Dear Family,
Sorry that I didn't send an email this last week. It was transfers and then we had emailing on Wednesday, but I guess I didn't hit "send" on the email I wrote, so I sent it just now, so you can read what happened the week before.
Let me start by talking a little about what I found out from last week. Hoang (yeah, that Vietnamese guy that Elder Rhodes and I taught back in Plzen) is still in Vietnam, even though he said that he'd only be staying for about two months. A while after he had left, I got an email from him saying that he's doing well and that he's still praying and reading the Book of Mormon. He also said that he found the church building in Hanoi but couldn't get in contact with missionaries but that he trusts that everything will be okay. Just this last week, I got a couple of emails from the senior couple in Hanoi (missionaries aren't allowed to be there for proselyting because it's still communist, but senior couples are allowed) asking for information about Hoang because he had been to church three out of the four previous weeks and that they wanted to know what he had been taught. I sent an email back answering their questions, talking about how we had taught him everything and how he had accepted every single one of our commitments whole-heartedly. He wrote back a response very quickly saying thank you and that he was doing very well. He told me that they had a few meetings with him and his family and that the missionaries (APs from Cambodia) came over and had a golden lesson with them. They committed Hoang to be baptized, then to receive the priesthood and baptize his family shortly after! I called and told Elder Rhodes all of this and the two of us were just beside ourselves. Elder Rhodes was actually talking about getting permission from President to go down to Vietnam to be at his baptism. He must have been joking, but that would still be really awesome.
So, as you can probably tell from the subject, I've had quite a change coming from Trebic and the other places on my mission to here. It's not that I disliked those places that I've been, it's just I haven't really had a teaching pool since... Zlin? Yeah. That's nuts. Well, coming here has been kind of like walking into the land of milk and honey. All around the mission, Ostrava for the past few transfers has been known as the town that's really been on fire. Well, coming in, I found myself walking into an area with about twenty investigators, four baptismal dates and almost all of them are really quite solid. I'm super stoked.
On Thursday, we had three lessons scheduled. One of them couldn't come, but that's okay, we just set up for some other time, but the others were fantastic. We met with a guy named Jaroslav, and he has a baptismal date for the eleventh of June and seems to be going pretty strong toward that. The only thing that's really keeping him back is that he smokes, and quite a bit. He works as a puppet maker (like marionettes) and he says that when he's just thinking, he smokes and it helps him concentrate. He knows that it's a bad habit and he wants to stop, but now his entire workshop smells like smoke and he's just trapped around it whenever he works. So, we taught the word of wisdom and he read the entire thing and I think that he agrees with it. The trick is just getting him to quit smoking. I believe that he can and will do it.
Then we had game night, and it's amazing that people actually showed up! Elder Betts said that on a bad week, only seven to ten people show up, but the most that's ever showed up was around thirty. Nuts!
After that we had a meeting with one of our other investigators. He's such a cool guy. He reminds me a lot of one of my buddies back from BYU. I'll send a picture one of these days. Basically everything about him! Way he looks, acts, interacts... basically all the same. He's also really into Korea. He wants to go to Korea and study Korean, so he was really excited when he heard that I, a half Korean, was coming to Ostrava. He was a little put out when he found out that I don't speak Korean, but I think that he likes me all the same. His name is Honza. We had just a short meeting about what we want to do as missionaries and if he would be willing to just try the things that we'll ask him. We went so cautiously because he had investigated a while ago and when he saw that the missionaries were asking lots of things, he disappeared.
Then the next day we met with another one of our baptismal dates and went through the baptismal interview questions, and there were a few things that he didn't know about yet, but as for the things that he does know about, he was very solid and quite golden. His name is Jiři and is going to be getting baptized on the 28th of this month. He had some little concerns about the Plan of Salvation and about Thomas S. Monson (namely accepting him as a prophet if he doesn't know anything about him), but we'll resolve those quickly. Elder Betts said that he was a potential that got kind of pushed off to the side and a little forgotten about, and even after they started meeting with him, he didn't seem terribly promising until they challenged him to baptism, and then he really started thinking and became the cool investigator that he is.
Later, we met with another investigator. According to Elder Betts, she wasn't terribly focused or making a whole lot of progress, but we were really straight forward and bold with her, and Elder Betts said that she was completely different that meeting. She got the feeling that she needs to read the Book of Mormon and she told us herself, that she feels that she needs to be praying more than she is. One really cool thing about that meeting, however, is the entire time she was telling us about how sometimes God doesn't answer in the ways or the time that we want. We told her that's exactly how it is. Her name is Renata. I think that she's going to start moving. She also baked us some cake thing. It was really good. She said that she bakes because she wants to learn how and that we're good critics.
Then later we met another one of our baptismal dates, who's named Honza (yes another one) and we read through the baptismal interview questions with him as well. It was fun to do that with him becaus he's really open with us, but he's really polite about it as well. When he read the first question if he believes in God the Eternal Father and Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world, he said, "I don't want to offend you, but this question is kind of ridiculous because if I'm planning on getting baptized, shouldn't I already believe this?" It was really funny and we said that the questions are really basic and they're just there to see if he'll be ready and willing to keep the things that are entailed by baptism. As we read on, we found out that he has some chastity and Word of Wisdom problems, but I think that as soon as we have some meetings with him, we'll be able to fix those.
On Sunday, I got to meet the branch. They're wonderful. It's the largest branch that I've been in so far on my mission. This Sunday there were probably around thirty to forty people at church, but last week (the week before I got here) there were almost sixty people! I had to get up and introduce myself to the branch, and I was pretty nervous because I haven't spoken in front of so many people in a long time. I managed though, and I got lots of compliments saying that I speak Czech really well. Sometimes I don't think so, but if they say so, I won't argue. I must say, I love being here in Ostrava. It's a great place. The city doesn't die after six o'clock and we actually have a teaching pool and people that are progressing! I'm really excited to see what this next week has in store for us, and I know that we're going to be busy at the least.
Love you all a lot.
Starší Monk