Hey All,
So, today is Saturday and I'm sitting in a rather loud, obnoxious computer lounge. My companion and I are surrounded by several other cubicles where the local teenage population is hanging out, playing loud, obnoxious video games and talking trash to each other. Not exactly as ideal as the library where it's so quiet you can hear a pin drop and the librarian is an investigator. But, even still, it's been a great week and I'm really excited for Monday when we have Zone Conference.
This week we've taught a ton of lessons and have worked a lot with our baptismal date investigator, Iva. Iva is a great lady who is getting baptized because she knows it's right, not because it's easy or even because she agrees with us 100%. Since deciding to be baptized, her views, faith, and perspective has noticeably changed. She's more open, more insightful, and more teachable. Even still, however, there are a lot of points of doctrine that she's still trying to understand. What's so fantastic about her, though, is that she knows that eventually it will come and that, in the mean time, she received her answer from God that she needs to be baptized. So, she's preparing for that and continuing to progress and learn day by day.
Otherwise, we found a new investigator on Wednesday named Eva. We've already had two meetings with her, and she's very excited about what we have to teach as missionaries. She's so interested, that we're planning on extending her a baptismal date as well in the next week or so. It's so exciting being a missionary! Last transfer was very difficult. It was a powerful learning experience, however, and it helped to strengthen my faith. I learned a lot about the necessity of relying on the savior and about doing everything you can to push the work forward. Actually, the fruits of our labors started to pay off towards the end. The last week I was in Ostrava, we found a man named Daniel. He was so interested in what we had to say, he took every piece of literature we had home to read it. We left, and the new missionaries started teaching him. Surprisingly enough, he already has a baptismal commitment for the 5th of September. He will be the first man that I was involved in finding and teaching. So exciting!
Elder Machado, my companion, is a very wise missionary with a lot of experience. He actually will be concluding his mission here next transfer. In the meantime, however, I've been learning a lot about vision. I think I might have talked a little about vision last week, but it's starting to really take shape for me. We are shooting to meet the mission standards set for us right now, meaning we find 3 new investigators per week, teach 4 lessons with members, have 2 people actively pursuing baptism with dates, and speak at least 56 hours of Czech per week (we're shooting for 70 at the moment, though). It's incredibly difficult to do every one of those in a week, but it's becoming very apparent to me that when we sacrifice and are obedient, that god rewards our desires. I've wondered sometimes why we have the word "want" in our vocabulary. Why don't we just leave it up to God to determine the paths we should take? Really, it sounds silly typing it out because that's why we have agency - to make a difference in what is around us! All living things have some agency, but not like we do. Our agency is so powerful it sculpts the Earth we live on and influences the lives of everyone around us. I'm starting to realize that when we have righteous desires and are obedient to God (and we figure that out through speaking with God in prayer and learning about who He is through living and scriptural prophets) that we are entitled to ask for things. When we go looking for new investigators, we expect to find people. It's not just a certain degree of hope or desire, it's not just about putting your hook in the water and hoping someone bites. When you are so focused on your goal and mission, you are empowered to find who or what you're looking for. Families, individuals, anyone. We are trying to build our vision, focus, and faith to a point where we always are fully charged spiritually, so charged that those who are prepared start coming to us. It's been interesting this week, because when we go out finding with such intensity of focus and desire, we usually find new investigators within the first 5 people we talk to. It used to be that I had to spend hours with my companion, both of us talking to every person we could find. Now, it's much easier than it used to be. The difference isn't in obedience or working harder. It's not even working smarter. It's working with focus, vision, desire, love. I don't think there is a sufficient word in English to describe it, but that enthusiasm and sheer desire to achieve is becoming so strong in our companionship that when we set out to do something, it gets done. It's not left up to chance anymore, and it is all because of our reliance on God and our self preparation so that we are able to honestly ask God to enable us to fulfill our plans. That's why our Heavenly Father doesn't just send us planners with our days filled in. We get blank ones, and he expects us to govern ourselves. When we do that and rely on God for help, we can accomplish all our goals, desires, and dreams completely and without fear.
Well, it's been a great week. Lots of finding, lots of teaching. Today we went to a little village nearby to search for the ruins of a castle in the forest. We didn't find them, unfortunately, until we realized we were standing on them and that a villager had used the remains to build a retaining wall. It's such a different experience here, walking around where warlords have fought for centuries, where the houses are older than some parts of the United States, and where farmers really do have the option to recycle old castle remains into parts of their farms. I sent a memory card on Monday so the rest of my travels in Ostrava should be arriving soon. In the mean time, I'm trying to document as much as possible and help record my service as best as possible for all of you. In the mean time, I'll let you know how zone conference and the next week 1/2 of service goes (I won't be writing again until the 31st of August). Other than that, I love you all and hope you're happy, healthy, and finding out what your relationship with the Savior means to you personally, because when everything is said and done, it's those kind of relationships that last for eternity.
Thanks,
Elder Brent Anderson
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