Hello Everyone! I've made it safely from the states to Prague, from Prague to Ostrava my first area, and survived a week here in the country. Whew! It's amazing here, absolutely fantastic. Strong members, wonderful people, great food, great elders and sisters - it's just incredible. Ahhh, it's so great to be here! I'll answer a few questions real quick first, then dive into a bit of a travelogue.
First, Sister Vankova is awesome. (She is a sister from Slovakia that served her mission at Temple Square and my parents got to know her). I got to call her when I met with the other trainers. A slovak elder said she was excited to get to meet me and gave her a call on his cell phone (we all have cell phones to get the work done better since it's so cheap over here). So, I talked to her for a few minutes.
Second, the people here are awesome - members or otherwise. People here love to talk, believe it or not. You just have to catch them at the right time and make it relevant to them. We talked to a few people our first day here and spent about an hour total between the three of them. Trams, buses, on the street - I don't know what I heard before my mission, but if you know how to talk to them they'll talk your ear off. A lot of the things I studied from Dale Carnegie help a lot. A lot a lot. Although my Czech isn't as good as it needs to be, I understand most everything and I'm putting together colloquial Czech very quickly. One great blessing I have received is my pronunciation. When I talk with people, my vocab and my grammar aren't always perfect. But my pronunciation sounds native, so I do have a leg up in that arena. Way exciting.
The trip was pretty uneventful. We all had seats right next to each other, so it was really hard for us to contact people. Someone bought us breakfast on the plane from salt lake and most people were members. There was a Hungarian and a woman from DC area that we talked to though, however they weren't particularly interested in the gospel. Same thing on the austrian airline, pretty much. I did get to speak German with a few of the people on the airplane, and made friends with some of them, but since my German gospel vocab is pretty limited, I couldn't make much headway. It's been kind of frustrating, since my colloquial german is way better than my Czech, and here in Ostrava they put a lot of things in German. Consequently, I understand a ton of the German and not as much of the Czech. But, I'm getting around alright. Restaurants, getting bus tickets, etc. is doable. It is a little frustrating here in Ostrava, because they are notorious for "Ostravsky" and speaking really fast. They have their own variation of Czech kind of. Lots of slang. Not everyone uses it, but it makes it difficult to discern whether I have a full vocabulary or not. I'm surviving though.
So, we got to Vienna, and I had to get some water. They don't have drinking fountains here, so we picked up some way overpriced water. Hence the $3.50 charge that you noticed on my debit card. We headed to Prague from Vienna, and started hearing Czech everywhere. Prague was much easier to understand than Ostrava, now that I think about it. We talked to a lot of people there, listened to some converations, and it was very gratifying to understand what they were saying.
President and Sister Slovacek are pretty much amazing and then some. Very loving, very active, they get things done and they are both very accomplished in the gospel and in-world experience. They run the mission very powerfully, with lots of structure that is missionary driven. "Teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves" is the rule, coupled with high expectations and lots of faith. The result of this is that we have 30 baptismal dates across the mission right now, we're up about 1400% from last year's Jan-Mar, and we're not just finding "a few" or seeking out "the one." Just since being here in Ostrava, we've picked up 3 new investigators and several potential investigators, placed several books of Mormon, and more. We talk to people all the time, and people are largely receptive. I think the crux of our success hinges around the love we have for the people, however. I'm still working on that, but Starsi Auger has a heart of gold when it comes to the people here, and it comes through in his teaching in amazing ways. How he speaks to people, how he cares about them more than about forcing a spiritual thought down their throat like some missionaries, it just opens doors. Most people think he's a native and they're shocked when they find out he's been here for almost two years (this is his last transfer) and I've been here for a week. It's great to be here in every way, and I'm very fortunate to have been blessed so much so far.
I've got to wrap things up, but know that I'm here, alive, well, taken care of (for Velikonoce - easter - we had about 2 kilos worth of food each, not even kidding; the members love us missionaries; we had so much that our district leader just about got sick on the way to our 4th "lunch" for the day; the night before, one of our investigators made us dinner and food too;)
Everything is great, the work is exploding, the people are listening, there will be many baptized, and I'm just getting started. Woo!
Love,
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