Ever Member a Missionary (and vice versa)

Dear Family,

This week has been a little interesting.  Last Sunday after call-ins with Elder Thompson, we got a call from the zone leaders, and there was Elder Rigby.  He started, "Hey guys, can you guess why I'm calling?"  Basically it turned out that they weren't terribly happy that we haven't had very many member lessons the past couple weeks.  Actually, I think that the entire transfer, we've had like three or four.  We made a goal to get two member lessons this week, and it's been good, we even got one, but I think more than actually teaching with members, I learned how important it is and how much we need to be working with them.  Really, to the Czech people, we're just a bunch of crazy Americans who want to convert people.  While that's true, they don't realize why we're doing it.  On the other hand, if one of their friends comes up and talks to them about it, they're far more likely to accept, because they already know and respect the person that they're receiving it from.  Random aside not about missionary work.

So, one crazy thing that happened actually last week, is that we had to go visit this one family who are gypsies because they saw us on the namesti and were angry that we haven't visited them in so long (the missionaries visited them about half a year ago), and so we set up and went to visit them.  When we got there, they said that we're actually going to go to their children's house, and so we follow them and get to this really small place that, to be nice, isn't very pleasant.  We stood there trying to teach something or anything, while kids run in and out of the one room place, baby fussing, no one paying attention but just wanting to show us their this picture of someone's wedding.  On and on.  Then one of the boys that had been coming in and out, probably about fourteen years old, comes in and says that we have to go and meet his dad.  Oh boy.  Wasn't terribly enthused about this one, but we decided to go anyway.  We walk down the hall a little way and get to another room that's exactly like the last one, but much better kept up.  There we met František (frawn-tea-shek).  He told us a little about himself, but we didn't have a ton of time so we had to push our way out.  He seemed really cool and said that the "Mormon Bible" is the only Bible that he hasn't completely read, so he wanted us to come back some time so that we could give him one and we could talk some more.  Great, so we set up for Tuesday.

When we came back, they had kind of forgotten and were finishing up lunch, but they finished fast and cleaned up.  We had a good long chat about the Book of Mormon, his spiritual experiences while he was in jail and how he basically converted all the inmates when he cast out a devil from a man and no one saw it except for him and the other man and so on.  He's a little strange, but he's really a good listener and he accepts everything that we say because he says that he's already asked the same questions and that our answers are what he believes.  At the end we left the Book of Mormon there and asked him to come to church.  He seemed really interested in that too.  Since he kind of forgot about our meeting, we decided to stop in at his place on Saturday and remind him of that.  He wasn't home, but his wife was, so we wrote down where and when we were going to meet before church and left it with her.  Come the next day, he came!  He also brought his son Kevin with him, and they both stayed for the first hour.  They had to go after that because the boy needed to recuperate from the day before of soccer because he got kicked really hard in the face, and supposedly so hard that he doesn't remember it at all!  He has a little rug-burn looking rash on his face.  Poor kid.  He already read thirty-two pages from the Book of Mormon and said that he knew that there was stuff missing from Bible and that there had to be more prophets than those just in Jerusalem, so it made sense that there would be more people and more scripture.  Elder Betts said to me that he seems a little too perfect, so we're going to keep teaching him, but with just a little bit of a careful eye.

Then we taught Renata this week.  She's doing wonderfully.  We spoke about obedience with a member and it went really well.  She seems to be having troubles right now with commandments and the need for a church, but hopefully with her new understanding of obedience to commandments, she should be able to swallow them a little easier.  Elder Betts used a really good analogy that struck a good chord with her.  Commandments are like a string that holds a kite up in the air.  Sometimes they seem to bind and restrict us, but as soon as we cut that string, we go up for a little while, but soon are drug to the ground by the air.  Also, when the string is secure to the kite, there is resistance on the kite, that can be our trials or hardships, but we know that only because of that wind or resistance, the kite can keep flying and see the great view.  We kept referring back to that analogy because it just worked so well.  She also seemed to understand better because of it as well.  She's not going to make her baptismal date for this Saturday, but we're hoping to give her a new one for the thirtieth of July.

On Friday we had a wonderful conference with Elder Kerr of the fourth (I think) quorum of the Seventy.  He explained what being a Seventy is and how the different quorums of the seventy work.  He explained that there are eight quorums of the Seventy, but each one does not have Seventy people.  Basically you have full time Seventies (the first through third) who serve as such until they're seventy years old.  Then the other quorums of the seventy are just part time, basically they squeeze any time that they can and give it to church service, and they serve for three to five years.  Let me just tell you, this guy was amazing.  He was so enthusiastic it was infectious and I hope that even a little bit of it stayed with me.  He's from Scotland, so he had a great accent to go along with it.  He really wanted to let us know that we're only going to learn the most when we're all working together, so really it wasn't so much of him lecturing us, but we had an open floor so that everyone could speak and we could all learn together.  Through that conference, I learned a ton about the importance of good members and using the members in missionary work.  One thing that he said to us, that stood out in my mind, is that "every member [is] a missionary, but also, every missionary [is] a member.  We, as missionaries, need to be kingdom builders!"  I had never thought of it that way before.  I need to be a kingdom builder?  That's a pretty big commitment, but then again so is coming on a mission for two years of my life.  Pretty crazy.

I can't say how much I love being here and how confused (sad and happy) I am about coming home in just a few months.  Elder Thompson and Vomocil (both people I've served with) gave their final testimonies at the conference on Friday, and it scares me a little bit to know that I'm the next one up!  Where does the time go!  It's weird how many things I've learned this last transfer that I wish I had known at the beginning of my mission.  I would have been so much better a missionary if I had known them.  Oh well.  All things are in the Lord's hands and if He had wanted me to know them earlier, He would have let me know.  It's just up to me now to do what I can with the knowledge and time that I have.

I love you all a ton and hope that everything's going fantastically.

Starší Monk

PS - Mom, I'm eating fine.  This last week we were fed at a member's home on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday.  that's probably the most number of lunch appointments I've had in one week on my entire mission!  Also, at each one, they basically shoved food down our throats.  Yeah, I'm not feeling too good now, but I'll get over it.  I have to. :P

Pretty Busy Week

 

 

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

Bezva! (Groovy)

Dear Family,

So this last week, I was on exchanges with Elder Thomspon.  It was really weird, but really satisfying and cool to work with him again.  We had another lesson with Marta while we were on the exchange, and Elder Thompson, always knowing what to do, spoke very minimally during that lesson, just so that I would have to get over being intimidated in front of her.  I wouldn't call it very nice, but the lesson went fairly well.  We spoke about praying and reading as how we talk to God and how we hear what He has to say to us.  She understood it really well, and at one point I asked, "What kind of relationship do you have with God," and she thought about it for a long time and then after thinking, she said, "Probably none."  It was cool to see that she knew that she had a reason to try these things and that we were just there to give them to her.  I finished the lesson in about five to ten minutes, because I didn't know what to say, so I guess I just said things very consicely and quickly.  She didn't have a backpack with her at the time, so we didn't give her the Book of Mormon then, but we set up a little time the next day so that we could just meet up and give it to her.

Also, we had a great lesson with Renata.  We finally got a member lesson with her!  It's not that members aren't ready to help and that it's hard to schedule with her, but it's just that we couldn't think of whom we wanted to teach with.  Renata's around our age and there's just not that many people in the branch who are around that age as well, so we've been having a little hard time thinking of who, but eventually we decided to teach with one of the older ladies in the branch, who's named Sister Renata, funny enough.  Sister Renata is really upbeat and energetic, which we think Renata really liked, and Sister Renata really liked that Renata is humble and willing to listen to the things that we speak about.  We had a really good lesson about the Holy Ghost and how we're supposed to learn to recognize how he speaks with us and what we should expect.  Everything just seemed to work in that lesson: Renata learned about how she's supposed to expect answers, Sister Renata learned more about how the Holy Ghost worked, and a great friendship was made.  After the lesson, we got a text from Renata asking for Sister Renata's number, because she felt that they had a lot of the same interests and that Sister Renata would be able to help her out.

This Saturday, we also had two more baptisms!  One is named Jirka, from the sisters' area.  He's nineteen years old and super solid.  He's thinking about going on a mission, and that would be fantastic!  The other is Kristyna, from the other elders' area.  She was dating a member here in Ostrava, Ondra Tomsik, who has just recently left to go on his own mission.  Kristyna didn't tell Ondra that she was getting or even got baptized.  She wanted to send him a letter with a picture and suprise him.  I'm sure that it will!  Jirka asked for Elder Blair, one of our zone leaders from Olomouc, to come and baptize him (they met while the zone leaders were here on during the interviews and street display - in which Jirka participated by contacting with us) and Kristyna asked for Elder Thompson to baptize her.

This last week has definitely had it's ups and downs, and we actually just had an investigator drop us today through texting because he asked a really weird question.  He asked, "I found Jehovah under the J's in the index in the Book of Mormon.  Can you tell me what kind of connection you have with this religion?"  I texted back and told him that Jehovah is just Jesus Christ from the Old and New Testaments and that, if I understood the question right, we have nothing in common with the Jehovah's Witnesses.  He wrote back a little while later and said that if that's Jesus Christ, he wants nothing to do with us, that he's sorry that he wasted our precious time, he doesn't want to get baptized, he's going to go back to having sex, and that he's erasing our number right after he sends that text.  I was sorely confused.

Other than that, I don't think there's a whole lot of other big things going on.  Things are interesting, as always.  Life as a missionary is never boring, and if it is, I know that I'm doing something wrong.  Love you all lots and hope that everything is going well for you as well.

Tons of Love,

Starší Monk

Overall, A Satisfying Week

Dear Family,

This last week has been a pretty good one.  We had a mission conference on Tuesday because Elder Pearson (of the Seventy) came to pick up his son, Elder Pearson (the older Elder Pearson that I served with for a little while in Olomouc as a threesome), because Elder Pearson (the Seventy) is being moved to New Zealand for three years and it would have meant that Elder Pearson (the missionary) wouldn't see his parents for five years.  So he's going home early and as part of such, he (the Seventy) gave us a mission conference as well.  It was fantastic.  There were some really amazing things said, but probably even more importantly, the Spirit slapped me in the face and I really realized some things that I probably should have known from the very beginning of my mission, but there's not really much I can do about that now.  Now I know, and now it's my responsibility to change because of it.  Because of the travel to and from Prague (which is four hours by train), our Tuesday was kind of shot, but we made the best of what we could.

So, a little bit of a continuation from last week, where Elder Betts was feeling like the area is dying, we lost another baptismal date, because we told him that making the baptismal covenant means keeping ALL of God's commandments.  He then told us, "Okay, then we can call off the baptism, because I will never live according to the Word of Wisdom and the Law of Chastity."  That was a really disappointing outcome from that lesson, but we came away feeling good because we had done what the Lord wanted us to, and we felt that we were doing our part.  Elder Pearson said (the Seventy) at the conference that we should be disappointed every single day, but never discouraged.  We were very disappointed.

We had some really good finding where we found some people that should get moving this next week.  I'm not going to write about them, because we're in Prague right now getting Elder Betts' visa renewed.

Renata, our baptismal date, is still going really strong.  This last week we met with her and taught the gospel of Jesus Christ more in depth, but also had her lay things out so that we could see how much she's really getting and what it really means for her.  I was really surprised with how much she really got what we were talking about.  She said that she had some questions about what "faith in Jesus Christ" is versus just "faith" and also what "enduring to the end" is, so we went about the lesson by reading from Preach My Gospel, and I just love the way that things are laid out there - it's just so clear and easy to understand, and so I think that it really helped her to really understand how the things all fit together.  Later I was looking at her record, and it's really funny to see the kind of progress that she's made.  When they began teaching her, she would pray to the universe, and she told the missionaries flat out that she wouldn't ever join our church, and here she is, making really good progress toward it.  We had another lesson where we just answered her questions and she wanted to just go over the baptismal questions again, in more depth.  As we went through the questions there were some strange like, she doesn't believe that Jesus was born from a virgin, because it just doesn't make sense.  It's a good concern, but not terribly pressing for the time being.  Then we ended up talking about the Law of Chastity for the majority of the lesson.  She understands all the things that we say and she understand where we're coming from, but she doesn't agree with it.  She lives according to it, but she doesn't agree with it right now.  The way that we see it is that she's on the fence about it and she doesn't agree with us about it because she doesn't see the reason to come to the other side because she's grown up with the other ideas her whole life.  It's kind of a strange situation, but otherwise, she's doing really well.

Another interesting that happened this week is that we began teaching this one girl who's about our age as well.  Her name is Marta.  They found her before I got to the area, but something interesting is: she's a violinist!  She told me that she's been playing since she was five years old; her mother's a violinist, she's studying at the university here for violin and she lived in New York City for a while when she was younger.  It's probably one of the only instances where I was intimidated by the person that we were speaking with.  I don't really know why, but I was.  I found myself just staring at Elder Betts because I couldn't talk, so he did most of the lesson.  Toward the end, I was doing better, and I participated as well.  It was really strange.  We didn't have a whole ton of time with her, but we've got another lesson set up for this Wednesday, so I'm excited to meet with her again.  Let's just hope that I can speak.  Oh, she also said that she'd lend me some music so that I can play something other than just Bach whenever I have time to play.

Not a whole lot else to say, or really that much time, but I hope that everything is going well for you all in whatever you're doing.

Love you all,

Starsi Monk