Awesome April - Week One

Dear Family,

Here we are sitting at the end of the first week of Awesome April and it has very much so been "awesome." This week was the 181st anniversary of the Church this last Wednesday (6 April 1930 - 6 April 2011) and President Irwin gave us the challenge to give out twenty pamphlets of the restoration and get ten numbers with follow up meetings attached.

The week leading up to Wednesday was pretty normal, but on Wednesday we really had the determination to go out and meet that lofty goal that was given to us. We thought about it and said, "Oh, that's more than accomplishable in Prague or Brno, or maybe even Ostrava, but here in Trebic? That's going to be hard. Perhaps we should only have personal study and then just go out and hit the town so that we can have as much time to work as possible." Yes, we were considering not having companionship and language studies so that we could have two more hours to work. We got a text from the zone leaders that morning saying that we should read through the pamphlet together before we go out and work, so we did that too.

As soon as we set out to start working, there was a new and greater devotion to contacting people, finding the ones that would want a pamphlet, want to meet with us and would want to hear about the restoration of the gospel. About twenty minutes into our finding, we were in a little park (more like a path next to the river) and Elder Vomocil told me to talk to a lady who was approaching us. As she got nearer, I contacted her - probably not the contact that I would usually use to start talking with Czechs. I asked, "We're here talking to people about God. Do you believe in God?" Usually when I do that, they get really freaked out and just run away, shaking their hands, saying, "No, no, not about God. I don't have any interest/time," but this lady said, "Yeah I do." As we continued talking with her, we found out that she believes in God, but doesn't know what or who it is. As we testified to her, she would say, "Yeah, I believe that." Her name is Lenka Kočiřová. She told us about how twenty years ago she developed schizophrenia and only seventeen years she started taking medicine to control it. She expressed to us that she has no one to talk to about God, because she feels that as soon as she does, they'll think that she's gone crazy again and will lock her up in the looney bin. I think that she really felt a relief to speak to us, because we understand. She also spoke a lot about how the world has changed so much, for the worse. No one cares about love or friendship, but only about money and power and receiving. She said so many things that related to the pamphlet, I just had to whip one out about three minutes into the conversation, and I just stood there holding it until she stopped talking enough that I could get a word in and give it to her. We also got her number, but we didn't set anything up with her. She's just so open and we're very sure that she's going to be a great investigator, but more importantly, she's going to find what she's been looking for. I called her yesterday and set up to meet on Friday. She picked up the phone just so happy and enthusiastic - she can definitely feel that we want to help her and she wants someone who she can talk to. She'll be awesome.

Then later, after things weren't going so hot anymore, we were walking on one of the streets along the town square, and we were both kind of burned out. I looked at Elder Vomocil and said, "Hey, let's play a game. Whenever one of us snaps our fingers, the other has to contact someone within ten seconds." He said okay. Then I saw a pretty good crowd of people coming, not three seconds after I finished explaining the game, and snapped my fingers. The group passed us, and afterward, there wasn't really anyone. I looked at Elder Vomocil a little sad that the group passed and that it was so much smaller than it had seemed. I stopped counting and kept walking, but Elder Vomocil was still counting. Randomly, it seemed to me, he contacted a younger girl a little way down the street. We started talking and she said, "Já nemluvím česky." (I don't speak Czech.) She told us in pretty decent Czech, but you could tell it was difficult, that she was from Russia and that she doesn't speak Czech very well. Well, us as missionaries, know at least two languages: Czech and English, so I asked her if she knew English, in English. She looked at me and said, "Of course." We continued to speak with her. The more the conversation went on, she got a little on my nerves because she was trying to tell us that no one can know about these kinds of things and that we shouldn't believe them, that we should live our own lives. That's a pet-peeve that I've come to realize this transfer: when someone tries to tell me what I believe - it gets under my skin really fast. Elder Vomocil, on the other hand, was completely fine with it and just kept bearing testimony about the things that we do know, and that she could find out too. We challenged her to hear our message because we promised that it was something that she hasn't heard before. She agreed and seemed really excited to meet with us. Whether it be because we're two American boys, or because she can't do anything here in Trebic, because, as she explained it, "after five o'clock, it's like a nuclear bomb went off." She's from Moscow, so she's used to the larger cities. Her name is Valerie. The next day, we saw her on a patio of a restaurant with a couple of guys and we remembered that she told us that it would be her birthday. We said hi and kept going. She looked really surprised to see us and responded, "ahoj." As we got down the street a little way further, we sent her a text saying, "Happy Birthday, even though the bomb in Trebic has already gone off." She wrote back and said, "Dík :)" (thanks). We called her yesterday and asked if we could meet later in the week and she told us she's in Prague right now, so we'll call her tomorrow to set something up later in the week. At least she said that she wants to meet with us. Pretty cool.

Then a little later, the same day, I really wanted some ice-cream because we had been walking around town all day, and had probably been on our feet about six or seven hours at this point. There was a little ice cream place that I had seen a few days earlier kind of back off the river-walk park and thought, why don't we go there. We went there and the guy said, "Well hey guys. It's been a while since you've come. Your friends used to come all the time, and I just thought you guys stopped liking ice-cream or something." We had a fun little conversation with him. Perhaps we'll go there more often and slowly give him pamphlets or something to read, because I'm sure he doesn't get a ton of business. After we got our ice cream, we went and sat on one of the benches in that river park and were maybe sitting there ten minutes when a guy stopped and said, in Czech, "Hard work guys?" Elder Vomocil said, "Not really. We're just sitting eating ice-cream taking a break. That's not very hard work." The guy laughed a little and asked if we were the guys who walked around town talking to people about our religion. We said yes. We started talking with him, and he was really cool. We eventually ended up in English, and he speaks really well. His name is Milan. We ended up giving him a pamphlet and asked him to read it because it's our unique message. He said he'd like to meet with us but didn't know when he'd have time, so we exchanged phone numbers and said that we'd call some other time to set something up. We also told him to read the pamphlet and that we'd talk a little more about it next time. He said that he'd do it and that he was looking forward to next time.

That day was just filled with big and small miracles. Elder Vomocil and I have been waiting for us to get cut some slack and I think that the Lord finally gave us some. We didn't reach the twenty pamphlets goal or the ten numbers with meetings goal, but we did give out three pamphlets and got three numbers and we felt that we worked our very hardest that day. All three of these people, Lenka, Valerie and Milan, are all so cool and we just can't wait to meet with them all again.

We got conference this last week and watched the Sunday morning session for church. It was fantastic. Dana was there and she seemed to like it as well. We went over to her place afterward for lunch and a meeting. She's doing well. She's still really stressed out with school because it's coming down to the final few weeks and wrap-up for everything, but she did come to church! She's also making other progress in other ways, but that's too long of a story to write up here and now. Basically, she told us that she knows exactly what it's going to mean to start investigating the church more fully, because she knows it's true, and she knows that she needs to change a lot of things in her life to come in line with the gospel. She's doing very well. She knows what she has to do, but she's a little afraid of it, but for good reasons. She knows it'll be tough, but she also knows it'll be worth it.

I'm so happy to be here as a missionary right now! I wouldn't be any other place than right here. People sometimes say that we're crazy to let the church drive us around and control us for two years, but really, the church just gives us the calling, and then we drive ourselves and we do it because we want to and know that it's what the Lord wants of us. I love you all very much and hope that everything is going well for you as well.

Much love and prayers,
Starší Monk

Awesome April!

Dear Family,

We have some really cool things coming up this next month. I don't know if I've told you anything about the "Awesome April" program that we have. At the meeting that we had in Prague last week, President gave us a program that the entire mission is going to be doing each week of April.

Yesterday (Sunday the third) we all fasted for missionary work, especially for the month of April. Then this upcoming Wednesday (the sixth), which will be the 181st anniversary of the church being organized, we're going to have a special contacting day where each companionship is going to try to give out twenty restoration pamphlets and receive ten phone numbers with a follow-up meeting. That's going to be really hard here in Trebic, but we're both really excited for it and we have really high hopes.

Then the next week (the entire week the eleventh through the seventeenth) is going to be focused on members and meeting with them. President and the office elders have put together a trifold brochure with challenges for the members to do-- things like praying every day for missionary work and inviting a friend over to meet the missionaries. The trifold comes with a one month commitment and has twelve different things that they can do. The goal is to have them do all twelve things within the month. It means a lot of work for us because we have to visit them multiple times to follow-up on their progress but at least it gives us something a little new to do!

Then the next week, on Wednesday (the twentieth) will be completely devoted to finding. We're supposed to set up meetings around that day, if at all possible, and leave that day completely open for just finding people.

Then the entire next week (the twenty-fifth through the first of May) we're going to try to have each and every companionship in the entire mission give out one new baptismal date. If that were to happen, the mission would have around forty new baptismal dates! That would be amazing.

Elder Vomocil and I are really excited to start this month. This last week we worked harder than we have before, and we made a lot of laps on Trebic, we spoke to some cool people, we got a few potentials, but nothing too solid. Mainly, our feet hurt but we know that we did our best. We've had really beautiful weather this last week. We had one or two "Texas rainstorms" but nothing too bad. Yesterday the weather was in the high twenties to low thirties Celsius (so like sixties to eighties).

Other than that, we had sports day on Saturday. It's fun to spend time with the youth here. They always raise our spirits.

Love you all. Hope you're all enjoying spring! It's started here too.

Starší Monk

Trudging Through

Dear Family,

It seems yet another week and not a whole lot has happened. Ari has still been in Brno with Bayar. She says that he's doing better, but still can't talk very much and can walk very little with help of a walker. Dana is still swamped with work and school so she hasn't had the energy to meet with us. Other than them, we don't have a teaching pool, but we're still out and about, searching for those that are ready for the gospel.

This last week we had a small meeting in Prague with our zone (no, it wasn't a zone conference but a specialized conference). That started at 9:30 in the morning, so Elder Vomocil and I had to get up at 4:30 to catch a 5:45 bus that would last three hours to get us there in time for the meeting. That gave me a terrible headache. Then afterward, I rushed down with Elder Mills (the same Elder Mills that was in a threesome with me my follow-up trainee transfer) to catch a bus back to Jihlava so we could have exchanges. That bus ride was really miserable too, but only an hour and a half. By this point, my head was killing me.

We went right from the bus station to a meeting with one of their baptismal dates who was really sick. He told us about he tried drinking some coffee to help his throat and that he ended up throwing it up later. He took that as a sign that he needs to keep the Word of Wisdom. We taught him a quick lesson about the priesthood and then gave him a blessing. He was really grateful and we told him that it would work according to his faith. The next day he missed his meeting with us because he was healthy and was up and working somewhere. Guess he has pretty good faith!

Later the same night, after the blessing, we went to an appointment with a family that are all on date. They're the Gunarovi. Last time I was with them, I was on exchange with Elder Bailey and I told them that I play the violin. They asked me to play the next time that I come, so this time, I brought my violin along. I played a few little things for them and they really enjoyed it. We then had a really good lesson about the pre-mortal existence. They didn't get everything all at once, but as we answered their questions, they began to understand. They love having us over, because they can feel the Spirit and they just know that the things we tell them are true.

Then the next day, we had four lessons scheduled. Three of them didn't come, but we met one of the potential investigators they found the week before around town and brought her back to the building and taught her a lesson. Afterward, we went back out looking for someone else. About forty minutes before one of our scheduled meetings, we found this guy named Bohdan. He was really cool. We began telling him about faith. He said he already had faith. We asked what kind and he said Hari-Krishna (or however you spell it). He said that he bought the book just the day before! We then began talking about the Book of Mormon and his eyes lit up! He seemed really interested in talking. He said a few times, "I'm really interested in hearing what you have to say." We then invited him to the building and as we walked into the building, one of the members from Jihlava showed up. We ended up having a member lesson with them, go this number and set up a next appointment. He's way cool. After the lesson, we told him that we had another meeting, and he said that he understood but he'd rather stay with us. That was just so cool.

The rest of the exchange went pretty well. We came back down to Trebic that night and had a sleep over because there weren't anymore trains from Trebic to Jihlava after 8:15, which we couldn't make, so the Jihlava elders had to catch a train back up the next day.

As for Trebic, there's not a whole lot going on. We're working hard, trying to find those who are here. I've heard lots of good things from you about what's going on back home. Glad to hear that we can see the blessings in our lives!

Love you all and take care,
Starší Monk

Call Me Out

Dear Family,

Again, a pretty hard week. It rained nearly all week when last week was at least nice and clear skies, so as such, it was a lot harder to go out and work, but nonetheless, we went out and tried talking to people. There wasn't a huge selection of people to talk to. We couldn't really go tracting, most people would be at work. While we were out, Elder Vomocil would say jokingly, "Take it in Elder, every drop of rain is another minute your wife spends in the gym." He said that his brother's mission would say that. Yes, he served in the Amazon. Yes, they loved working in the rainy season. Just little stuff like that keeps you going sometimes. It's silly and you know that it's not true, but it's fun to think about. Get's your mind off the depressing fact that it's raining a lot, it's annoying, no one's outside, the ones who are outside don't want to talk to you; takový je život (such is life).

We found a couple cool people this last week though, however they didn't show up to their follow-up appointments. Perhaps they just need time to think and "brew" for a while and then they'll be more ready next time they run into missionaries. We also finally caught Ari. She came home from Brno, with Bayar, because they're doing a census here in the Czech Republic, so she came home to be there for that. She's returning sometime today.

Sadly, there's not really a whole lot to write about. I guess I could tell you one interesting story that happened this last week. On Wednesday, we were out contacting, it was raining and we didn't really want to be outside, but we were anyway. We had been contacting and it hadn't gone that badly. We stopped at one point because we were both just kind of dragging, and it was only 2:00 or so. So we made a goal to contact for another thirty minutes and talk to ten people. We knew it would be hard because of how scarce people were at the moment, but we were determined and we set off. Not five minutes later I heard the phone ringing in my pocket, so I took it out to see who was calling. It was a number that we didn't have, so I picked it up, said hello and said that I was Elder Monk. The lady on the other end didn't even say hello and started accusing me of calling her son. We had done callings the day before to try and set up with investigators and less actives, but I didn't remember calling a young boy. I asked her what her son's name was and she said Roman. I certainly didn't call anyone named Roman. This entire time she's just laying into me, letting me have it saying that calling over and over is harassment and that she was going to call the police next time we call because it's illegal. At this point, I was very confused. I kept telling her that I was sorry, but I didn't call any person by that name, but she kept accusing me of calling anyway, she just wouldn't let it go. She said that she was looking at her son's phone and she could say the time and the number that called. Then she also told me that there was another number too who were probably our friends, that was calling him too. She accused me of passing out his number and then harassing him with it. Needless to say, I was extremely confused, but I got the fact that she didn't want us calling her son, so I finally butted my way into the conversation and asked her to send me her son's phone number so I could look through my own phone and delete it if I had it, and also send me the number of the other phone that was calling so I could call them and ask them to delete the number, too. Once she could see that I was confused, but I wanted to help, she completely changed and I could tell that she was just looking out for her son. She was just scared because she didn't know who we were. By the end of the conversation, she was thanking me for being helpful and I kept reassuring her that I would help get it resolved. We said good-bye and hung up. A few minutes later I got a text with her son's phone number asking me to delete it from my own phone and then a minute or two later I got another text with the other number that had been calling. I called that one and it turned out to be the missionaries from Jihlava. They picked up and I asked them if they had called a Roman recently and they said yes. They also said that the lady on the other end threatened to call the police if we called again. This made me curious how she got our number because the kid was only a potential in the Jihlava phone. That didn't matter. I told them to delete the number, and they said that they already did. That was that with them, so after I called the lady back and told her that I got it all resolved and figured out, and that they wouldn't call any more. She was really grateful. I told her that if they called again, for her to call me and I would fix it again. Afterward, needless to say, I didn't have much of a desire to contact people, so we went home and sat there for fifteen minutes or so before going back out into the rain to work some more.

That was our interesting story for the week. I'm glad to hear that all the hardships I'm going through here aren't in vain. At least I'm growing. I definitely learned to think under pressure from that phone call. It was only 8 minutes and it was over the phone! I have a lot to learn still, but I'm learning. :)

Love you all and hope you're all doing well.
Starší Monk

Tough Week

Dear Family,

Well, this may very well be the shortest blog that I write to you. Sadly, There's not really much I can write from this last week. All the lessons that we set up fell through, about five of them - one was even a member lesson. We had four lessons with less actives. Other than that, it's been a pretty tough week to push through. There have been other times on my mission where we've had really hard weeks like this one, I don't think that any of them have been this low, but I would always feel really bad about it. This week is different. I know that we worked hard, we did lots of finding and tried really hard to meet with our investigators. Just everything that could have gone wrong, did go wrong. Ari, the Mongolian lady that we're working with: her son's father had a stroke and is in the hospital right now, so she left to Brno to take care of him, so she couldn't meet with us. Dana has a ton of school and work as usual, but this last week has really taken a large toll on her so she's been really tired and couldn't meet with us. Other than that, we've been doing our best to find the people here in Trebic who are ready to hear our message. It's been tough, but we don't have any regrets about this last week.

Elder Vomocil has been helping me a lot about feeling good about what we're doing instead of expecting such great things out of the work and then being disappointed and discouraged when it doesn't turn out such. He's helped me look at the Christ-like Attribute of 'hope' differently. It's been helping a lot, and now I'm much happier about what we're doing. It's great to be working with Elder Vomocil; we're always laughing, having a great time, but still at the same time, building each other up and working hard.

I haven't much to say, but I hope that you're all doing well and are safe. If you can see the blessings in your own lives, it gives us the hope and determination to find those who want to see the same kinds of blessings in their own lives here in Trebic - to bring them the same happiness that we all have.

My body aches, my brain is exhausted, but my spirit is hungry to work on. I love working as a missionary. I just wish that I could do it better! That just gives me a higher goal to shoot for, doesn't it? I love you all and hope you're all doing wonderfully.

Much love,
Starší Monk