Monday, July 9, 2012

Week 21 End of Transfer

Draha Rodino, [note: Dear family]

It's been a good week. Very very hot, but good. We had some better lessons with our investigators. Our Jewish investigator is progressing slowly. He’s more open and specific with how he’s feeling. We taught him yesterday and he said at the beginning of the lesson that he’s had a lot of family members die in the last couple of years and it's been hard on him. He's feeling bitter about it I think. But it was perfect because we planned to start teaching him the plan of salvation. The lesson went well. He is reading in the Book of Mormon and praying which is great. He said the heavens are still closed to him answer wise so we are trying to help him recognize answers when they come. Great lesson though with a great member.

Another investigator is a guy that we met at Luzanky [note: park] a few weeks ago. I can’t remember if I talked about him already, but he’s great. One day we called him to check up on his reading and he was so excited. He said, "I read and there was so much action! I mean this guy named Lehi has to get out and then Nephi goes back and kills this man and they get things to take back. And Nephi has faith but his brothers choose money over faith...So interesting! There’s a lot of action..." seriously, his call made our whole day. He’s slowed down a little but we watched the restoration film this week and we're hoping he'll get back on track. In our lesson he thanked us so much for helping us to teach him to pray right. He said he loves to pray and is just so happy to know he's doing it right. Such a neat guy! We were talking about baptism with him and how important it is. Each lesson pretty much we talk about baptism with our investigators so that they know what our purpose is and stuff. The last time we talked about baptism we gave him a soft commitment-if you find these things are true will you be baptized...? But he said no. He said he doesn't think he can live by that. Well he started saying the same thing when we brought up baptism this time. He said that he doesn't think he can live the kind of life that we covenant to with baptism etc. But then something changed. He felt the spirit and suddenly everything we were saying made sense to him. He stopped arguing with us and said, "Of course if I know these things are true I will be baptized!” After the lesson we talked about how that was definitely not us but the spirit. The spirit taught him and it was more powerful than anything we could say or do.

We got another miracle this week when our Mongolian investigator appeared at the building with his entire family; his wife and two beautiful children. They don't speak much English, but the mom speaks Czech so we finally have an interpreter somewhat. The children are 12 (girl) and 14 (boy) and are beautiful. We watched Znovuzrizeni [note: Restoration] in Mongolian and afterwards they said they didn't understand much, but that it was beautiful and they loved it. We are excited to start teaching them. Also, a tender mercy is that this Mongolian man apparently had contact with the church in Mongolia when he did the electricity for a church building in his city. So neat! I will have to tell you his whole story another day. But we have a family! Their children came to sports day on Saturday and it was so fun. It was so so hot but we played soccer and volleyball and it was just a wonderful time.

Church was great. We had a large folkdance group from America come to church. They are the ones that do the summer folk festival in Bountiful and they stopped in Brno for the weekend. It was powerful to look out the window of the budova [note: building] and see this huge group of well-dressed YSA’s filled with light come walking down the sidewalk to the kapli [note: chapel]. They filled the chapel and ended up doing a musical number during sacrament meeting. We also had some beautiful talks from the members. There weren’t enough headsets for everyone for translation into English, and there was a mom and her daughter from the group sitting in front of me. During the first talk I felt like I should offer to translate for them, but I got nervous and just ignored it. I felt like I couldn't do it. But the feeling to translate for them just kept coming so after the first talk I gave in and offered. This lady was so happy and accepted immediately she was like, "Please, tell me what she is saying?" I was able to translate for her the entire rest of the meeting, no problem. I realized that I’ve been blessed to understand Czech and I need to use that to help others.

I am so grateful that I can serve here. I love Brno. I love my companions. I love my district. It’s been a great transfer. Who knows, maybe I will still be here next transfer but we will see. Love you all. Thank you for your emails.

Ale mam vas moc rada. [note: I love you very much] Have a beautiful week.

S laskou, Sestra Melissa Pysnakova

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