October 4th, 2010

Ahojjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj!!

You will never guess what we did this morning... Sli jsme na houby!! --We went MUSHROOM HUNTING!! I KNOW! Czechs are just like little hobbits, it's great. And they all know their species of mushrooms... Especially Petr (he's the one who took us--he's the ultimate hippie, basically. Which is why we love him so much). I thought about Courtny a bit as we went, and how we bought those weird mushrooms at the farmers market in Boise, along with that plant viel--the baby ferns. Unfortunately, because it's getting cold, we only found poisonous mushrooms, so we couldn't eat any of them. But some of them looked EXACTLY like the mushrooms in Super Mario Bros. I mean really. It was weird. I guess it makes sense that they modeled the video games after things that were somewhat real...but I'd never really envisioned it before. Petr told us that all mushrooms are edible--but the ones that we saw were the kind of mushrooms you can only eat once.

Speak of Petr, he's doing GREAT. We talked with him last week about missionary work and asked him about telling his family and friends about his baptism. Initially, he was completely against it--"No way!" he told us. He even said it in English. But he's slowly been breaking down...Saturday night, apparently he couldn't sleep at all because he had a dream that he told his family and friends and that they all came to his baptism. So early Sunday morning he called his mom and told her. She wasn't too happy about it--he doesn't really understand because she's also the one who didn't like it when he was younger and got into a lot of trouble. I think she may warm up to the idea though. He talked to his dad too, who said he'd come. Weeeeeeeee! Seriously, this man is stellar. I'm kind of obsessing over him and how great he is.

Liba is doing okaaay, but not quite as well...we taught her the Word of Wisdom this week. I was nervous about this because nearly every time we've come she's told us how much she LOVES coffee. Initially she protested, but finally she said, "Okay, if you say so, Beely (remember, that's what she calls Sister Wheeler...apparently she called Sister Reese, who was here before me, Sally. Go figure), I believe that it's from God." And she agreed not to drink coffee any more. We brought her Caro to drink instead. The next day she drank coffee once, but we've talked to her about it and she's done better since. We're a little worried about her testimony...she's very childlike, so we're teaching her simply, but we really want her to have a testimony when she's baptized, instead of just baptizing her because we can. We've talked about pushing her date back some...we'll see. I tried to take a picture with her, but she said we needed to wait until we could get her cats in the picture, so maybe next week. :) Yesterday we visited her husband in the hospital with her. It all makes sense now. He's also very simple-minded, but less talkative. She just brings him tons of food and talks to him while he silently chews. It's a beautiful marriage. :)

So I need to tell you about a miracle, quickly, because we're running out of time. About a month ago, an Elder and I contacted a man from Tunesia. He's Muslim and his name is Ghazi. We talked with him about the BOM. I kind of figured he wouldn't be interested because Muslims tend to be wary of other books and the idea of other prophets since Muhammed, but he actually said if we could bring him the book in French he'd read it! Okay. So we did, maybe 2 days later. Unfortunately, though, he was going home to Tunesia for a while, so we wouldn't be able to meet with him until October. And he didn't have a Czech phone number, so we just planned to meet with him on Oct 1st. That day came about on Friday. With no way to contact him and remind him, we weren't so sure it'd happen. But he called US! So we met with him--he read the Book of Mormon TWICE since we gave it to him! He was worried about the things that God's forbidden us to do--especially because he's done a lot of them (he has a 4 month old daughter...and the woman has fled the country). He said he didn't want to do those things any more, that he knew it was a very good book, and that he wished there were a way for him to start over fresh. What do you know, THERE IS! So we told him about baptism and showed him a picture and he said, "Where can I go to get that done?" Here, in Brno! "When?" How about November 6th? "Okay." SO HE'S GETTING BAPTIZED!! WOOOO! And he seemed so sincere and humble...it's interesting how the most humble people are the ones with the roughest lives. Anyway, it's cool.

Also: any appropriate music will do. And HAND WARMERS! AND FEET WARMERS! AND ANYTHING FOR WARMTH--IT IS GETTING COOOOOLD HERE! They don't sell hand warmers. The easiest way to send money would be just to put it into my account. And you can also get me a CTR ring in czech for Christmas if you'd really like to... ZS is it in Czech. A gold one maybe. With white on the inside of the shield. If that's even possible.

And yes, E. Meiling's been in the CR for 2 weeks now. I just saw him last week--he's hanging in there. He said he FINALLY got a letter from Danielle. His health has been miraculous.

And now I must go write the Pres.

LOVE LOVE LOOOOOOOOOVE!

Sestra Dean