour and a half, when normal meetings should be about one hour max. When we left, she went to the window and watched us go all the way out to our car. What a sweet woman. When we got in the car, Starší Price told me that she had told us a story that she hadn't told anyone except for her sister. Why she opened up to us like that, I'm not sure. Perhaps there's something about us (missionaries) that people can just trust without knowing why. Dunno. Also, she told us about the other day when she was at the grocery store and there were some ladies talking about two men in big black coats going around bothering people. Sister Boržutová must have known they were talking about us and said to them, "those boys wouldn't hurt anyone" and stood up for us. Why isn't this woman Mormon? It continues to boggle me. She needs to be Mormon! She's perfect! She has some difficulty understanding the atonement and one or two other things but besides that, she's basically mormon already.

Now for the fun part of our days: finding people. Let me talk about yesterday because it's fresh in my mind. You get a huge variety of people that come to the door. So, yesterday we went tracting in one ponelok and did what we always do. We try and get into the building. Luckily the first person let us in and then we took the elevator up to the top. Then you start knocking on doors and work your way down through the floors. We went to the guy who let us in first, and luckily he was on the top floor. He opened the door and he seemed like a nice guy, probably about his young thirties and he was obviously living with his girlfriend because on the door it had his name and her name and they didn't have the same last name. Usually the doors will just say, "Bartošovi" or "Slovačkovi" or some other name. The -ovi ending means (name)'s plural referring the the father. Women, when they get married, get her husband's name with the -ova ending meaning (name)'s singular meaning that she is his. Little more intense than the American tradition that we have. Anyway, back to our door guy. He came to the door and we introduced ourselves as missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ and that we had a short movie to share with him, if he had just five minutes to meet with us. The movie however, is Searching for Happiness, which you can watch in English on the mormon.org website. The movie is brand new in Czech, meaning we got it in zone conference last Friday. This was our first attempt to use it. So he asked to see it, and we pulled it out and it's this sketchy looking DVD in a white paper case with nothing written on either. So, it's not much to look at and he saw it as such and said that he didn't have any interest. Škodá (pity). So he shut the door, and we went to the next door, but then we started hearing him and his girlfriend yelling at each other. It got pretty intense. Perhaps that's why he wasn't interested. Don't know how much good that movie would have done right then with them having bad feelings at the time. So we went to the next floor and the fight got bad enough that she said she was going "home." That could be her parents' home, because it looked like she lived with her boyfriend. Meh.

Later we went to another door, and I was up (Starší Price and I switch off every other door who's starting the conversation). So I knocked and an old guy came to the door. He didn't look too happy, but as soon as I said, "Dobrý Den. Já jsem Starší Monk a toto je moje společnik Starší Price. Jak se daři dnes?" (Hello. I am Elder Monk and this is my friend/comrade Elder Price. How are you today?) he seemed to brighten up a little, but replied, "Prosím? Nerozumím." (Excuse me? I don't understand.) Starší Price told me that I just needed to speak up and slower for old people. So I tried again, but when I said that we were missionaries, he changed to a little bit of a frown and said that he wasn't interested. Then we started doing the other doors on his floor, and he opened his door and told us that none of them were home and that we should go to the next floor. So obviously he was watching us from his peep hole. Funny old guy.

Anyway, my time is nearly up. I have other things that I must do today. Perhaps I'll talk some more about what we do here in the Czech Republic next time.

Love you all and I hope you're doing well,
Starší Monk

Christmas and New Year! (Vanocé a Silvestr)

Dear Family,

To explain why I didn't write last week, I need to explain a few little things. Well, these "little things" will probably not be so little. Tak (so)... Here in the Czech Republic, Christmas/Vanocé is three days long. The first day is the traditional "Christmas" as we know it, on which Ježíšek (baby Jesus) comes to give the presents instead of Santa Claus. And it happens during the day, so the parents have to be extra witty on how to get the presents under the tree without the kids seeing them. Whenever Ježíšek comes, he rings his bell and the kids come running, but when they get there, Ježíšek is gone! They say that Ježíšek is invisible, and usually comes when the family is eating dinner. In that case, the dad (or the mom - either one) sneaks off and puts the presents under the tree, and then rings the bell. Quickly the kids run in and the parents says, "Awww man! You just missed him!" Fun stuff. So this day is the 24th of December. Then the next two days basically consist of the family just staying together to have good bonding time. I felt really bad for the people who had to work the trams and the trains on those days. We used them a few times on those days, and they did not seem like the happiest people in the world.

So, Vanocé is from the 24th to the 26th here, and if you remember, the 26th was a Saturday, so President Slovaček made our P-day for the week that Saturday so that we wouldn't waste anymore time not being able to do work. So the next Monday was a normal working day instead of P-day. However, since Saturday was still a holiday for the Czechs, I couldn't write an email because the email cafe that we normally use was closed! So was the Library! So, this has been a very long week. My companion, Starší Price keeps telling me, "You had such a terrible birth (coming to the mission field). These few weeks are not normal." However, he also said that we did much better these couple of weeks than he did last year in Brno. There, he said, nothing was happening. They would walk around the ghost town and the few people who were out didn't want to talk. Their current investigators had gone home or didn't want to talk either. So, I'm ready for some normal weeks and see how normal missionary work goes. :D

So, a few realy cool experiences that we had. This week has been a week of a few firsts: I went tracting (knocking on people's doors), I rang my first doorbell to try and get into a building. Here in the Czech Republic, basically everyone lives in things called Poneloks which are basically really quickly-erected communist housing and are made of solid concrete. Fun huh? So it's like an apartment building, except not as nice. Some of them are pretty cozy/big, but others literally have one bedroom/living room, a kitchen, and a very small bathroom. When I say this bedroom, it's probably 10x12. That is tiny for a few couches to sleep on AND all of your stuff. It's nuts. So you have to have someone let you into the building, and you do that by ringing someone and asking them to let you in basically. That was an adventure. So, those were both really fun. Right after last time I spoke to you, Starší Price and I went grocery shopping! It was really fun seeing things that I recognized, but didn't know what it was. Like tomato pureé, but thinking it's tomato sauce because I can't read the box. Yes, it comes in boxes. So does the milk in fact. The milk is really cool... you can leave it on your shelf and then cut it open and drink it, and it's fine! But then after it's opened you have to refridgerate it. We got a loaf of bread and that was pretty cool. It wasn't anywhere near as good as the bread that we made at the bakery, but then again, this bread was well under one seventh of the price. Yes, a very large loaf of real bread costed only 15Kč (by the way, right now it's 18Kč to the dollar). So all-in-all, we checked out and it run up to 1010Kč and that's about 50-60 dollars.

One thing that I'm doing every Tuesday (Úterý) is teach English (Angličtina)! I teach the advanced class, so I speak English the entire time. However, it's hard to teach for an hour about something, when you don't know what you're teaching. This last time I taught about description and how it's important. Then we had an activity where I wrote a simple noun at the top of a page and wrote five words they couldn't use to describe it and then they had to write out a description, so that the other people in the class can guess what it is. That was fun. Basically like Taboo, except no time limit. They did really well with it, and then we played twenty questions because that's all about description too.

We have a few investigators that I'd like to talk about for a second. One's named Tomaš. Tomaš is a very smart guy, but likes to have five year plans for everything. So he has one for us/the church. He's a little afraid right now to join the church because he believes very strongly that if you surround yourself with a kind of people, you'll become like them, and what he's seen of the people in the branch here, is that they don't have any dreams. They have lots of faith, but no vision, no dreams, nothing that they're reaching for. Tomaš is very goal oriented. He's 18 years old, but he's already doing business consulting as a job. Yesterday he sat us down and explained it all to us. To be truthful, it doesn't interest me very much, but he knows what he's talking about and he seems to have a really good grip on it. Also, he speaks very good English. You'd know that he's a foreigner and that he doesn't know all the words to explain himself, but his English is better than my Czech! We meet with Tomaš about every other day or every three days, and we're really trying to get a good connection with him so that he knows that we care about him. I think that it's starting to work, because the other day in one of our meetings, he asked why we care about him so much. I think that was a break-through with him, because he can see that we do care about him. We explained that we love him because we love God, and God wants us to love Him back and to do that we love and serve everyone else. We then gave him 1 Nephi 8:11 and told him to watch for what Lehi does when he eats the fruit. We also had him read it because it's amazing. Anyway, that's Tomaš for you. He's making progress, but he's still doubtful.

Then there's Denisa. Denisa's awesome. 'Nough said. The last elders found her right at the end of the transfer while they were on splits and taught her at her doorstep. That was the only contact that they had with her. Then we took over and we have only taught her four times, but we already have a baptisimal date! She's sooooo golden. Two lessons ago, we started about the second lesson, and I can explain about the first half of it in Czech, so my companion had me do so. Then he said, "Can you list the frst principles and ordinances for Denisa?" (In Czech of course, but somehow I understood.) I pushed through those with difficulty. Then he went off about something and everything and I was very lost. I caught words here and there, but they were very random to me. Basically, afterward, Starší Price told me that he had basically taught her everything except for the law of tithing. He taught her the Word of Wisdom, the Law of Chastity, and "atd" (Czech equivelant for "etc" - means "a tak dalé" which means "and so further"). Denisa is so awesome, because she said that she already does those things! She only drinks fruit tea (Ovocné čaj), she doesn't smoke, she doesn't drink, she lives the law of chastity... how else could she be any better? I'll tell you one thing: she doesn't come to church, but that's our fault. We hadn't told her about it. So in that same meeting we told her that it was a commandment to come to church, to which she replied in Czech, "So that's why I went to the Kostel (Cathedral / big catholic meeting house) every Sunday when I was little." So we invited her to church and she accepted without hesitation. Yesterday, we were shocked to find that she wasn't there! We called her after church to see what was wrong, and she had thought it was in the evening. Guess we won't make the mistake of not telling them "rano" (morning) again. Anyway, she's got a baptismal date for the 6th of February. Sweet!

Hmm, what else. Oh, for new year, which they call Silvestr (which I will explain in a second), we had to be back in our apartments at 6:00 pm. The reason for that is because when you combine drunk people and fireworks, you get the Czech New Year. Basically, in some places they'll have things called Ponelok wars, in which they fire fireworks at eachother's buildings. Safe huh? Yeah, as I said - Drunkards + Fireworks =/= safe.

So about calling New Year "Silvestr," here in the Czech Republic, and maybe in all of Europe (I'm not sure), they have things called name days. Basically, whatever day your name is associated with, you get to celebrate on that day as your "name day." Some people think that it's bigger than your birthday. So, on the new year, all the people with the name Silvestr partied even harder. I was with some investigators and they figured that my name day was "Ondřej" (or the Czech equivelant for Andrew). However, people here in the Czech Republic don't have middle names, and when I told them that I do, one of the boys was jokingly frustrated with me because I have two name days. Anyway, I can't remember which days they are. I want to say that "Ondřej" is in November or September somewhere.

Anyway, I need to go. This is a sufficiently long letter for you all to chew on for the next week. :D

Have fun, and I love you all. Hope you all had a Vaselé Vanoce a Nový Rok (Happy Christmas and New Year).

Lots of Love,
Starší Monk