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