Flu Season and Miracles ( Week 6 in Olomouc, Week 41 in Czech )

This has been an incredible week, friends. Let's begin from the start.

I didn't mention last week that last Sunday I had a minor fever and chills. I didn't think much of it, perhaps some bad food or maybe a brief cough. Monday rolled around, I felt alright and so I said I was doing well in the letter. But, it was just the beginning. Light headed and feeling sick, we started hitting up appointments. First, a member family with some of their friends who happen to be investigators. We were ready to teach the rest of the Plan of Salvation, but they were stressed out because one of our investigators had been in a car accidenet and was sick, the member husband had also been in a car accident the night before and, with a massive headache, had a major seizure when we walked in the door, employment issues compounded the stress, and the investigators end up being completely unteachable. Not much teaching was done due to the stress, but we did give a blessing to Pán Dvořak (That's right, Mr. Dvořak, like the composer?). We're visiting again tonight, so we'll see what happens. We visited Josef Baliar and his family. His son was baptized recently, but it turns out the family was asleep except for two kids who were in the hospital with their mom, and Josef was up waiting for them. He was pretty tired and stressed as well, we could both feel sickness sneaking in, and to make matters worse, we later found out the kids have meningitis. This is good news, seeing as we've been working with them for months, and this also happens to be one of those families that has 15 people living in 2 1/2 rooms. Wow. I sometimes wonder how I could consider my lot to be hard in the past. We're working with them, helping them stay employed, at home, and healthy in the mean time, but wow - imagine getting that kind of a hit all at once.

That was just monday.

Tuesday was district meeting. We'd started feeling sick and were trying to take things a little easier to keep from getting too sick. District meeting was great, we were in touch with missionaries, investigators, taught lessons, and our current baptismal date, Martin, is plugging along perfectly.

Wednesday we went back to Prostejov, a city south of here, to teach a recent convert who's wife died last month and to meet with the gypsy king we've been teaching. Did I mention we teach a king? Yeah, we're teaching him and his family, and we've started teaching their son as well. He's found great faith in christ recently, and is very interested in the Book of Mormon. Plug for the book of mormon: It does have the answer to the questions of the soul and serves as the foundation for a particularly reliable testimony of Christ.

Thursday we went to Ostrava. It was incredible going back to my "home town", as it were. I've spent the most time there so far, and the people there are amazing. Renata, Eva, Daniel - they are such great examples to me. Eva made a cake for us and Renata gave us a bag full of the world's best svickova. Her food just makes this world a happier place. The day was spent working with people I've known and taught before, getting contact with the missionaries and people I know who could really progress. Finally, we had an interview with Tomas Pesl so he could get baptized on Saturday (which, he was!). We drove home, crashed, and, still feeling flu-ish, got ready for Zone Leader's council on Friday.

Zone Leader's council taught me that I can actually serve as a leader. I realized that my ideas, impressions, and contributions to the work are quality and useful. The spirit was so strong and the missionaries there were so good, I just left with that happy spring in your step that you always are looking for. Even know just thinking about it brings the spirit. We talked about leadership, the mission, Christ as a leader, and many many other subjects. I'm the youngest zone leader in the mission, which is daunting because the rest of them are slated to go home in the next 6 months.

Here is the cool part of the week: I've been thinking about ways to serve and find people in need of the Gospel who can be the next branch presidents, quorum presidents and, eventually, bishops and stake presidents. While it's hard to say what would be most effective since such people come from everywhere, It's occurred to me that a way to serve people here would be to help them improve employment and self-marketing skills. We're looking at a lot of options now, so I'll keep you posted, but it's exciting looking at the possiblities we, as missionaries, have when it comes to blessing and influencing lives through proselyting as well as through christlike service. Never forget that expressing love to others is the sign of the true church of christ. If that's not there, then you'll find the church can't be there either because the Lord can't be there.

Well, we came home and were both feeling under the weather, but things took a turn for the worse. Between diahrhea and stomach pains, the stomach flu had arrived. I had taken some supplements earlier in the week to curb the illness, and it's been largely tolerable. Elder Hatch, however, started getting pretty ill on thursday, progressed through friday, and friday/saturday night was spent in the bathroom. Saturday we stayed home all day, excepting a lesson with two couples looking for the true church. "Yes, we can help you." And sunday was similar, except we had a fantastic time celebrating elder hatch's birthday, despite the illness. We're on the mend and doing alright today, still taking it easy but it seems everything is going well.

I have to say that the experiences from my mission have been priceless. Anyone considering going on a mission should make sure they are in order to go, but don't doubt in any way - just go and do!

Finally, I received a stack of mail on friday. Special thanks goes to the following for making a missionary's day happy and bright, and a merry christmas/ happy new year to you all.

Grandparents Murdoch, Anderson, Grunt, and Joe (Yes, I have four sets of grandparents...)
The Jeppesons
The McCann Clan
My cousin Abby
The Jim Walker family
The Johnstonites from Canada
The faux fam, the fan club, and the forkaster alumni association

I suppose the Czech Postal service/carrier pigeons and the US postal service deserve a hand too.

I'm working on getting letters sent off to each of you, you can expect them in the near future. Otherwise, be healthy, be happy, read your scriptures, and find a way to make someone smile right now. A letter, a note, a hug, a kind word. Be the answer to a prayer today. I'm sure the Lord wouldn't mind help with all those prayers coming in. Ask to be the answer, and I know he'll provide you with the opportunity.

Thanks,
Elder Anderson

Photos from Starsi Brent

Here are a couple of photos that Brent mentioned from my blog

Josef's family

Starsi Brent, Starsi Hatch, Josef

Have a great week, Starsi Brent's Dad

A great week ( Week 5 in Olomouc, Week 40 in Czech )

Hey Everyone,

It's been a great week. I've sent home some pictures from the baptism we had last weekend. It's pretty exciting. Josef Baliar was pretty excited. He's the son of a recent convert family who didn't have a whole lot of interest last week, but found testimony and interest with us. He's 11, so he'll be becoming a deacon pretty soon. It's pretty exciting. We're really happy that everything has worked out as it has with him.

I'm really happy with this week, too. I'm much happier, much more satisified with how things are going, and have found a lot more peace and joy from the work. We found all 7 of our investigators from referall work this week, taught 18 lessons, and spoke 80 hours of czech. We've dropped down a bit because we're working on getting to know each other a bit better, and to be honest, it's still hard to express things sometimes as we'd like to.

In other news, I got to confirm little Josef on sunday. I love giving blessings. It's one of the best feelings ever. It's always interesting giving out a blessing in Czech, because you don't know how it will go out, but it's the same as in english. The Lord never seems to use particularly complicated language in blessing his children. If you think about it, scripture is in most instances very literal and very clear, and our personal difficulties in understanding how simple the message is confuse it sometimes.

Hmm....Not sure what else I had to say this week. Sorry about last week. We had to help one of our members get a new apartment in order. He's been homeless for a while, but he's found a place for him, his estranged children, and he might be getting married sometime soon. We'll see. In the mean time, it's incredible seeing the blessings that come from establishing and maintaining a connection with the Savior. I have to say that is the most important thing. If you don't feel different when you're done praying or reading the scriptures, you need to find out why and fix it. That's the secret to success. If you are aligned with the Lord and what he wants, then you've got all of his capacity behind you, which is a lot.

And a quick parable: A SCUBA tank has a ton of pressure in it, enough to sustain a diver as he goes down to depth. A secret of diving, however, is that the pressure of the water presses onto the diver the farther down he goes. The pressure we don't notice on the ground from the atmosphere increases to 2 atmospheres at 10 m, 3 atm at 20, and so on. Consequently, your lungs also feel the pressure and start to collapse if you don't have balanced pressure. That's why, when you breathe in at depth, you breathe in normally, but your lungs have denser breaths. at 10 m, you have 2 atm, 20 you have 3, and so on. You don't notice it, but that pressure building inside keeps you from collapsing on the outside.

Isn't it neat how, when the Lord asks us to do something hard, when the pressure builds up and we can't seem to do anything but collapse, that the Lord says "breathe - take in the Light that I have to give you" and his Light fills us up, countering the exterior pressure, and we stay afloat. Prayer, scripture reading, it's just breaths of air keeping ourselves from suffocating and from collapsing. Do the little things, and the big pressure will suddenly not even be noticable. Amazing.

Love you all, thanks for the letters everybody! We're going to Brno for a conference on Friday and we'll be in Ostrava on Saturday as well. Lots to do, not much time. I'll write more next week, really!

Elder Brent Anderson

Random musings ( Week 4 in Olomouc, Week 39 in Czech )

Hello Everyone,

Starsi Brent was unable to send us a post for the blog this week. They had an emergency trip to another city to help someone. He asked his mom and I to post a few thoughts about his service and our impressions.
We are extremely proud of the way he is serving and growing there in the Czech Republic. Those of you that know him, know that he is a very focused and driven individual and loyal to those around him.  He is really no different there. He is still focused, driven and loyal. He is being challenged in ways that have forced him to stretch himself.
Talking to him on Christmas day was a treat. He sounds great an is loving what he is doing. I think that the call made him a bit homesick, but that is understandable. He is pressing forward in all he is doing. As a new Zone Leader, he is now in the position of being a learner and it is causing a bit of discomfort. He is not used to be in the role of learner. He will get over this and we expect to see tremendous growth over the next few weeks.
Cards and letters are greatly appreciated and even if his responses are sometimes delayed, he always expresses gratitude to us in his emails for all of the kind words that are sent.
Thanks to all of you for your support for Brent and his mission. Special thanks to Faux family members. (You know who you are.)  :)

Love, Brent's parents

A Very Happy New Year ( Week 3 in Olomouc, Week 38 in Czech )

Hello Everyone!

 

Happy New year to you all! A few details about new years, the last week of miracles, my well being, and a spiritual thought is on the plan for the first installment of ever continuing adventures of Starší Anderson in Olomouc for the year 2010! Hope you all had a great christmas, great new year, and are all excited to get back to work this year. I know I am. Missionaries are silly, because we don't like holidays and vacation time is dangerous, if not lethal, to progress. People start leaving areas, losing contact, turning off phones, spending more time in the kitchen making cookies than on their couch reading the book of mormon. It's terrible!

 

...right up until they deliver the missionaries a box of czech cukrovy (Literally translated, "Little sugary things", or as we say "treats"), and then all is forgiven.

 

Actually, last week was the most statistically successful and, maybe even spiritually difficult, week of my mission thus far. Two new families, another new family who we're set up for on wednesday, contact with another family who wants to baptize the rest of their kids, a referall from me about a guy from ostrava who moved to new zeland that will be handled in prague, checked in america, and forwarded to a great couple that visited us from new zeland, the husband being a former missionary. Whew!

 

So, new years is big here. It's been 20 years since the Czech government has been not communist, and they love their fireworks. And alchohol. We had to be indoors no later than 6 PM, and we spent the evening with the other missionaries playing games and talking. We even had some little sparklers that we set off at midnight, in the midst of a billion fireworks going off around us. Pretty crazy.

 

So, I mentioned all those families, kids, and referrals. Here is a segment from my letter to my parents describing the member work here. And, I might just tack on the spiritual thought from that letter too, since it's what I wanted to mention anyway. So much typing, so little time! I wish there were a better way to share with you all the things we're seeing here. I've seen so much out here, it's humbling. People with nothing to eat, people with so much they don't know what to do with it. Theories, thoughts, confusion, ideas, contension, and apathy. The only thing that will bring this world together is the Love of God and beliving the savior when he says that we can be unified, but we have to love one another and serve each other. So, here are the remarks from that other email:

 

We had an incredible week in terms of the numbers, and a lot of it is due to Elder Hatch's attention to details and overall excellence as a missionary. We found 10 new investigators this week, in conjunction with Lad'a, a recent convert who wishes he could be a missionary. It's "unfortunate" that he's got a family and other concerns and couldn't commit himself 100% to the work. Instead, he just spends about 90% of his time with us teaching, finding, and looking for people he knows to teach. In fact, he'll go to people he knows, build friendships, teach them the gospel, and then refer them to us for official teaching. It's incredible. The bottom line: Elder Bednar's (which is, by the way, a Czech/Slovak name) counsel is absolutely true. Missionaries are full time teachers, members are full time finders. It's hard in Utah when most people are members, but building those relationships with people and loving them according to christ's teachings is the secret.

  

To me, it seems calling should be about the same anyway. I remember something that you told me which continually haunts me when I think about what I *could* have done, what I *might* have done with friends who may not have had the strongest testimonies. "Aren't we each our brother's keeper?" Home teachers are, in my opinion, one of the most crucial, important, and vital callings in the church. It's the front lines, where authorized representatives meet god's children and are charged with one simple commission: Serve them. Really, isn't that what it's all about as men and women under priesthood authority? Anyone can believe in christ, those who actually follow him are immediately charged with the message "Feed my sheep." It wasn't until this week when I was reading a little book about becoming an extraordinary missionary that I read something profound. I'm not called to teach, I'm not called to convince, I'm not even called to expose people with the spirit (although that is important). I'm called to serve, and in the end, the mission of God's priesthood is serving people so that they may increase in light and knowledge, prepare to make and keep sacred covenants to protect and direct them, and to refine themselves in love and service to others. And, through this service, we discover that that "fountain of living water" starts to swell up inside us. In losing ourselves, we find ourselves again. That's really what it's all about.

Well, I've got to wrap this up now. It's been a good week, I've learned a lot, and had a few good experiences. From the grab bag: We did have fish, but I didn't know what it was. It wasn't carp, but it wasn't bad. Pike maybe? And this one should make you all laugh: An old member gave us chocolates the other day on a visit. Turns out they were filled with straight shot rum. Yummy. I just laughed and laughed. And, another member, in an effort to be generous, gave us a christmas sausage. It looked and smelled pretty good, and we got to work on cooking with half of it last week when we made Halušky. As we cut it up and started frying it, we realized it wasn't just any sausage. This was a straight-up blood sausage. We figured we'd give it a shot anyway, and it wasn't too bad. But, we're still trying to figure out what to do with the rest of it.

 

Well, time to wrap up and head out. Hope you're all happy, healthy, and in good spirits. May you find success in school, work, those ever-important daily gospel sessions I'm sure you're all having, and most importantly, the relationships you have with each other and with our Heavenly Father. That's the most important thing.

 

Thanks,

Elder Brent Anderson