My Dear Dear Family,
Wooo! HAPPY THANKSGIVING!! You have no idea how much longer a week and a half is than a normal week between p-days! It was SO GOOD to hear from you! ALL of you!
Today we are in Olomouc to feast and football and be Americans in the heart of Europe together as a zone. Awesome. For some reason today I keep remembering last Thanksgiving and everyone gathered around watching the BYU game...let me know how it goes, I guess. :)
Last week was a pretty rough week, I'm not going to lie. Probably the toughest of my mission thus far--but I've had it pretty easy as a missionary, so I think it's mild compared to some. S. Laws and I had a lot of high expectations as the week began, but one thing after another fell through. For example, Linh had some family problems and left to go to Prague with his uncle and just barely contacted us yesterday, despite our attempted calls and texts. He doesn't really want to divulge much information, but he should be coming back next week. He was supposed to get baptised in 2 days...if someone could teach him all the commandments and take him to church 2 more times in the next 2 days down there in Prague that'd be a great help. Velka skoda!
Then, on Wednesday the CR celebrated the day they got their independence. We had the entire day lined up with meetings--the ENTIRE day--and EVERY SINGLE PERSON cancelled on us...or didn't show up at all. So we ended up having a long day of contacting and tracting. We tracted one huge building and no one even wanted to get past 'hello' with us. Once we had gone through 50 doors or so we realized why--we met some Jehova's Witnesses who lived there and told us that they go around knocking on doors and talking to people often in that very same building. AHHH! A lot of people here get us confused with JWs--and there are a lot of negative feelings towards them, largely because they don't believe in blood transfusions and this really seems to bother Czechs, among other things.
And to top it off--I locked both the keys and the phone inside our apartment as we were about to go out tracting some more. Leave it to me to do something like that. Our neighbors were really nice and helpful, but it ended up taking the entire rest of the night.
Then, on Friday we had a meeting with Petr! Woo! We love all Petrs!! We brought Bro. Huska with us from the branch. The lesson started out really great and spiritual. Bro H kind of talked his brains out, but he said some really great things that Petr needed to hear, I think. We ended the meeting by inviting him to come to church with us. Petr paused for a second, considering it, and Bro H. jumped in with "Well we really don't want to rush you or anything you could wait and come next week if you want and you don't have to stay for all three hours you can just come to the first one and really whatever it's up to you we don't want you to feel like it's too fast..." and on and on and I think it kind of scared Petr because he decided that, yes, it probably was too fast--even though he'd been about to agree the second before. So that was a big bummer too--after a week that seemed like a long series of rejections, it seemed like the final straw and Sister Laws and I ended up in a big heap of tears and humility on the floor in our apartment.
But good news: he is coming with us this Sunday.
And this week has been much much better.
One reason: Meet Pavel.
-20 years old
-studies geography and crisis management at the university--wants to spend his life doing humanitarian aid
-comes from a Catholic family
-likes scouts and camping, etc.
-not bad looking at all and can grow a fair bit of facial hair in 2 weeks
-a little quiet at first, but opens up as the conversation goes
I may have mentioned him before--we had a lesson with him 2 weeks ago, but he was one of the Wednesday cancellations last week. We gave him a BOM last time we met with him. This time we showed the Joseph Smith movie to him and brought along a member, Tomas, who was baptized 1.5 years ago and taught by the beloved Sister Austin (my MTC teacher). He's 19. When we asked him if he'd read in the Book of Mormon he told us that he'd started at the beginning, but it was kind of hard to understand, so he skipped to 3 Nephi and read about Christ coming. !! This is a big deal! Normally when people don't understand they just stop reading. He said he really liked the idea of Christ visiting the people in America too--it made a lot of sense to him.
Then we watched the video. We talked about living prophets. We asked him what he would want to know if he were given the opportunity to have a 20 minute meeting with God. He said he'd ask which church was true, why he was here on earth, what he should do in life. I KNOW! This kid is GOLDEN! So he said he'd pray about Joseph Smith and about everything and keep reading in the Book of Mormon and we have another meeting with him next week. The feeling was so great and overpowering as we talked with him--he's really sincere and looking for this! AAHHHH! This is what I love about being a missionary! So please pray for him. Okay, thanks.
Another reason: we met a less active man on Monday named Lumir. He's 36 and hasn't been to church in over 2 years but has been coming less often for far longer than that. He was really funny--he could have talked forever!--but also really lonely. I think he stopped coming because he didn't feel he belonged--at least that's the feeling I got because he kept talking about how everyone was so serious and boring at church and he felt like everyone just sat there and listened and believed whatever they heard. That is definitely not our branch. We invited him to come to church with us and he's still considering it--I was surprised at how interested he seemed in coming back with us, but he made it clear that, IF he did come it would be because he wanted to come, not because he felt bad for not coming in so long. He also told us that he doesn't drink coffee because he doesn't like the taste, not because it's forbidden--but I could tell there were still embers of a testimony inside him that had once been aflame. As we left he told me to tell the former branch president that he stopped coming because he didn't want to listen to those people talk anymore, not because he didn't want to be a member.
I couldn't help but thinking how different things could be for him if he'd had a dedicated home teacher. People just need to feel loved. I see a lot of good in him. Here in Ostrava there are officially about 150 members, but only about 30 come to church. In one quarter last year only 6% of the people did their home teaching. A correlation? I think so... People need to just take care of each other! We NEED each other!!
And other people that I will report on in future accounts. (I.e. an investigator that the elders were teaching but asked us to teach instead--she's 23 and lives really close to us. She already has said she wants to be baptised, but she works every Sunday...serving beer in a bar with her mom. Misha. It'll be interesting, that's for sure.)
Other thoughts:
Grandpa/Grandma can email me if they choose, but I will have to write them back. But sometimes I don't have a ton of time to read everything, so probably a normal letter would be better.
Big box will be fine. We'll probably be on a train or something, so I won't have to carry it much. Hearing about the size and weight makes me think about what could be in it far more than I should. :) I love you mom.
Also: the knighting pictures. So, even though everyone in the CR speaks Czech, it's easy to tell differences between the ways people speak in different areas of the country. In Brno, people are notorious for using a lot of slang that they don't use in other areas of the country (although I've heard some of it here in Ostrava too). There's a woman in the Branch who takes the missionaries up to Spilberk fortress once every transfer and quizzes them on their Brno slang--if you pass you are then knighted a Brnak/Brniacka. So I passed, and therefore was knighted--my first step towards taking the city by storm.
BEKAH!!!! AHHH! I can't believe you're actually in the country! I LOVED seeing your picture--YOU as a real missionary! Sometimes when I explain missionary work to people we contact on the street I tell people about you going to Taiwan and learning Chinese and people are all astounded. Don't worry, after the first few weeks things go by faster...before you know it the transfer will be basically over. Hold on to each moment--don't worry so much about what will happen next, but make each moment count as you live it. For reals. I just LOVE you! I am greatly anticipating your letter with more deets.
Gayann--OH MY! Can I just say, you are AWESOME?! I already got the package and you have no idea how much I needed to feel some love at the time--it was right on cue. Thank you thank you thank you--be expecting a letter from me in the mail around Christmas. :)
I keep seeing signs for the new HP movie--any good? Not that my mind's in babylon or anything....
Family, I just LOVE you! You're just so good to me and just plain good in general! I want to hear some news soon about a new baby in the family or something exciting like that...what are Chris and Corey even doing over there?? Sometimes it seems so foreign hearing about other lives--why don't you spend more time talking to strangers? Isn't that what everyone does?
I'm so so so grateful for you! I'm grateful for the truths that I've grown up learning my entire life--that I know without at doubt that God exists, that He knows me personally and cares for me, that He is involved in my life, and that I can choose who I want to be. Isn't that beautiful?
Let's tell everyone about it, okay? Okay.
Lurve,
Sestra Dean
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