Week 8 in Ostrava: The beginning of the end of the beginning

I'm looking down at the beginning of the end of the beginning. In a few short days, I'll not be a greenie anymore and my companion will be going home. I'll of course have a new companion to work with here in Dubina, but things won't be the same from that point on. The work progresses, the people are receptive, and on Sunday we had about 60 people at sacrament - a record in the history of Ostrava. We've also got two more baptisms this weekend, two men named Tomaš. The first Tomaš has wanted to be baptized for months but his parents haven't given him permission. Now that he's 18, he's decided and will be going ahead this week. He's also asked me to baptize him. :D I'm excited. Our Tomaš is a student of about 21 who has a really solid testimony. He even helps us teach one of his friends sometimes, which is really neat to watch. He can just read something and understand it almost perfectly. So, we give him a lot of reading assignments and he rolls ahead with everything. I'll post pictures of that baptism next week. In the meantime, I have pictures from the last few weeks to post. They're too big to post one by one, so I'll zip them up and send them home with captions.

So, as far as the particulars of this past week, a lot has been the same with teaching and finding. We went on a vylet on Saturday to Štramberk (an ancient town about 40 minutes south of Ostrava) and brought along one of our new investigators, Renatka. Renatka has been coming to english for a while, but she had a down week last week. For the Spiritual Thought I bore testimony to our purpose in life and to the plan for us on the earth, and she started to tear up. Elder Auger talked to her about things and set up to meet with her to talk about her purpose, something that she's been looking for for a long time. Martin, the boy who stopped us on the street a week or so ago, keeps meeting with us regularly and has a lot of great questions. He's started bringing a friend, Lucia, who speaks english really well and who loves meeting with us too. Apart from that, we've taught a number of members, contact a lot of our street contactacts, and stay busy with everything overall.

For me personally, this week has been really hard, especially the last few days. I've been hitting a wall with the language recently, especially with people talking to me and me, for some reason, not understanding what people are saying to me. They'll say something and when I don't understand, they react as if it's a bit of a shock. Kind of frustrating. Even so, I'm still forging ahead. I'm feeling like I'm paying the price right now for success in the future. It's said that the greatest battles are fought on the battlefield of the soul, and that every external success comes first from an internal one. Consequently, I'm certain that the coming weeks and months will be full of even greater growth, progress, and blessings for myself and especially for the people I'm serving around. I'm making it a policy to contact on trams and when travelling as much as possible (somewhat difficult with people getting on and off all the time). At the very least, service and example go a long way in getting people interested in our message. Just today as my companion was shopping he was able to talk to the sales lady for a few minutes about who we are and what we do. Even last night we had a good conversation with a group of men who were interested in copies of the book of mormon. There are people everywhere that we can serve, we just have to keep our eyes open.

I hope you all get a chance to do something nice for somebody this week. Even just talking to someone sitting on a bench for a few minutes can make a lifelong difference to someone. I see that every day I'm here and know that sometimes that's all it takes with people. Good luck this week!

Brent

P.S. I'm glad I got to go to Nate's farewell. :P Haha, Christie and Mikayla are the best. I'm glad they're still hauling me (cutout Brent) all over the place. :)