Dear Family,
Week two in Ostrava and still loving it! This place is great. I was a little hesitant to come to a larger city because I didn't know what it would be like, but basically it's the same as a little cities, except for the fact that it takes twenty to thirty minutes to get home compared to the five it did in my other towns. I guess that Plzen was a little similar, but it was only like eight minutes after you got on the tram. Anyway, this last week we had a lot of lessons and a little bit of finding. We found a couple cool people and they're now new investigators. Sadly, this last week, we lost two of our baptismal dates, not the people but just the dates, because they're not going to be able to make it for whatever reason; one has his wife's birthday the day after we had scheduled his baptism, and the other is going to be having work and can't get out of it. The good thing, however, is that they both still want to be baptized, they just have to get new dates. That shouldn't be too bad. Just meet with them and give them a new one.
First off, our one baptismal date that is still on track. His name is Jiri (George in english). He's really awesome. We taught him the law of tithing the other day and he understood it all and said that it makes sense why we need to pay tithing. When we asked him if he would pay tithing after his baptism, he squirmed around a little and then said, "Well, my wife might think it would be kind of weird if just part of our salary was just disappearing." Jiri has been meeting with the missionaries for a little while, probably two months, and wasn't really solid until he got his baptismal date. Now he's just on fire, and I think the only real thing that's keeping him back is the fact that his wife doesn't completely know that he's meeting with us, that he wants to be baptized, and I don't really know if she is very keen on spiritual matters. Well, tithing would be a very hard thing to hide from a wife, so we told him that he needs to tell her. I suggested that he could invite her to one of our meetings so that she can ask questions and she can get to know us as well. I also think that it would be a great opportunity for her to start investigating the gospel, too. He thought about it, and he looked like he would try that, or that he would at least start talking to her about it. Then I asked him the question again, and he said that he would. He's only got two weeks before his baptism, but we believe that he's going to make it. All that he needs to do is meet with us three times each week. Four of those meetings will be us teaching him, one will be a meeting with the branch president (he likes to meet investigators before they get baptized), and a meeting with Elder Thompson for his baptismal interview. I really think that he's going to make it. The best part is, he's solid and normal! It's awesome to see anyone get baptized, but, a little sorry to say, really awesome to see someone normal get baptized. There are just so many times that missionaries baptized the weird people that have nothing else to do other than listen to the missionaries and are probably going to be more of a burden on the branch rather than a help. So I'm really excited for Jiri.
We had other meetings with other investigators, and they were really good too, but it would take too long for me to write about each one of them, so I'm just going to talk about a few people that we found this week. First one, we were out talking to people and there was a guy just sitting on a bench, basically sun bathing his face, eyes closed and just facing the sun, and we saw him and Elder Betts made a comment about him, but we didn't contact him. We went on and then as we came around again, he was still there and we just contacted him. It was probably a pretty bad start to a conversation. I just said, "Hi, have you ever talked to us before? Do you know who we are?" The guy had no clue who we were, but we somehow got into conversation about it, and found out that he had just lost his job, whether it was that day or the week before or sometime a while ago we don't know, but one way or another, he had time. We sat down with him and began talking, or he began talking. He really likes to talk. He's also slovak, but speaks czech enough that we can understand. I think that Elder Betts doesn't understand much of what he says because of his accent and the fact that he uses many slovak words. I understand him just fine, but I've been around a while longer so I guess I have a larger slovak word vocabulary than Elder Betts, but we make do. We kind of worked our way into conversation and told him that we have a book for him, and that the book, if he reads it and tries the things that are in it, will help him, even help him find work if that's what the Lord wants. He's already a believer, so that helps. We set up with him the next day at 2:00pm and when we showed up for finding at 1:30pm, he was already there. We figured that it would be better to go over and start our meeting with him rather than contact around him and have him feel like we didn't want to talk to him. He saw us from a distance and stood up to greet us, and when we got there he said, "So, I'll take you to my house. There we can talk better." So we followed him. He lives right off the namesti, so it was easy and quick to get there. Well, may I say that it was a good thing that we didn't have any meetings after him, because he pulled out about eight or nine photo albums of when he went to Egypt and various places so that he could show us. We stayed and talked and looked at his photos, and at the end, probably an hour and fifteen minutes later, we worked our way in. I told him that when we meet, we want to share a message with people, that we would be sharing a message with him and will probably last about fifteen to twenty minutes, so after the message we can talk about whatever we'd like. He agreed to that. Then we gave him the Book of Mormon and gave an introduction about it and asked him to read it. He agreed. This guy's name is Štefan. He's really cool. We should be meeting with him again this week. Don't know when yet, but we'll set up soon.
Another person that we found is named Daniel. I think that his family is from Spain, because his last name is Crus, which is not at all czech. Anyway, we were talking to one lady on a bench on the namesti and she wasn't really going anywhere, but we kept talking to her none-the-less. While we were talking to her, I noticed a guy behind us kind of just hovering around, but I figured that he was just waiting for someone, but all of a sudden he comes up and starts talking to us and the lady. He started by saying, "I heard your question. Very interesting." and then looking at the lady, "What do you think?" He continued to question her and we just figured that they knew eachother, but after a little while, it was pretty noticeable that they did not know eachother at all. This guy was asking her questions that we usually ask people and when she'd ask them back at him, he would answer basically golden answers. Then he looked at us and asked, "I have a very philisophical question for you. Who made God?" I tried to give him an answer that wouldn't freak him out, so I just told him that the answer to that question requires lots of basic knowledge that he doesn't have yet. With that said, we said goodbye to the lady and we walked away to speak to him somewhere else. He then started asking us what we believed as far as how people were created. He wouldn't take, "God created us. We're his spirit children." He just kept asking, how, physically, materialistically. I couldn't give him a solid answer and he kept claiming to know how we were created. So we sat down and Elder Betts asked him, "So, according to you, how were people created." He smiled and looked around and asked if we knew the Transformers movies, parts one and two. Elder Betts said yes, and I said just part one. With that, he went into telling us that transformers really do exist and that other races from outer space come and visit the earth all the time and that the transformers have to be here to protect us. He said that transformers are the epitomy of perfection, and that all we would have to do is look at them and we would agree. He then continued that the transformers wanted to create something so they began process on planning the "human." He said that only something as perfect as a transformer could think up all the genes and every little detail of a human and then, they created little pockets of information that contain all the information of what a human is. The transformers then created six pockets of human: white male and female, black male and female and asian male and female. Then with these little pockets of information, the transformers put them into printers and the printers took the information and transformed into the first six people. Elder Betts and I were both really confused by this all, but whatever. He kept repeating that people came from printers as if it was a breakthrough in reality. We both just looked at him like he was crazy. Then I just had to ask, "And how does God have anything to do with this?" Then he kind of ate his words and said that God created the transformers. Elder Betts looked at me and said, "Why not just cut out the transformers part? Then he'd be right. God created humans." At this point we had to run to get to a lesson, but I asked for his number and he gave it to us. I figured that it would be worth at least a meeting or two with him, crazy or not. We met with him the next day and the lesson was less than spiritual. He's really gross and crude. Basically the entire time he was trying to tell us how sex is the best thing in the world, and we could barely get a lesson in. That's either his last meeting, or we might give him another chance. We'll see.
Other than that, this week has been really good, but I can't write about everything or else this would be way too long and you wouldn't want to read the entire thing, and I would have to break the rules so that I could type it all out. I don't want either of those. I hope that you're all doing well. I'm doing fantasic. President was down here for Branch Conference on Sunday, and I had to translate the entire meeting for Sister Irwin, and it really surprised me how well I did. I even translated a fairytale that I've never heard before. It was kind of crazy and I didn't really even know what was going on, but I translated on! It made sense about half way through. It's fun to see how progress happens even though we can't tell that it's happening. I know that is exactly what's happening to me now on the mission, and I know that it can happen to every single one of us. Just as they said at general conference, just because we don't have huge revelations doesn't mean that we aren't becoming more and more converted to the truth every single day. I love you all very much and hope that you're all in good health, spiritally and physically.
Love you all muches,
Starší Monk