Pizza and Two Lessons

Dear Family,

First things first. Sorry that I didn't write you yesterday. I was in Prague all day with Elder Ingalls because he was getting his visa renewed. We got up and caught a bus at 7:20, sat there for three hours to get to Prague, got there around 10:00ish and then walked around for a while. Went to the building, stopped at Tesco (kind of like Costco) to get something to eat, stayed at the building, for multiple hours, and then they finally left to do the visa stuff. Then President wanted me and Elder Bracken (someone else's companion) to get out of the building, perhaps because we were being distracting, and so he sent us out to enjoy a day in Prague with two of the sister missionaries. It's weird being around sisters again after so long, however it was fun: we sat outside shops while they ran in and bought things.

Then later Elder Ingalls and I ran to the bus station to try and catch one bus, but we missed it by about five minutes and had to wait for another hour and a half for the next one to come. Turns out that the bus running from Prague to Trebic only leaves every two hours. Figure that. So we ate at Burger King in the meantime, and caught a 6:20 bus back home and got there around 9:00. Both of us were about to die, because the bus was really hot and really bumpy. So, that was my day in Prague (8 hours in Prague - 6 hours on a bus to and from Prague)! Yay.

Anyway, next things. This last week was interesting. It seems like everything that could have fallen through, did fall through, except for our meetings with less actives. They all met with us. Our teaching pool basically all got dropped this week because I hadn't met with them the entire transfer and didn't even know who they were, so we finally got around to dropping them. The ones that we didn't drop all had excuses to not meet with us. Our baptismal date from last week, Martin, got really really flakey; he always has some excuse to not meet with us and a few times even picked up the phone really sassily. That didn't rub me right, but whatever. He's on hardcore probation and he lost his baptismal date. We'll see what happens with him.

Here's a fun little story. This last week was Elder Ingalls' one year mark on the mission (not in country - that's next transfer) and so like most missionaries, he wanted to go out to eat somewhere special. I was on an exchange in Jihlava with Elder Bailey, but we caught a train down so that we could eat with Elders Vivona and Ingalls. So, there's a pizza restaurant here in Trebic that's pretty good and Elder Ingalls loves it. So he said that he wanted to go there for lunch. I reminded him that we were already going to be there later in the day with the seminary class (because we had a test on The Doctrine and Covenants thus far a week or two ago and everyone who passed was going to get pizza). He said that he knew but wanted to go there anyway. He was being kind of silly about it and just wanted to show off how many times he could eat pizza in one day. So we went there, we all got pizzas, and then later that day when we came back, the waitress lady kinda looked at us like we're crazy, but had the look of, "oh well." Elder Ingalls got the same pizza he always gets, pepperoni, and I knew that I couldn't handle another pizza in the same day, so I got a salad. The entire seminary class made a little fun of me, but I just told them that we had already been there that day. Elder Ingalls got about half-way through his pizza, and looked at me and then at the pizza as to say, "what have I gotten myself into?" My salad wasn't very good, either.

So Elder Ingalls and I went through this entire week without any lessons; however, we were setting lessons up, they weren't coming; calling to say they couldn't meet, etc. In our other time, we'd go out and contact. I remember one hour of contacting. It was Saturday at 2:00pm. It was pretty cold (perhaps -1, -2 degrees celcius; about 28-30 degrees Fahrenheit) and it was snowing a little bit and the wind was blowing, but we felt that we should go out contacting nonetheless. So we headed out, and the city was completely dead. Not a soul. So we start walking around, wanting to talk to anyone and everyone. At the end of the hour, we came back home because our ears were cold and we had talked to two people. Two. That's it. So, figured that's not the best use of our time.

Later that same Saturday, we called up one of our other investigators, her name is Dana. She's 50 years old and she's living with her 60 year old boyfriend and she's working on her Bachelors degree. Why not? We called her up and said that we made American brownies and that we wanted to stop by and give her some. She told us that she'd have time later that evening and that we could stop by when we had time. So we made up a batch of brownies and headed to her house. We had a fairly good lesson with her and her boyfriend (he's hilarious by the way - crazy old Czech man). We invited them to church, and with a little hesitation, they accepted, and then they were really determined about it. I think it's because I told them that I had a talk and she really loves missionaries. They've been investigating for about a year and half now and have been to church only once. The last time they came they were really surprised by how irreverent people were and so they've been using that experience as an excuse to not come again.

Come the next day, they show up to church. I turn to Elder Ingalls and said, "Is it weird that we have more people to church than we had lessons this week?" He smirked and went back to playing the piano. Then after church, we went and helped Ari (our Mongolian lady investigator) with something. She was going to Brno to stay there for about four days because her living conditions here in Trebic are really bad-- the heating isn't working correctly. Sometimes it works and sometimes doesn't so she can't open the windows because she wants to keep the heat that they have, and in return, her apartment is really humid and unbearable.

So we helped her push her stroller up the hill (she has a 2 year old son named Od or Jaromir - Od is his Mongolian name and Jaromir is his Czech) to get to the train station. Then we went to Dana's home to have lunch. It is really nice not having a missionary meal for once in a while. Afterward, we spoke with her and Jirka (her boyfriend) and some really important concerns came up. She said that if it weren't for this concern, she would already be baptized. Well, that's good to know. Anyway, we spoke about that, and you can see she's been thinking and suffering over this problem for a while. We'll see how we can try and fix it.

That's about it for this week. I won't be writing emails next week on Monday because it's already transfers again! So that means P-day is going to be that Wednesday, so expect emails then. :)

I love you all and hope you're all safe and well.
Starší Monk

Never Want to be a Social Worker (Nikdy Nechci být Sociální Pracovník)

Dear Family,

Well, this week I have a little story to tell you. So last Monday, we were walking around Trebic with the elders from Jihlava, because we have nothing better to do in these tiny towns on P-day, and I was with Elder Bailey. We walked past this guy with a little kid, and I was really distracted by the sun because it was really bright and also because it was probably the first day we had had sun in about three weeks. So I'm walking past this guy looking like an idiot trying to figure out why the sun is so bright, glancing up at it and then back down to see where I'm walking, just to find out that I blinded myself by looking at the sun, smart right? Yeah, not terribly bright - me that is. Anyway, this guy passed us and I looked at him, and I could almost swear that he was amused by my amusement with the sun. Anyway, didn't really think much of it; I was terribly distracted with the sun.

About five minutes later, Elder Bailey and I got bored of walking up the street we were on, so we turned around and went the other way to try and find the other elders. We found them talking to that guy who had passed us! In the mean time, Elder Bailey and I tried to look inconspicuous and "found something interesting to look at" in a nearby store. When they finished, they told us that the guy had met with the missionaries a while ago and used to come to church even, but wanted to come over to their place the next day and talk about the Book of Mormon. That was cool. Can't say that I've had that happen before. Why not?

Well, the next day, we had a little while before the meeting with him, and Elder Ingalls pointed out a part of Trebic that he had never been to that you can see from the building, so we decided to go and look at it. Perhaps we'd find a few places that we'd like to tract later on. Just so you know, we found some really cool houses. Yes, houses, not panelaks. Way awesome. I kind of felt like I was in part of Spanish Fork. Weird. Anyway, before we realized it, we had to run to make it to our meeting on time. We started running, but soon found out that we had no idea where we were; all we knew was the general direction we had to be heading in. We ran across some muddy parks, we even jumped a stream. That was fun, but we were only ten minutes late to the meeting. Not terribly bad, considering.

We had a decent meeting with him. It was more of him speaking about the missionaries that he knew, and how he knew that the Book of Mormon is true and how that knowledge didn't come all at once, but slowly over time. He also told us that he wanted to start his life over because he knew that he had done some stupid things and knew that baptism is a good way to start fresh. The more and more that we listened to him, the more and more we were really excited. We soon had to run to get to our English class on time, but we prayed with him and then ran to English (got all the way across town in fifteen minutes when usually it's about a twenty to twenty-five minute walk), and there five minutes late. Oh my word, I was so sweaty. Gross, however my English class didn't seem to care very much. English went well.

The next day we went and visited Martin (the guy who stopped us) again. There we talked about what it means if the Book of Mormon is true and how through baptism he can be cleaned from all the dumb things that he's done, that he can start again, and that he can follow Jesus Christ more closely in his own life. He asked us the soonest date he could be baptized on, and we told him the 12th of March. He accepted it readily. We spoke some more and invited him to a baptism that would be happening in Brno on Saturday, and he was really excited to come and see that, to see how baptisms are done. That meeting went well, but we had to run from that one too to make it to another meeting on time.

Then on Saturday, the day that we were going to be going to the baptism, we found a train that would get us there in time leaving from Trebic at 12:39. We had told him that and he was counting on it. That morning he called us up half-way through personal study and told us that he wouldn't be able to come with us to the baptism that day because a problem arose in the family. I asked him what it was and if we could help with it in anyway way. For a while he wouldn't tell me what the problem was saying that he was nervous to tell me, but eventually told me. He said that his family was going to have to be without food for two days because they ran out of money. He reassured me that they were going to have money on Monday and that he was starting his job on Monday as well and would be payed every Friday. I could see right away that he wanted us to buy them food. That's against missionary rules, and I told him that. He then continued to tell me that past missionaries had done that, and I had to try and tell him in some way that we're not allowed to do that anyway, whether they did or not. We spoke on the phone for probably a good hour and a half. We even called President here in Trebic asking what we should do, and he told us that we should definitely not give him money because they've come to the church before asking for money and financial help. Oh great.

I didn't want to deal with this over the phone, so I told him that we'd be coming over to his place. He said thank you, and I think that he understood that as an, "okay, I give in, I'll buy you your groceries." When we got there, we sat down and began talking about how we can't do this. He acted like he knew that already, and he should because I had already told him probably twenty or thirty times. We began talking about how there is a way to figure out this problem and that if we pray, God would help us. He seemed really skeptical of this, and his girlfriend, who was also there, was definitely no help, she was more skeptical and sarcastic than he was. We couldn't resolve the problem by us buying them the groceries, so Elder Ingalls gave a proposal of them selling something so they would get a little money to buy their groceries. They immediately shot that down saying that they couldn't do that because no one would buy something from a gypsy on the street - people would just say they stole it. Extremely skeptical. We kept speaking with them, and you could see that they kept pushing for us to just buy them the food, whether they were asking directly or indirectly. I finally told them, we want to help, that's why we were there, but we can't help them in the way they want. We knew that if we prayed, we'd get an answer.

So we all knelt and prayed. We asked for guidance and a solution to this problem. Afterward, we sat in silence, all thinking, and I began talking, asking about where they would be able to sell something they would have. They said that on a Saturday, everything would be closed. That was true. I then turned to Elder Ingalls and, in English, spoke with him about what if we had them sell something to a member and then they could buy it back the next week. That way they wouldn't be borrowing money, there would be a little bit of sacrifice, and they wouldn't be doing it through us as missionaries. Elder Ingalls said that it was the most in line way of doing it he could think of. Then we thought of a member who lives pretty close to them. We told them that we would return and tell them whether our idea would work.

We ran over to the sister's home and spoke with her about it. She was very helpful and agreed to help, so we ran back to Martin's house, picked him up and brought him to her house. We had told them, before we went to Sister Červeňova's home, to look for something to sell that would cover what they would need for groceries. When we got to her house, he presented her with his ring and bracelet. She, being a little bit of a joker and liking to tease people, acted like she was really thinking about whether it was a good deal or not, when I know it didn't matter to her. After a little while, she agreed and gave me the money (so that he wouldn't take it and spend it on alcohol or cigarettes), and we went and bought the groceries.

After we finished, we took the groceries to their home, and then we had to run for the train station to make it on time for the second train that left for Brno, that would get us there just a little late for the baptism, but we figured better late than not at all. We ran there ahead of them so that we could buy the train ticket. Elder Ingalls and I got there just a minute or two before the train left and then Martin and another little girl who lives at the same residence, who also wanted to come, got there about twenty minutes after the train left. Martin then started throwing a little hissy fit because they weren't going to be able to get to Brno and meet the girl's sister and get 1000Kč so he could pay off the debt. I asked him why he was throwing his hissy fit, and then he started giving me a whole bunch of different dumb answers.

It just seemed like at every corner he would give us a different bit of information that led me to believe that he's just using us. I would rather believe that he's not, but that's the way that it's looking right now. We'll see. He still has a baptismal date right now, but we'll see. He's sitting on a short leash right now and we'll see if he's being sincere or not.

That's the story for this week. It's cool to see that when we pray we really get answers, and also, there's always a way to solve the problem that fit within the rules, even when it doesn't seem like there is one - it's just not the easy way out.

I love you all, and I'm sorry that I'm not writing person emails to all of you that wrote me this week, this story got kind of long, so next week I'll write those.

Love you all and hope that everything is going well for you in your various activities.

Starší Monk

A Couple of Interesting Things This Week

Dear Family,

So, this last week has been another pretty normal week in terms of how things are going. Instead of just leaving it at that, I should probably tell you a story, shouldn't I? It seems like it's been a while since I've written a story out for you.

Last Monday, we finally didn't have a lesson that evening (we've basically had a lesson every Monday evening this transfer) and Elder Ingalls has been telling me that every Monday evening that he's been tracting, they've been let in and taught someone. That's pretty good odds to me. I've only been let in twice on my mission before I came to Trebic, and we've already been let in once. So why not?

We started walking around, trying to find where the Lord needed us at the moment, and we made it just about all the way out of town. We finally decided on a Panelak and started tracting after we made a few calls to set a couple of meetings up later in the week. For the most part, pretty normal tracting. One man, without pants on mind you, opened up his door, looked at us, I said "Dobrý Večer" and he responded "Na shledanou" and shut the door almost immediately. Fairly normal. There was one door that was really cool. It was basically all wood and the surrounding area was also wood, when the rest of the floor is tile and concrete like just about every other panelak in the country, and a really nice old man came and answered the door. We spoke to him for a moment, and he told us that they were leaving. We asked him if we could come back later in the week, he said that Friday at 6:00 would be good, so we said okay and that we'd be back. We then continued on.

Sometimes tracting can get really boring and degrading, so Elder Ingalls and I make conversation, sometimes silly, just so we can keep ourselves smiling even though every door is rejecting us. On one floor, Elder Ingalls asks me if I've ever contacted a Muslim. I said no and rang the doorbell. Perhaps a second later, the door behind us on the other side of the hall opens up, and so we peek behind ourselves to see who it is and what's going. There was a little girl standing there at the open door. I said hello and asked if her parents were home. She turned around kind of confused, and then a lady from the other room inside peeked her head around so she could see who it was. I then started talking with her and then she cut me off and said, in English, "If you speak English come here, come in." We both looked at each other very confused, but went in anyway. As we walked in, I felt like we walked into a Mideastern room. It was kind of weird and cool at the same time. Anyway, we went in, took our shoes off, and sat down. She was smoking, and the entire house smelled like incense, but we didn't mind much; we've smelled much worse in peoples' homes before.

We sat and began speaking with her. She asked us what we were doing and what she could do for us. We said that we were missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and that we speak to people about Jesus Christ etc. She didn't have much interest and told us that she was Muslim. I looked at Elder Ingalls and he could see that I just wanted to say, "Irony..." Through the conversation, we found out that she speaks ten or eleven languages like Russian, Czech, Slovak, English, Arabic, Persian, Hebrew and a whole slew of others. When she heard me speak Czech, she was really surprised because, at least she said, that my ř was really good.

The conversation went really pretty well with her: we explained the Book of Mormon, we spoke about prophets (which according to Elder Ingalls, she cringed every time that we said prophet because she believes that only Muhammad was a prophet), and we taught prayer. She was hesitant about prayer at the end, but she agreed to next time we come over, we can talk about prayer, she can teach us her prayer, and we'll teach her ours. I'm not usually one to really like the whole you teach me and I'll teach you, but in this case it seemed fitting. Then we just spoke for a little while, and we spoke about music, and it came out that I play violin. She just about died when I said that. She then asked if I'd bring my violin and play for her some time. I of course agreed. She told me that she'd wear her best night gown and light the candles just for me to play violin. Don't worry, she's a little larger woman... rather, a much larger woman. I'm sure I don't want her to wear her night gown. That could be awkward. Once we got out, we realzied that we had been in there for forty minutes with her. We'll see what goes on with her. One cool thing, at least, with her was the entire time she was asking how she could help us. We'll find something for her to do. :)

Also, this last Thursday, we were in Jihlava with the other elders for the entire day. We had district meeting and did a lot of finding. It was fun to be with them. Then they came down to Trebic with us, and we had an awesome day. We got one member lesson, three other lessons, two RCLAs (recent convert/less active lessons) and three potentials. Overall, that's a really awesome day. That would even average out to two really good days. Also, on Saturday, we went to Jihlava to see a baptism of an eight year old girl from a member family. It's the first baptism that I've been to since Libor Jelinek's. It was good to be there and feel the spirit of baptism again. We don't really have a font or anything close around here, so we went to a hotel in Jihlava and rented out their jacuzzi for two hours and had it there. It was pretty funny, but it doesn't really matter where you do it, as long as you have enough water to put the person under, right?

This week was pretty good. Overall, our numbers went down, but things have been going good. We're starting to get this area onto some stable feet and get it ready to take off. The members have recently taken an interest in mission work, because for probably the first time in a long time, they've taught with us.

Other than that, we've been having really nice weather. Today, actually, is gorgeous. Blue skies, probably around 10 degrees (Celsius). Really nice day. I just hope that the weather lasts. All the Czechs are telling us that there's going to be at least one more freeze before the weather starts going up for good. We'll see.

I love you all, hope you're doing great! I'm doing fine here.
S Laskou (With Love),
Starší Monk