Hot dang, I have the best family in the wooooooooooorld.\
This week has been much better. Well, I guess it's only been 4 days since I last emailed you...but it's been good still. Our Thanksgiving dinner consisted of Czech food (mushroom spaghetti?! i suppose that's just a czech twist on italian food... it was actually really good) and Elder Blair's apple pie. I'm not gonna lie, I was missing my dear friends from the sweet potato family, but it was definitely enough. We also had a rousing game of football--it's interesting playing football as a sister missionary with elder missionaries...Sister Laws kept asking me if two-handed touching is in the white handbook. Haha.
Petr dva (2) is an interesting fellow. I think he's golden potential, but we're hitting a little bit of a rocky spot. I forgot to mention that last week he prayed for the first time with us--but not after a lot of encouragement and me saying a prayer first. Looking back, I can't decide how sincere the prayer was. At the time I definitely thought it was, but he hasn't prayed since because he says he's not sure that God really exists. He says he needs to believe in him before he prays about it, rather than praying to see if it really works. We spent a while talking about prayer with him and what it is, etc, but I think we're going to keep teaching him other things and see if his desire to know increases. The funny thing is, he says he really wants to know--that he really has that desire to find out whether or not God's there. He just wants to take things slow. But I feel like taking things slow just makes one's fears bigger and prolongs potential happiness. It's not like we want him to jump in the baptismal font or anything--we just want him to try a prayer or two, ask a simple question--"Boze, jsi tam?"
There was a baptism we invited him to on Saturday, but he'd already planned to come to church on Sunday and didn't want too much too soon. I prayed really hard about him the night before the baptism, after our meeting, seeking guidance. I felt that if we could get him to the baptism he'd feel the spirit there and things would improve for him. I devised a plan to make him cookies and stop by on our way to give him one last chance to come. I really felt good about the idea...but he wasn't even home. No dice. Isn't it interesting, learning to follow the spirit? Liba (I hope you remember her!) is getting baptised on Dec. 5th (happy little birthday present, right?!) in Brno--I'm wondering if we could get him there with us. It's a 2-hour trip each way, but maybe he'd enjoy it.
But we did bring another investigator with us--Olga. She's a new investigator--single, 35 year-old mom w/ 3 kids. She's Catholic, but met the missionaries last summer and planned to meet with them and ended up losing their phone number. We've taught her twice already. Can I just say that the Primary room is a beautiful thing?? She brought her sons to both lessons, so we taught her there and let him play with things during the lesson. I'm not exactly sure how much she got out of the lesson, but she sure got a lot out of seeing how comfortable he felt there.
The baptism was interesting. I can sympathise w/ Bek's email about the baptism, because that's just how it is here too. It's mostly missionaries that come, a few investigators maybe, and a few members who are feeling really benevolent. We all met together and caught a bus to take us 30 minutes to some swimming pool that you can rent out. Then, we waited for another half hour outside because the people who'd booked it before us weren't quite finished yet. Inside there was a little bit of chaos, but hey--the man covenanted and began a new life and that's the beautiful part. She really liked the feeling there, despite how small and informal it probably seemed. Afterwards the man, Max--a refugee from Russia who speaks perfect English and is hilarious--bore his "testimony", which was mostly condemning the Elders who served in Yekaterinsburg Russia 5 years back (holler Briegle!!) because they only contacted young women, even though he had sincere interest in the Church, and condemning the Catholic church because he thinks they do everything incorrectly. Luckily the Elder who translated it into Czech used a gentler interpretation. Afterwards Max came up to me--"Was my testimony okay? Do you think President Monson would have liked it? I thought so--he really likes stories and such, so I thought he'd approve of it." Haha!
Sunday, both Petr and Lumir (the less-active man) came to church. Petr said he enjoyed the meeting, but left after the first hour, saying that there was a lot in his head and that we couldn't come visit him that night because there was a lot for him to think about, but maybe next week. I'm not so sure what that means, but we'll deal with that on Friday, I suppose. Lumir stayed for all 3 hours. When we arrived, he was sitting all alone in the back corner, somewhat disdainful, so I sat next to him. During sacrament, he turned to me and said--"Have you ever thought about how, since this is supposed to be the body of Christ, we've probably eaten him up several times over again already?" He's a really funny guy. I think Sunday School was really good for him--all about having the gospel written on your heart. But NO ONE SAT NEXT TO HIM DURING PRIESTHOOD!!! ASHKDFALJ;LAWKEJF;LKASFD! WHO ARE WE AS CHURCH MEMBERS?! I mean REALLY, people! There were people he knew there--his HOME TEACHER who is also the ward mission leader didn't even sit by him. After church I went up to his home teacher and mentioned that Lumir could really use his help now. I don't think he liked that all too much. But Lumir booked it after that and I barely got to say goodbye to the poor fellow. Yes, he needs to get over himself. But it'd help him if a few people were there to hold his hand as he did. There's a very sick lady in the ward who has a burning testimony but can't make it to church--we're taking him to visit her with us on Friday, hoping that he'll lose himself as he thinks of others. He wasn't super keen on the idea, but we didn't really give him much choice. He's the type that resists but is also secretly flattered that we want him there.
So that's most of that. We meet with Pavel on Wednesday. Who knows what that'll bring. We have plans to talk with 5 or 6 people about baptism this week--pray for us!
Danielle--your letter is still...a work in process, being carefully crafted in my thoughts. Don't be mad. Today we've set aside time to write letters and yours will be first.
Also, an investigator from Jicin (where sister laws served before) is in love with her. He told a member there yesterday. Haha! She is just too beautiful for her own good! She is also an accounting major, with maybe a semester left, and always points out big 5 firms when we see them--I think we've seen 4 of the big 5 here in ostrava. Maybe she'll come back and be an accountant in the CR--who knows? She's really great though.
I think Petr would really like the DVD--he has a laptop, so he'd be able to watch it on there. Go for it, I say. He is moving to Canada officially on March 1st (shout out to Gar Beecher--what a good day, right?), and he will be staying there for a year...which means that we are going to be taking a family trip to see him once I get home and then you can take a good look at him. Weeeee!
But that's basically life. It's REALLY snowing now--REALLY! Don't worry, I have a nice down coat, boots, scarves, gloves, hat--I'm surprised at how I dressed at home when it snowed, looking back. I was an idiot! You can never have too much clothing on when it's snowing out. Beks, sweat a lot of me on that bike, PLEASE.
Thanks for the report on HP. I'm already looking forward to it. Action-packed, magic-packed, sounds like my style.
I love you SO SO much! I will let you know about calls asap!
cau!
s. dean
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