More of the Same

Dear Family,

This week has been a lot of the same old jazz.  Lots of finding, standing at meetings that don't come, atd (a tak dale - Czech for 'etc.').  We actually had a conference this last week and it was really weird to see another one of my companions give his last testimony.  (When it's a missionary's last conference, they have the opportunity to give their testimony in front of everyone.  We call it a missionary's dying testimony, but I still have another conference, so I'll give mine then.)  Elder Bown gave a really good one and it really made me think about how and why I'm doing missionary work.  I've found it's good to ponder, but it's also good to just go and do.  Sometimes when we think too long, we lose the opportunity to do something really meaningful.  Anyway, that was one of my epiphanies this last week.

Other than that, we're still working hard.  Seeing all the little successes along the way.  Elder Gabrielsen is doing amazing with the language, and with the work.  He's really gung-ho and it's really crazy trying to keep up with him.  I thought, for just a small moment, that I was the trainer, but I feel like I'm just the language coach and he's really showing me the ropes.  It's nuts, but I love it.

I don't really have a whole lot to share, but I'd like to share one of the scriptures that I like to read when I starts slowing down:

Doctrine and Covenants 6:33-37

"Fear not to do good, my sons, for whatsoever ye sow, that shall ye also reap; therefore, if ye sow good ye shall also reap good for your reward.

Therefore, fear not, little flock; do good; let earth and hell combine against you, for if ye are built upon my rock, they cannot prevail.

Behold, I do not condemn you; go your ways and sin no more; perform with soberness the work which I have commanded you.

Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.

Behold the wounds which pierced my side, and also the prints of the nails in my hands and feet; be faithful, keep my commandments, and ye shall inherit the kingdom of heaven.
Amen."

I've read this scripture many times and every single time, I learn or just feel something little that helps me along.  I love how it says, "...fear not, little flock..."  I'm not completely sure why, but it always gives me the assurance that, even though I'm just a stupid little sheep, he doesn't forget about me and I have nothing to fear.

I love you all and hope you're all doing amazingly well!

Love,

Starší Monk

Missionary Success

Dear Family,

This week has been really cool because we've been doing everything that's been in our power, and we've been seeing a lot of... different blessings.  I guess sometimes we just need to remember what "success" is while we're on the mission.  It's not the number of people we find to teach, it's not the number of people who are "progressing" and it's not even the number of people that we baptize.  Yeah, those things would be nice, however, they're not what define a successful missionary.  I remember studying, not this week but some time else, in chapter one of "Preach My Gospel" about what a successful missionary is.  It's funny, that when you read it, not a single point under that section talks anything about what other people do; every single point is about you, about what you do, about how you feel the Holy Ghost and about how you follow the promptings of the Holy Ghost.

So, with that in mind, we had a really successful week.  We taught very few lessons, however, we were out working every day, very hard.  I felt that we were doing well in following the Holy Ghost, and we did something really impressive: we set up around sixteen lessons, and almost all of them would have been new investigators.  Sadly, all of them except for two ended up not coming.  That's a bit of a bummer, but Elder Gabrielsen is taking it really well.  In fact, he's really excited every day to go out and find.  It's really cool to see the enthusiasm that he has and how he wants to go straight at it every single day.  I really like the way that he contacts: he sees someone he wants to talk to, he walks right at them and then he stands in the way.  It's a little intrusive, but our message is intrusive: we've here to call people to repentance.  Isn't that intrusive?  Isn't that bold?  I really love this kid.  He's doing really well.

One of the meetings that did go through was with a guy named Petr Lefky.  Elder Bown found him last transfer and they had been having a bad day, but Elder Bown was determined to get one person before they turned in to go home.  It was a Saturday night, and there weren't a whole lot of people out, but they ended up talking to Petr and they got his number, but according to Elder Bown, he didn't seem too promising.  Nonetheless, he invited him to church and said that he'd call him Sunday morning to remind him.  Come Sunday morning, Elder Bown calls and he doesn't pick up, so they just went to the building and basically said that's that.  However, a little before church starts, a guy walks in and shakes Elder Bown's hand, and Elder Bown didn't remember him for a second, but soon realized that it was Petr.  Petr stayed for all three hours, loved it and actually asked for a Book of Mormon.  Since then, Elder Bown's been trying to get meetings set up with him, but he's been down on himself saying that it's not worth it with him because he's an alcoholic.  Elder Bown fought through that and said that it is worth it.  Recently, he texted us after he didn't come to a meeting saying that he was sorry, but that he couldn't come because he was in the hospital.  We told him that we could come and visit him, so he sent us the place that he was staying at in the hospital and we went and visited him yesterday.  He's in the hospital for rehab.  He's been there before, and the time when Elder Bown contacted him, he had been out for less than a week.  We found out that he was in there because he had drunk seventeen shots of vodka and just about killed himself.  The meeting was really great with him.  He's just such a golden humble guy.  He told us that he loves the Book of Mormon and that he's already read up through Omni.  We shared things from the Book of Mormon with him about how he can conquer the problems that he has right now, but he needs to pray to get over them.  Then he said, he doesn't know how to pray.  So we taught him that and he actually gave a prayer at the end of the lesson.  It was an amazing prayer and he did it completely correctly.  Way amazing guy.  At the end of the lesson, Elder Bown left a Book of Mormon with him, because his copy was at his apartment, and he couldn't leave the hospital.  He also left there a restoration pamphlet and said that we'd talk about it next time.  Then Petr asked about the book that we had read from at church , because he really liked it because it was really clear and straight forward.  It was a Gospel Principles.  Luckily I had mine with me because we had been at church earlier, so I left my copy with him.  I also marked the chapter on the Word of Wisdom.  The man just looked so incredibly happy to have us there.  The entire time we were there, I had the feeling that he didn't have anyone coming to visit him, so I asked if he had a family or if he was alone.  He kind of squirmed like it was a hard question, so I rephrased it and he gave me a weak, "Yeah I have family."  I felt that something with that was wrong, so I just said, "Well, it's okay.  We'll be your family."  He looked really relieved when I said that.  When we left, Elder Bown told me that he had a wife and a ten year old daughter, but they walked out on him, and that was probably the reason that he started drinking again (he had been sober at one point for three and a half years).  Well, I guess I had said the right things, even though I didn't know why.

We're having miracles and success, but it's not always the way that we want.  Sometimes we just need to step back and have the humility to know that we can't do anything, that our success shouldn't be based on results, but based on what we put into it - that's all God is taking notes on.

I love you all alot, and I hope that everything is going amazing with you all!

Much Love,

Starší Monk

Half Week in Brno

Dear Family,

There's not a whole lot to say from this last Wednesday when I wrote last.  I'm really enjoying Brno.  It's kind of weird being in a larger town.  Ostrava was the same size, roughly, in terms of area, but there are far more people here, so that's pretty refreshing when it comes to finding, and we have lots of that.  So far these past few days we've been doing mainly finding, with a few lessons that were found just the day before.

Coming into this area, there's not a whole lot to work with, and Elder Bown agrees with that.  He knows it, but it's looking very promising right now because our finding has been really good.  We've been averaging about three numbers a day these past few days, and we've already got two new investigators.  It's also really strange being in such a large district.  Here there are ten missionaries (the zone leaders, district leader and his companion, our threesome, and a sister threesome) and two senior missionaries.

Right now, Elder Bown and I have a little bit of a joke.  During all of our finding time, Elder Bown has been having all the "success" because he's the one that always comes back with a few numbers and sometimes one or two set up meetings.  I, on the other hand, keep coming back empty handed with a story or two about someone who wants to either convert us or just talk about whatever.  Elder Gabrielsen has been switching off between me and Elder Bown.  He's doing really well, and I think that he's really liking missoinary work.  Perhaps this transfer, so far, has been the transfer that I've worked the hardest and, perhaps, the most satisfied with the work that I'm doing.

I can already see that this transfer is going to be full of miracles, growing and tough times, but it's going to be well more than worth it.  Sorry that I don't have a whole lot to say, but there's just not much to say, right now.

I hope that you're all doing well.  Love you lots,

Starší Monk

PS - here's a picture of Elder Gabrielsen and me.

Transfer to Brno

Moved Again?!

 

 

Dear Family,

So, I'll start with some things that happened this last week and then I'll tell you about what the subject means, even though you can probably already guess what it means.

This last week has been really awesome because of a few new people we're working with.  One is a lady named Věra and the other is František.

I'll start with Věra.  She's a lady that we contacted about a month ago and we've been trying really hard to get in contact with her because whenever we called, she'd be really depressed, but would sound like she really wanted to meet with us.  So, we kept trying.  When we contacted her, she tried to just push by, saying that she was running somewhere, but I kept at it, for whatever reason, and said that we didn't want to intrude, but that we wanted to help her by sharing our message with her and if she would be interested in meeting some other time.  She finally stopped for a second and gave us her phone number and we contacted her later.  We set up a meeting with her and she ended up not coming.  I called her asking where she was, but she said that she had just forgot.  Then we set up again another time, and she didn't come again.  When I called she took a deep breath and told me about how one of the boys that she takes care of through charity programs was mugged and beaten up really badly.  She said that they even broke a few of his bones.  It was that bad.  She was really stressed about that, but she said that we'd just have to hold it off to another day sometime.  So finally this last week, we got a meeting set up by me just being pushy saying that we had time right now and that we want to come to their place.  They said not right now because they've got some problems going on, but when I told them that we wouldn't have any other time, they said that we could come over.  We actually found the address fairly easy.  I was expecting it to be harder, but it wasn't!  Yipee.  Anyway, we had a really good meeting.  We were expecting to just go in and talk and then perhaps talking about prayer because they did have a lot on their plate, so we didn't want to add too much to it right now, however, when we went in, one of her first questions was "What are you doing here as missionaries?"  That opened up the can of worms.  We ended up teaching them the Book of Mormon, prayer and committing them to both (them as in her, her boyfriend who lives there with her and one of her "sons" through charity work).  All three of them were really excited to read and I think that they're going to be really awesome.  Every time that we've called since then, they keep asking, "When are you going to come again?"  I hope that they progress and have time to meet.

The other, František, was a guy that was referred by his son when we were actually meeting some other people.  We didn't really know why we were visiting them, because it was really a big waste of time.  When the boy came in, he said, "You need to come meet my dad."  I told you about it last week.  He was the one who wanted the "Mormon Bible."  Well we met with him and it was really good.  We explained the Book of Mormon and prayer, and he wants to do them.  He was really really open and accepting to the things that we were saying.  He seemed to just accept anything that I would say.  Then he came to church on Sunday and loved it.  He could only stay for the first hour because his son had a pretty good bump on the head from soccer the day before, so they took him home to recover.  Then we met with him again through the next week and taught him the first lesson (the Restoration) and he loved it.  He kept talking about random things, but all in all, it was really good and at the end we challenged him to be baptized.  He accepted.  We said that we'd talk more about it next time.  Then came around Sunday, and we had asked him to come, but once Sunday came around, he didn't.  We were really baffled what happened, so later in the week we went by and visited him, but he wasn't there.  His wife was there, so we left a note with her saying that they could come to "family home evening" held by the missionaries the first monday of every month.  We said that the entire family could come too.  Come that evening, they all came.  Frantisek apologized that he didn't come to church on Sunday, because he was really sick and could barely even sit up!  We understood that, so we taught him after family home evening, which, by the way, was amazing; there were like twenty-two people.  Afterward, we had a lesson with him and a FOUR members.  We asked Rosťa to come and then Sister Renata asked to come because she has two girls visiting from Bountiful UT, one of whom is going to be going on a mission soon, so she's trying to get her to do as much missionary stuff here as she can.  So there were four members, but Frantisek didn't really mind.  He actually liked it.  The entire meeting was quite different.  Perhaps, for one, it was at the building instead of at his home where there are plenty of distractions, and two he was really focused.  He came in and started asking questions about his baptism.  It was a really good meeting.  We talked about how we do baptism, by what power it has to be done, and then why we need baptism.  It was a really awesome lesson.

Renata has been sick the past week and a half, but we finally met with her on Tuesday (yesterday).  She's doing fine.  We didn't really have much time to talk because we were going to have English class in just a bit.

So, now about the title.  We got a call on Monday evening and when I picked up, President was on the other end and said, "Elder Monk!  I know that we've been moving you around quite a bit."  At this point I started freaking out a little bit, and he continued, "We're going to send you to Brno.  However, before you go there, we'd like you to stop here in Prague and pick up a greenie."  Oh gosh.  He also went on to tell me that I'd be serving with Elder Bown, who's a missionary who's going home a little early (just three weeks) so that he can start school right away.  That's pretty crazy.  Even crazier than that, after he spoke with me, he asked to speak to Elder Betts.  Elder Betts was asked to move to Jičín with Elder Horváth.  Yes, that means our area is getting closed, for the time being.  There's so many missoinaries leaving this transfer (tomorrow) and during the course of this transfer (six weeks in) that the greenies that just came in aren't enough to fill them all, so our area got closed down, but we're keeping the apartment, so it's probably going to be opened back up in a little bit.  It was weird having to divy-up our investigators between the sisters and the other elders.  My greenie's name is Elder Gabrielsen and then I'm also with Elder Bown.

Things are crazy and unexpected, but so is life.  I've really learned that it's just up to us to make the best of what the Lord throws at us because he's only going to let us encounter the things that are going to be for our best.  Anyway, I haven't got a ton of time, but I'm happy to be here in Brno.  We got here safely and fairly easily.  Love you all lots and hope that things are going well.

Much Love,
Starší Monk

PS - there was a baptism of Honzík Hires and Berunka Šlezarová in Olomouc.  They're children of members there.  That was way awesome.  Honzík has been waiting a long time for this day.