Transfer to Ostrava

What? Missionaries TEACH?!

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

Awesome April - Week Four

Dear Family,

This last week has been really great.  It didn't seem like a whole lot happened, but we felt like we did our part and things just kind of fell into place.

On Wednesday, we were out around Trebic talking to people and trying to find that person that's ready to listen to our message.  We were probably out for three or four hours and no one had spoken to us yet, but Elder Vomocil pointed out that there was this one girl that he had been seeing around town that day and that he felt like he should speak to her, so he said that if he saw her again, he would speak with her.  Well, about five minutes later, there she was, so we pushed our way through a crowd and kind of cut so that we could get in front of her and start talking.  It was a little strange, but we didn't let it bother anyone.  We started talking and we asked her if she had some time that we could sit down and talk for a bit.  She said that she did and so we went over a little way and sat on a bench.  She only had about ten minutes before she had to be at a different meeting, but we sat and spoke about what we're doing, what the basics of our message is, and about how we help people come closer to Christ.  She said that she wasn't really a believer, but that she knows lots of people around her who are believers, but she didn't know for herself.  We exchanged numbers and went on our way, but we felt that we had found our person.  Over the next few days, we kept seeing her around, and we'd stop and talk just for a bit.  We'd just talk about whatever, but probably the coolest thing is that she wants to meet with us and talk more about our message.  She's actually interested!  It's also great to see someone who doesn't just see us as a suit.  Her name is Lucie.

Then on Friday, we had a pingpong tournament and grill with the branch.  Everyone kept warning us about Brother Kutil, and that he wins every year.  Now, if you knew Brother Kutil, you would be a little confused as well.  He's a really reserved, soft-spoken guy, but very solid in the church, so to hear that he wins the pingpong tournament every year, was a little crazy.  Well, they made the bracket, and I worked my way through and got up to the top three.  It was between me, Lenka Červeňová and Brother Kutil.  I beat Lenka, and then I played Brother Kutil.  Oh my word.  He is very good, but he would come down to your level and then step it up just one notch so that you would get beat at your own level.  I nearly won one set, but it got to a deuce and then he won that.  The prize for winning was a home baked cake by Sister Koutková, but every year Brother Kutil just shares his winning cake with everyone.

Then on Saturday we had the baptism!  It was just so cool to see an entire family get baptized, parents and two children.  There's not a whole lot to say.  I got to baptize the mother.  I had taught them twice before while I was on exchanges, so I guess they liked me at least a little.  A different missionary baptized each member of the family.  It was a special experience for President Svoboda (president of the branch in Jihlava) because he was baptized in the same place almost exactly twenty years ago, so he said that he'd never forget the Gunarovi family.

Later Saturday, I did some calling and called some of our investigators to see if they could come to church, even though we hadn't had any meetings with them that week, because they all had pretty legitimate excuses.  They were all pretty sure that I would be leaving and so they were really keen on coming to church to at least see me for the last time, so it turned out that we had three people to church without having any lessons during the week.  Interesting.  We then met with Ari (bet you haven't heard about her in a while) after a long time because she's been taking care of Bayar who had a stroke, and gave her a baptismal date again!  She accepted and really wants to go through with it.

Now, we just had transfers.  Yes, I did get transfered.  I got transfered to Ostrava.  My train was supposed to go from Trebic to Brno, and then I would get on a different train from Brno straight to Ostrava, but this morning when I got on my train, the train conductor came around and told me that we would be changing and getting onto a bus in a while that would take us to Brno.  Why?  I don't know.  Well, luckily, the bus got there early and I made my transfer to my next train.  Once I got on the train, the conductress came around and told me that we would be transfering to a bus that would only go a little way, and then we'd have to get on a train again, and then that would take us all the way to Ostrava.  Oh my word.  I have about 150-160 lbs of stuff, and it was not easy to carry around.  Luckily enough for me, there was a guy in Brno who was nice enough to help me.  We found out quickly that he was going to Ostrava as well, so every time that we changed, he helped me with the lighter of the two bags.  I got here on time, but man was it annoying.  I was expecting to sleep a little and rest up, but no.  Oh well.  I made it and I'm alive.

There are some really cool things that look like they're going to go through here in Ostrava.  Right now Ostrava seems like the land of milk and honey, so this will be quite the change from other towns that I've been in.  I'm really excited.

I love you all a lot and hope that things are going well for you all.
Starší Monk

Awesome April - Week Three

Dear Family,

There's been a lot that's happened this last week. I'm just going to talk about two.

First off, this last week, our focus for Awesome April was the contacting day on the twentieth. That day we were supposed to commit the entire day, if possible, to finding. As it turned out, we had two appointments set up that day, but we made sure that they were later in the day so that they would interfere with the finding day as little as possible, because prime finding time is more during the day.

One fun story from the finding, we were out walking around talking to people and we were walking along the path next to the river and we saw some JWs talking to a couple girls on a bench. Elder Vomocil wanted to just stick a contact card in their hand and keep walking, but was just being a little silly, but wanted to talk to the girls. We ended up passing them by and felt a little put off that we didn't talk to them. We continued our lap and the next time that we walked past the same place, the JWs were gone. The girls were still sitting there but we passed them again. We kept going and Elder Vomocil kept saying that he wanted to talk to them, but we just hadn't yet. We ended up passing them another time at the same bench. This time we continued on and he was really determined to speak with them if he saw them again. As we were crossing the bridge going to the path, we saw the girls walking on the bridge, going the same direction as us. We followed them a way and we were planning on going up some stairs to the park up above on the hill. As we got to the stairs, the girls, whom we wanted to talk with and who were in front of us, took the stairs! Instead of being really creepy and weird, we continued straight and got some ice cream and then went up the stairs. The girls didn't make very quick progress up the stairs, because once we got to the top, they were only a little ways in front of us. Now we felt like stalkers. So we followed them and they went into a little off-shoot part of the park and sat down and we continued down the park to talk to some people, a few of whom were interested in coming to English class and then made our way back up the park to that little off-shoot so that we could talk with them. We finally went up and started talking with them. We told them that we were talking to people about Christ, and they said that they had already spoken with someone about that earlier. We started talking and they were pretty interested. When we offered them a pamphlet about the Restoration, they said, "Oh, well, we'll take that and you can take these," offering us the Watch Towers that the JWs gave them, "maybe they'll be interesting to you. Really what you're saying is more interesting." We ended up exchanging numbers and hopefully we'll be able to meet and speak with them more later. One of them is only here once or twice a year but the other is studying here in Trebic. They're both from a small town in southeastern Moravia. We walked away and Elder Vomocil felt like we had done what we were supposed to.

Then on Sunday, we had Easter Sunday and had a special sacrament meeting - basically I played violin with all the hymns and then I had a solo piece between the speakers. All the members really liked that. Then came the special Czech Easter tradition on Monday. (That's why I'm emailing today - everything was closed yesterday due to holiday.) Here in the Czech Republic, for Easter, the guys prepare whips made of intertwined willow branches the day before and then on Easter, before noon, the guys go around whipping the girls on the bottom saying a little poem. Basically they do this because the willow whip is supposedly used to transfer fertility to the woman and the poem basically goes along to say the same thing:

"Hody hody doprovody,

dejte vejce malování,

nedáte-li malování,

dejte aspoň bilý,

slepička vám snese jiný."

"Feasts Feasts and entourages,

give me colored eggs,

if you don't give colored,

at least give white,

and the hen will bear you something else."

Basically, on Sunday, all the members were asking if we were going to visit and whip them. We said of course and then they asked if we had a whip. We forgot to buy one... and they all acted like it was the end of the world! Then remembered that there was one at the house from last year so we told them that it was alright. Well... you have to get all the whipping done before noon or else the women can pour water on you. I don't particularly know why, but that's the tradition. We left the house at eight o'clock and didn't finish whipping until four, because we had to walk all over Trebic and everyone wanted us to stay and eat and talk. Luckily no one poured water on us. Some of them were pretty funny, and others were really funny and awkward. Oh, also, the girls are supposed to run away while the guys are whipping them, but most of the time they're too "awkwarded out" to run, so they just stand there and take it. He-he. I attached a video of me doing the first one to President Pohořelický's fifteen year old daughter. Yeah... that was way awkward. I don't know if you can watch the video, but if you can, you'll know a little of how fun this tradition is.

Other than that, this week has been good. We've been working hard and we've been seeing blessings. I love you all and I'm looking forward to talking to you on Mother's Day, which I guess is right after transfers! Oh NO. Last phone call home of the mission. That makes me feel old.

Love you all tons,

Starší Monk

Awesome April - Week Two

Dear Family,

Yes, another week is gone and it seems shorter and shorter each week.  I remember something that Elder Price told me the end of my first transfer.  I think that it was either the last or second to last p-day that we had.  We were walking around Zlin and he looked at me and said, just as a kind of passing comment,  that the mission just gets faster and faster with each passing transfer.  I responded that this transfer was pretty fast for me and that the MTC even felt pretty quick.  He just gave me this weird look and said that I might as well say goodbye to my mission now!  How true that is.  It's been way fast.  Elder Vomocil and I this morning were talking about this being the very end of this transfer.

Anyway, that doesn't matter.  This last week was week two of Awesome April, and yes, it was awesome.  This last week was focused on giving the members their part.  President prepared a little trifold with a few things that members can do, and then it was up to us to give it to them and speak about how they could do it, if they didn't know how they could fulfill a few of the points.  Perhaps the hardest point was, "I can invite a friend to my home for family home evening and bring the missionaries."  For some of us that may not sound too hard, but it was the hardest on the list, and many members are afraid of doing so.  We gave them advice on how they could accomplish it and then committed them to doing it.

Elder Vomocil and I visited the Fejtovi, Kutilovi and the Červeňovi.  Also we're going to meet President Pohořelický and his family and the Houzarovi on Tuesday because they didn't have time this last week.  It was the first time that I had met with the Fejtovi in their home and I realized, I've been here for nearly four months and they don't really know that much about me.  That showed me that I wasn't doing my best to friendship with the members.  How could I expect to gain their trust, teach with them and have them give me referrals if I didn't know them?  I can't.  They're really quite open, but I just hadn't taken the time to go and talk to them that much.  I'm going to fix that.  They both served in Utah on missions, so they know how missionary work goes, but I think that they just need a little bit of support and encouragement to do missionary work here, because it doesn't yield as much results as Utah right now.

Then the Kutilovi: they live in a town that's about a thirty minute driving distance from Trebic, so we met with them after church.  They're really sweet.  There's a little calendar on the tri-fold and every time that they do one of the twelve things (there are twelve suggestions of things they can do) they're supposed to put that number down on the calendar.  They just made a joke and said, "If we all do number one (pray every day for a missionary experience), can we put down seven ones?" (they have five kids).  They're really cool and seem really determined to do all twelve of the things.  They were brainstorming the entire time among themselves to see how they could do each of the points.  They're even going to try and set up a time that we can meet with them again later this week.

Then we met with the Červeňovi (Jiři and Lenka).  They're a newly wed couple and they're really awesome.  We're pretty good friends.  The entire time that we were giving the program to them, we were cracking little jokes, but keeping it very serious, if that at all makes any sense.  They were keeping the mood light-hearted while seriously considering how they could fulfill the twelve points as well.  Jiři served a mission here in the czech republic about five years ago and so he knows how the work is here and how he should be doing his part as a member.  Lenka has been a member for about four years now, but is really solid.  We had a really great time with them, then they fed us dinner and then we played some chess.  I've become alot better at chess this transfer because that's what Elder Vomocil and I have turned to do when we're bored and have nothing else to do on p-days.  We were there for a quite a while, but it was okay because it was after call-ins on Sunday, so there wasn't a whole lot that we could do other than that.  Otherwise we would be at home staring at the ceiling or something.

We're really looking forward to this next week.  It's going to be the full finding day on Wednesday.  We'll see how that goes.

I hope that you're all doing great and you're all in good health.  I love you all,

Starší Monk