District Leader Elder Monk?!

Dear Family,

This week was the sad farewell for Elder Page: gone to Ostrava - land of the Škoda cars. I think that's where they originated, or at least had a plant there for a long time. Sometimes Czechs will say "Škoda škody" which means "Pity of a Škoda;" škoda means pity. We got a pretty good picture at the train station. I don't know if any of you have heard or even seen the movie (I don't know exactly what it is called in English because I've only seen the adds in Czech) called "Still Together, Still Alive" or something to that effect and has Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz - if you translate it exactly in Czech it means "In the Meanwhile Together, In the Meanwhile Alive" and that just sounds silly.

Anyway, we dropped off Page at the train station and said our goodbyes and then we waited for Elder Pearson to get in. So, looking at this transfer, we don't really have anyone making any real progress, so another huge finding trasnfer! We still have Saša and Ondra, his friend, but they're about it. So the the first day that Elder Pearson was here, yes, the day that he got in, we went out and did lots of finding and we saw some really cool things! We talked to lots of people, and I can already see that Elder Pearson is a contacting machine. During our evening of contacting, we got five numbers from people, three lessons set up for the next day, and one new investigator! That's incredible. The next day we went and the first guy we had set up with actually came and he listened to our message and then ran away because someone called him up and he had to go, but we set up again for the Tuesday (tomorrow).

Also, it's really weird being district leader. I'm not sure how much I like it. Both of the zone leaders now turn to me all the time and say, "okay, District Leader, what are we doing now?" I guess it's my responsibility now and they are my district so they have the right to say that to me. It's just so weird thinking that they're under my responsibility when I'm also under theirs. Get what I mean? It gets all weird and tangled up, but basically the way that it goes, is that I'm the leader of Olomouc and the zone leaders are only my leaders insofar as them being responsible for my area when they report to the APs and president. That's about it.

We had district meeting on Thursday and we all felt like it was really good. Basically, I assigned each one of us a little topic (repentance, exercising faith, bringing forth good works and praying always and how each ties into missionary work) and then I tied it all into Alma 26:22 and that if we do these things, we can get the blessings at the end. I suggest all of you read it - it's really good even for non-missionaries.

I can't say that there are any really big things that happened this week that make it really cool, but it's just the number of little cool experiences that we had - cool contacts, solid potentials, no one picking up our calls but after a while they call back and say that they can meet any time during the week, atd... There were many of those little things this week.

Now something cool, I think I said a few weeks ago that we were going to be having some big changes in the way that we will do missionary work, and the way that they're going to change over to this new way of working is by training people in the MTC with the new program. For the people who are already in the field, they're going to be having four day conferences where we learn all the new material and practice implementing it each night. Guess what? It's this week and only the leaders and trainers get to go. Since I've become a district leader, I get to go to this conference. Now, the really cool thing is that it's going to be in Bratislava! You can look all you want on the Czech map and you're not going to find it. That's right, I'm going to Slovakia! So, that's going to be really cool and I'm sure that I'll have tons to talk about next week. Elder Pearson is staying here and having another missionary whose companion is going to the training come up here for the four days. I really hope that I've showed Elder Pearson the city well enough so he doesn't get too lost.

I'm way excited for this next week and next transfer because amazing things are going to be happening! Everything is pointing in this direction and I am working my hardest to get there. I read a really cool chapter from the Book of Mormon the other day. To me, it's all about missionary work and what every missionary should desire. If you want to read that, it's Alma 29.

I love you all very much, and I desire the things that Alma desired, but sadly I cannot say that I have as much faith as he had, so I'm still working. :-)
Starší Monk

Už je Střídání? Jak to?

Dear Family,

How is everyone doing? It's been a while since I've heard from a few of you. I'd just like to say that this week was a ton better! We had member lessons for the first time this transfer, we had progressing investigators, and we had people to church! I know for some people in some other missions, these aren't hard things, but here they are. Anyway, million times better.

One of the really cool experiences this week was with a guy named Saša (Sasha). A couple of weeks ago, probably three or four, I was looking through the phone and was calling some people up, and there were two really strange entries that were entered as "P F __(name)__." Usually an entry starting with "P" means potential, but "F" means former. A potential former? What's that? I was curious, so I called. I was surprised to hear a guy pick up, but even more surpised to hear the guy say that he was Saša. I could have sworn that Saša was going to be a girl. Wasn't, but he seemed really cool and agreed to meet with us sometime, but he didn't know his schedule. Then a few days later, I called again, and he said that he could be at our place at 3:35. I was really confused to hear that because that's strangely specific, but I said okay and that gave us about an hour. The guy came and he was really awesome. Turns out that he's not Czech, but he lives and works here. He's originally from Bulgaria. The guy is such a computer nerd, kind of like me. He works making servers and server space for the Internet. Anyway, it turns out that he speaks really good English too. So we spoke with him in English, talked a little about our message, about ourselves and about why he stopped meeting with the missionaries before, to which he said that he didn't know. That made me curious, so I went and looked in the area book and saw that he had a record for one lesson, and then a drop saying that he's never in contact and that he can never meet. Well, that definitely isn't the case anymore. Turns out that he had gone to Bulgaria for a half year and that's why he was out of contact. Obviously he had forgotten to tell the missionaries. I also found out from the record that he had been found in April of last year, so it's been quite a while. Also, the last time he met with the missionaries, he brought his friend Ondra and he also had a progress record, but also only one entry/lesson. So it's really cool to see that the Lord brings people to you sometimes.

So we met with Saša this last week after he had a little vacation of two weeks in Bulgaria, and he brought Ondra to his lesson again! I was actually going to ask him about his friend Ondra and if he had any interest. Seems that the Lord already knows. Our lesson went really well and we taught them a lot, but probably the best thing is that we taught the lesson and it didn't seem to decrease how much they saw us as their friends. After the lesson, we went right back to talking about computer games, if they have girlfriends or not (which neither of them do) and other such random things. I just love that I can be a missionary and also be a friend to these people. That may be one of the most rewarding things I've felt on my mission so far, but they also did miss church even though they had said that they'd come. Oh well, they'll come next week.

Just a fun little experience that we three had this last week is one day we came out to the town square because Elder Pearson needed to prepare for a meeting with the branch mission leader, and we didn't want to be stuck at the building doing nothing so we'd rather be contacting people on the náměstí. While we were there, no one would listen; there just weren't that many people because it was a Saturday. Really, weekends die here. Completely backward from America, it seems. Anyway, so we came back to the place where Elder Pearson was sitting on the sloup (monument to the Trinity - around the bottom you can sit on the base of it) and found that there were some old people sitting rediculously close to him. Oh well. So, we started talking to Elder Pearson - just talking for the sake of talking - and I kept noticing out of the side of my eye that the old lady that was sitting right next to Pearson was glancing at me and then at my tag over and over. I thought this a little peculiar, so I turned and said, "Dobrý den," and they looked really surprised. They started talking with me but I didn't really understand them. They kept talking and I could tell that they were trying to figure out what languages I knew. They asked me in German if I know German; they asked me in Italian if I know Italian; and they continued with a few other langauges which I can't remember off the top of my head, but they basically asked me about four or five different languages and then they seemed to give up and just spoke Polish with me. Wow... that fried my brain. I could understand better when I zoned out than when I concentrated on what they were saying. Anyway, we started conversing and more and more of them kept showing up. There were probably three at the beginning, but after a moment, there were probably around ten or eleven of them, all of them speaking to me in Polish. I'm here trying to speak Czech and there were a few of them that tried hard enough to understand my Czech and keep a conversation with me in Polish. So, they were asking all sorts of questions like who we were, and we told them that we were the Mormons and they immediately reacted to that in a really friendly manner and were saying things like, "Oh! It's the Mormons! You guys are everywhere!" and then there was laughing and more talking. They would ask me about where I was from, if I had a girlfriend, if I was a virgin (that one was kind of weird to get as a question from a bunch of old pepole), if I was allowed to get a girl from the Czech Republic, if I was here looking for a girl, why I looked so weird... the questions just seemed to go on and on, but I loved it because I hadn't had anyone so intrigued and excited to speak to me in a long time. Turns out that they were tourists, and that was pretty apparent. Then one of them said, "I want to get a picture of you," and all of a sudden all the others wanted to as well! Then they started to want to get pictures WITH us and so we were probably taking pictures for a good three or four minutes with a bunch of them going the entire time. That was just kind of nuts, but it goes to show me, once you know one of the Slavik languages, you can probably pick up the others pretty easily.

As you probably can't tell from the title, it says "It's already transfers? How so?" Yes, it is transfers already. I'm freaking out. I called Elder Kreitzer about an hour ago just to speak to him about it a little and he pointed out to me that at the end of this next transfer, I will have been out on the mission for an entire year. Isn't that crazy? I have no idea where the time has gone. Anyway, as I said in my last email, transfers aren't going to be as crazy as they have been in the past because they want us to stay in the same place as long as possible so we can get the most done. Anyway, this transfer, they're doing a lot of really cool things: they're changing the whole zone leader/district leader thing - doing away with that and changing it back to pure zone leaders and having a different companionship be district leader, they're reopening the Brno zone, and we're opening up two new areas! The new areas will be Pardubice, which is a new city that hasn't had missionaries for about two to three years and the other is another area in Ostrava, which can actually handle having more missionaries. Anyway, here's the news, I'm staying in Olomouc and Elder Page is leaving me! He's going up to Ostrava to be in one of the old areas. He's going to be follow-up trained by Elder Blair, who's really awesome. Elder Page is going to have an awesome time with him. As I said, I'm staying here in Olomouc and I'm going to be follow-up training Elder Pearson from Elder Page's group. Elder Pearson (the one that's already here in Olomouc) is feeling intruded upon and feels that he needs to declare his dominance as the older/better Pearson. This should be interesting having two "Elder Pearsons" in the same area. Also, I'm going to be the district leader here in Olomouc now that they're splitting up the responsibility.

Anyway, that's about it for this week. Some of the members here said they were going to kill someone if I got transfered out. I'm not quite sure what I did to get them to like me so much, but I guess I did something right. Lucky for them (and for that un-named "someone"), I'm staying. So you will all still be hearing about the news here from Olomouc for at least two more months.

Love you all and I'm working hard for you,
Starší Monk

Another just... Normal week.

Dear Family,

I must say, I don't know why the work is going so slowly right now. Everyone is going slowly except for a few exception companionships. We were talking last night (the three of us) about how the whole Czech Republic is just spread too thin and I'm sure that it's the same for the rest of Europe. There just aren't enough missionaries here. We came to the conclusion that we need about twenty more missionaries and then we'd start be able to do some of the things that just aren't possible right now, but perhaps the Lord requires that we tough it out for the moment and then we will be blessed.

I don't know what it is, but recently I've been thinking a lot about how long I've already been out on the mission and thinking that I should know how to do mission work well enough that I can at least keep an area going but that doesn't seem to be the case - by the way, I've been on my mission for 10 months now - 8 in country. I know this that because Czechs ask all the time how long we've been here because we speak Czech so well; they love it.

The thing is, we speak to lots of people, I understand people, we have really good conversations and I bring the gospel into it in such a way that people are comfortable talking about it, but nobody is sticking! I think that this entire transfer has been a lot of trying to get anyone to stick. Luckily, a lady that we found at the beginning of the transfer and met with once is meeting with us again tonight. She's really cool. Her name is Jarmila and she was, literally, a thirty second contact because she was going somewhere, but she gave us her number and set up a time and place for us to meet without us asking for it. Then at the lesson she said, "Okay, what did you want to talk about?" She also brought her daughter. That was way cool. Why can't more of that happen? However, we've only met with her once because her work has her traveling a lot and she's been out of town for vacation for about a month and a half. That kind of thing I think I can wait out because there's some glimmer of potential, but when you look at the weeks and weeks of work without seeing any rewards or fruits, then it gets long and hard.

I'm sorry that I'm complaining. We just had a zone conference this last Friday and President Irwin shared with us the scripture in Alma where Alma the Younger was walking away from Ammonihah, discouraged because it seemed like no one had listened to him and no one wanted to accept the message of God, but then he was stopped by an angel. The angel told him that he was blessed and that he had much reason to rejoice. President added that Alma probably thought to himself, "What reason have I to rejoice?" and then he was told that he had MUCH reason to rejoice because he had been faithful in keeping the commandments.

Perhaps I'm not humble or patient enough. Or possibly it could be that I'm not hopeful enough to know that God will pull through in the end if I endure well now. We watched the Joseph Smith movie (the one they use in the visitor centers) with Libor yesterday. (By the way he's doing great - he's started blessing the sacrament and he passes every now and then. He's also awaiting very eagerly for the day that he can receive the Melchizedek Priesthood.) The part where Joseph was in prison and he says, "Oh God, where art thou?" pulled my heart strings really hard, but when the reply came, it came with more force than I think I've ever heard it. "My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment; and then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high;" (D&C 121)

I can easily say this is by far the hardest thing I've done in my life, but I have felt the love of God so much more. I know that He helps me, but He still wants me to work to the fullest of my capacities. It's very much like the first vision. When Joseph was seized by Satan in the grove, Heavenly Father did not free him until he had endured the adversary as long as he could. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. It's the same in spiritual means - if we receive great light or tribulation, then we can expect to receive equal trial or blessings.

I love you all so very much and I feel sometimes that I'm not doing the best I can out here and that I'm letting you all down. I can say that my spirits are getting down but I know that some awesome things are going to happen this next week and things are going to start heading up hill. Elder Pearson's area (Olomouc North) hit zero investigators this past week as their baptismal date and only investigator surprised us and said that he's moving to Ostrava. We have missionaries there and he will continue to work and progress in the gospel, but it was a bit depressing to hear that he'd be leaving. As for our area, we at least have lots of contacts with good potential, but we need to get them moving. I worry for Elder Page and how this is going to affect the beginning of his mission experience: to see so little success and to think that we're going to be able to work miracles here. I know that he will be fine and will become an amazing missionary, but I'm feeling that I'm failing as a missionary and trainer, for his sake.

I would really appreciate it if you could all put in a prayer for me and this city - even for the entire country. The work is moving very slowly here and there are many missionaries that are getting discouraged.

Dad asked if I'm going to be moved this next transfer, and the answer is that I probably will not. The reason is that when President Irwin came in, the brethren told the new mission presidents that they're going to revamp a few things, one of them being that they want to try keeping missionaries in the same area as long as possible so that they have the greatest possible impact, so President said that it will not be completely impossible for a missionary to stay in the same area for three or even four transfers. This also means that we may not change companions every transfer, so I may also follow-up train Elder Page. How's that for strange? However, there will have to be some changes because of the missionaries going home and new missionaries coming in. Also, I heard a rumor that they're going to open up another area in Ostrava and it's well needed. So some lucky fellow is going to be blinded in there.

I'm feeling sufficiently weak now, so I think that the Lord will be able to sculpt me now. I'm ready for the pain but I'm also willing because I know that I will come out better than when I came in. If I've learned one hard thing here on the mission, it's to not see our hardships as something to complain about but as something to love because we know that by those means, the Lord changes us into the greater and more prepared beings that we need to be so that we can return to be in His presence one day.

I love you all so much,

Starší Monk

Ahoj z Prahy! (Hello from Prague!)

Dear Family,

Sorry that I didn't write last week. I thought that I did, but I guess I didn't. It's okay, nothing really happened, sadly. We got our toilet completely fixed finally - the "last" time that we fixed it, it was kind of weird because the tube that we bought didn't really fit the threads on the toilet, so we ended up forcing it on. The tube was metal and the fitting was plastic, so... yes, it dripped a little, and it was getting progressively worse over the next week, so we took the tube and the fitting part (which is part of the module on the inside of the toilet) to the store and we told them that they didn't fit. They ended up playing around with like four or five different fittings and tubes until two fit together. That, by the way, is ridiculous - if it takes that many tries to get some pieces that fit together, there's a problem. Anyway, the toilet is perfect now. :D

Jínak (in other news - literally: differently), this week is very strange. As you've probably guessed, I'm in Prague! There was an emergency exchange in Olomouc, and now I'm here. Very strange, huh? Turns out that one of the missionaries from Plzeň had to go home early so he could start school, so there was a hole there, and President Irwin felt that it needed to be filled. So he searched the entire mission, and it was said that he thought about every single different missionary to see if they would be the one that would work the best there. Turns out that Elder McGowan was the one that he felt had to go there. So... the real news, I'm in a threesome, AGAIN! Isn't that ridiculous? Elder Anderson (one of my old zone leaders and now AP) says that I probably have a record on that: four out of five transfers on my mission have had a threesome in some way, shape or form. Crazy. I've now had nine companions in five transfers. Yes, that is crazy.

Anywhosers, that doesn't answer why I'm here in Prague. Let us start at this last Monday. Elder McGowan and Pearson were in Prague to get Elder Pearson's visa renewal, because it's that time for him, but it turned out that they went almost in vain because they weren't ready yet. So, President Irwin pulled McGowan into his office and spoke to him for a while and basically popped the news on him that he was going to be moving to Plzeň that Wednesday. Then he pulled Elder Pearson into his office to pop the same news, but on the flip side to him. Anyway, they came home and then decided to pop the news on us. That was nuts. So our Monday was kind of shot and thrown off because we were all pretty confused about what the heck was going on, even though I've been through this once already.

Then comes Tuesday. We actually had a pretty normal working day, in Olomouc South, but we didn't have the best of weather, so it didn't turn out so well - all the Czechs were unhappy that their nice weather was taken away from them.

Then on Wednesday morning, at 7:30 or so, Elder McGowan caught his train to Plzeň and that was the last that I saw of him, until today, which I will explain later. (This week truly has been crazy.) Then we came home, got ready for the day, and then we went to Zlín because the other Elders had planned on an exchange that day, and they couldn't cancel it, so we went, and Elder Pearson worked with Elder Tall (the elder companion - also training) and I was stuck with two greenies! How's that for fun? Anyway, it was really nice being back in Zlín, but I now see how tiny that city is. We stayed there for the night because we were having a full-day exchange and then we left the next day.

Thursday, we got home around noon, worked in our city for about an hour, and then we had to go to Prostějov, where most of the members from the Olomouc branch live, for branch council. We went there and decided to see an inactive member before we went over to the meeting and that went really well. He's really cool and seems to have a really good testimony. The only thing that keeps him from coming to church is that he has no transportation to get to Olomouc and he can't take the train because he's afraid that he'll get beat up by gangs. Seems to be a pretty true story because his son attested to it as well. We then got home late, and started working, but there just didn't seem to be anyone outside that was willing to listen to us. So, another hard day where we basically weren't in our own city all day.

Then on Friday we were in Brno! They were having zone leader conference and since we're with Elder Pearson, we had to go but we couldn't stay for the meeting, so we went on exchanges with a companionship from Brno, because their area is having a little bit of trouble there. I went on an exchange with Elder Vivona, and we had some good conversations with people, even though it was raining, but not much else really came of it. Later, we got home around 5:00pm and then started working in our own city again, but yet again, another hard day where no one wanted to listen.

Strangely enough, Saturday we got to work in Olomouc! Weird huh? It was kind of weird working in Olomouc for basically the first time in the week and thinking, "Oh, it's Saturday." Yeah, that sucks. We worked hard that day, even though it was still really gross weather and no one really wanted to talk, but we just kept strong arming it and working hard, knowing that something had to happen. Basically, for me, there was a kid that was riding past us in the park on his bike and was staring really badly, and I said "hello" to him, and then he seemed really confused. We kept walking and he kept riding, but a few seconds later I could hear him turn around. He came up and rode along side us, and we started talking. He really liked that we spoke English, because he wanted to practice his English and said that it would be a good experience for him. We kept talking and I spoke about why we were here and he didn't have the greatest interest, but I tied it back into the fact that he could practice English with us and he seemed willing to meet with us again. I don't particularly like using English as a hook to get people to meet but if that's what it takes to get someone to listen, then I'm willing to use it. So, there's a potential in the bag. I'm going to call him probably today or tomorrow.

Then we had a normal Sunday - church, studies, work, calls. We had a bench lesson in the park because it finally started to be sunny outside, but the guy was very intent on holding onto the Catholic church even though he didn't know why. He didn't know anything about his beliefs, but it seemed to be the only thing in his life that he could depend on, so he was very intent on holding it.

So, now we're at today - we're here in Prague again because Elder Pearson's visa didn't go through! So, did I scare any of you at the beginning making you think that I was the one that was emergency exchanged? I tried to, but if I didn't, I guess it was a joke made in vain.

So, this week has been stressful, long and I don't feel like I've been in Olomouc very much. That's fine though, I know that this week we're going to be in Olomouc all week, except for today and Friday when we're in Brno again for Zone Conference. We should have good weather too, so the Czechs should be happy. :D

Look forward to the blue skies because they're much more beautiful after you've endured the gray storm clouds. :)
Starší Monk

PS - as for all of you that I didn't write individually this week, I'm sorry because I'm still limited on time this week even though I'm in Prague on a mission office computer. :(

This is my greenie: Elder Page.
He's checking out some features on his camera or something.

Elder McGowan.
You'd be surprised how often he makes this face.

This is our new third wheel!
Say hello to Elder Pearson. :)

The view from my bathroom window a few days ago.
Isn't it pretty? I thought that I'd share it.

Já nevím to co se stalo! To Explodoval! (I don't know what happened! It exploded!)

Dear Family,

As you can probably tell from the subject, I've got quite the story to tell you all. We started off the week working really hard and looking forward to some really cool things that were going to happen. Just a glimpse at the beginning of the week: we had three new investigators by the time that Thursday came around and we had only taught five lessons. That's really cool. One of our investigators' name is Saša (Sasha - yes that's a guy's name here) and he's really cool. We found him in the phone so we decided to call him and when he met with us we found out that he had met with the missionaries about a year ago and doesn't know why they stopped meeting with him. I didn't think too much of that other than I needed to find his record and find out what happened. So he said that he'd like to meet with us again and that we could probably do that later in the week, so we were super stoked for that - Someone that wants to meet with us! Sadly, the other two new investigators were dropped because they didn't come to their next meetings. That seems to be the trend right now.

So anyway, back to the subject. Come Wednesday night, we prayed and went to bed like always, however, at about five in the morning (one and a half hours before we were supposed to get up) I woke up and heard a really loud and strange hissing noise in the house. I was really tired so I just lay there in bed listening to it for a moment. (By the way, something really strange has happened here on the mission - from about day one, I've become a pretty light sleeper... I can't say that I particularly like that.) So after about three or four minutes of listening to this noise, I got curious enough to get out of bed, even though I just wanted to sleep. I just followed the noise and realized that it was coming from the bathroom, so I headed in that direction. When I put my foot down into the hallway that leads to the bathroom, however, I didn't find tile first, I found... SNAKES! No, I'm just kidding, it was water. Being still half asleep, I didn't really think much of it other than, "Oh look, there's water on the floor. Is there usually water here?" I kept going and got into the bathroom and found water flying everywhere and then I kind of woke up and thought, "Oh... there's something wrong here." I found out that the water was coming from the direction of the window (and we keep all the windows open at night because it gets hot and stuffy) so I thought that it was raining rediculously hard outside and so I slammed the window shut, but when the water continued just the same as before I shut the window, then I got really confused. (Also, realize that I was still pretty sleepy and stupid at this point even though I was getting sprayed and soaked with water.) So I looked down and realized even closer that the water was coming from the direction of the toilet! So I put my hand over the top of the toilet to see if the water was shooting out of the bowl, but strangely enough it wasn't. This whole situation got more and more confusing by the second. I had no idea really what was going on. Finally, I saw that the little tube running from the wall to the toilet was the source of the water so I immediately tried grabbing it to stop the water, my brain still not working, and then turning the little knob next to the wall to try and shut off the water. That didn't work, so I yelled to Elder Page to get him up. I yelled about two or three times and then he came in really asleep, like, "Hi? Oh, there's water everywhere. Isn't that sumthin?" As soon as he finally found out what was going on, he and I started running around the house trying to find where we could shut the water off. Elder Page found it and we shut it off. By this point, it was about 5:15 and we had around two to three centimeters of water on the floor. Once the water was shut off, we started cleaning up the water. We tried using the dust pan, but that didn't really work well enough and I wanted to get back to bed, so I ended up just using one of my towels and squeezing it out into the tub. We got the whole thing cleaned up in about thirty minutes, and then we looked at the damage to the toilet that caused this whole problem. Turns out that the tube running to the toilet at this time had completely split through and was sitting in two pieces - the one attached to the toilet, and the other to the wall. We took it off and decided that we were going to go and buy the new part later that day, but as for the moment, we went and tried to sleep again, but we were all wet, so it was a little miserable.

Later when I asked Elder Page what he thought when I woke him up, he said that he had two ideas. The first one was that our alarm clocks hadn't gone off and that we'd overslept, so I was yelling to him to wake him up, but then he heard the hissing noise, and assumed that I was making bacon for him! What good ideas. When I woke up, I was just really confused. When we woke up, we realized that we didn't have any water so we we had to go to the other elders' apartment so we could use the bathroom and shower and stuff so we just took everything that we'd need for the morning, including our study materials so we could just stay there and study. Later, we went out and bought that tube and tried installing it, but we didn't have a wrench that was big enough, so we had to hold off on it and we slept at the other elders' apartment that night so we'd have a place to shower in the morning. Sadly, the next day we weren't be able to fix the toilet either, because we had a conference in Brno for all the trainers and their greenies (greenie bootcamp) where we basically had a little talk with president about how we can do this job and also to discuss any problems that we may have with our greenies - communication, working, studies ATD... Also, we had missed our bus to Brno by about one minute, so we ended up being thirty minutes late rather than the forty-five minutes early that we had planned just because of the timing of the buses and other stuff, so we ended up stalling the conference for thirty minutes. Then at the end of conference, we missed our bus home too! So we ended up waiting for the next bus home, which was about two hours later. That was a pain, but it taught us a good lesson: don't be late. =\

Anyway, our toilet is fixed now and we're back in Olomouc so everything is in order and we're doing great! This week is going to be awesome, and we're really going to get Saša moving toward baptism. He's really cool and Elder Page likes him too because he speaks English.

I love you all and know the Lord blesses us when we do our best, even despite our little problems like exploding toilets.
Starší Monk