Dear family,
Quite the week! I think the simplest way to share it would be a day-by-day rundown.
Tuesday: Very long! We spent a long time contacting, and then we had a lesson with a member at the very outside edge of Třebíč. Our member lesson went a little long, and so we were kind of late to English class. I don't think I've mentioned my English class to you all yet, but I teach the "conversation class" while Elder Gilmore teaches the beginners' class. My class is a difficult bunch. The point of our English classes is to make it a finding opportunity and to share a spiritual thought, but no members come to my English class and so have getting my group of very nice, but disinterested atheists to hear much. I'm working on revamping my plans to help them :)
Wednesday: Taught a first lesson with a woman named I V! She's someone from Elder Gilmore's English class. She's very nice, and has some interest in the Gospel. She didn't come to church this Sunday, but we hope she comes next week. She's my first new investigator!
We taught M today also. As I mentioned last week, she didn't make her baptismal date for last Saturday, but we had a great lesson on Jesus Christ and how He is central to EVERYTHING about the Gospel. Her new baptismal date is 8 March.
(Funny side story about Wednesday: apparently there was an ice hockey final between the US and the Czech Republic during the Olympics that was a prime time event here. All of our appointments cancelled because of it! We were very disappointed to hear that the US won.)
Thursday: We had Zone Conference in Brno! It was a great training. It was a joint conference with the Brno and Slovak zones, and so there were a lot of missionaries (and a lot of pizza). The McConkies gave me a huge, 300-g Milka bar for my birthday. I attached a picture of it (next to my Preach My Gospel, for scale).
Friday: TODAY WAS A MIRACLE. First thing, we taught a lesson with Sister Š and Z P (a member who basically led our lesson in the greatest way possible). We invited Sister Š to set aside money as a practice for tithing, live the law of tithing after her baptism, and commit to a baptismal date, but SHE FINALLY AGREED TO! Tithing has really been the last thing she needs to agree to do before she can be baptized, and she finally did!
The second thing happened on our way back into town after the lesson with Sister Š. We were trying to talk with everyone we could and we came to this one woman. We were talking to her for a little bit, and then this really huge-looking guy came up and starting trying to escort her away! I didn't understand what was actually happening, but it seemed to me like we were about to get jumped for trying to talk to this lady, and it didn't seem to me like Elder Gilmore was helping the situation at all because even though the lady was getting escorted away by this huge guy he kept trying to give a card to her! What the man actually wanted, though, was for us to talk to his friend, J, down a little ways who had heard us earlier and wanted to know what our message was (and so that poor woman was just getting harrassed). We ended up talking to J for about an hour! At first he seemed to want to trip us up with his questions, but as we talked to him his attitude seemed to change because he really wanted answers to his questions and no one else seemed to have been able to answer them before. He wouldn't give us his phone number, but we left him with a card and a copy of the Book of Mormon and so we really hope that he calls us back.
Saturday: A good day! I called potential investigators on the phone for the first time today. I was really nervous to do this because members are a lot more understanding of how badly I speak Czech, and the first time (of two times) that someone picked up I forgot how to even say "Hello." It was super uncomfortable until the call was ended by either connection problems or some connection problems that the lady I was talking to fabricated. I tried calling some more people after this with no success, and we had time for one more call. I couldn't pick who to call on the list of potential investigators, and then Elder Gilmore said, "You are a spiritual person!" (because President McConkie says this to us constantly). Right when he said that a name popped out to me, I called him, he picked up, he was interested to meet, we have a meeting set up for tomorrow, and I even managed to speak some Czech! ANOTHER MIRACLE!
Sunday: Another good day. Church was hard to understand, but what really made the day was our visit with a recent convert, Sister M. She hadn't made it to church that day because she was sick (she has cancer), but she still took the time to make marble cake for us to take home. She's so kind. I certainly wouldn't have taken time to make someone cake if I were in her situation!
That about sums up the week, except for the fact that it has been bizarrely warm and sunny this week! All the members have mentioned what strange weather we're having, but it's nice. Spring is coming early, it seems!
There was probably a lot of unnecessary detail in this letter, so if it was too long and you didn't read it this is the summary: MIRACLES! IT'S WARM! And that's about the short form of it :)
Love,
Elder Boyce
No comments:
Post a Comment