From Brno to Hawaii
July 8, 2012
Wow,
how fun to receive an email from Maui! I'm so glad to hear it's been a wonderful
trip so far and hope that it will continue to be so. It sounds very fun!
Well we
celebrated the 4th of July a little differently here - we sang the star spangled
banner at the beginning of companionship study! Yeah! haha I know, kinda lame,
but what else to do? We did missionary work! But we did have root beer floats on
Tuesday at district lunch with root beer a member gave us - so that was a fun
taste I haven't had in a long time! It sounds like the breakfast was wonderful.
How I love our ward activities - and thanks for representing the Czech Republic,
Bro. Whiting!
How fun
your week sounds so far there in Maui! I'm so excited to see some pics and hear
some fun stories from the vacation. I cherish our family vacations so much -
it's really funny, so Czech people usually really like Americans, but there's
kind of an expectation that Americans haven't seen or travelled the world as
much, so when I can tell people where I've been priveleged to travel to they are
so surprised and glad that I had that opportunity. Once again, how I love our
family vacations!
So I'll
answer some questions then move on to some other things:
1. Any
further sense as to what transfer day may bring? Will your p day be Wednesday
next week as a result? If you are not sure, we will just load our email on
Sunday as ususal and wait to hear from you whenever. We will be very excited to
hear what the "surprizes", in fact, are and are so interested to learn of the
changes. - I honestly have no idea what will happen at transfers. President
Irwin has promised that this will be a very exciting transfer, so we'll see what
that means in the near future. And yes, you're correct - due to transfers our
P-day next week will be on Wednesday, and we'll see what the transfer will
bring! I just really want to leave this area strong and help these people as
much as possible, whether I stay or go.
2. How
are your investigators doing? We'd love an update on each one. - OK, so here's
the update! One of our investigators has made progress, but still has a long way to go as
far as learning and applying the gospel. He is waiting on an answer before he
agrees to a baptismal date even as a goal, which we think is holding him back
from really receiving that answer. But he's a good kid and we continue to work
with him. Another investigator has been out of town since last week, so no real update on him
as of now. Yet another is still having trouble accepting the idea of God existing and
loving him (it's so sad to see that so widespread here!), but we're gonna keep
working with him and have a lesson set up for this Saturday. We are starting to
work with some awesome new people, though, including an awesome referral from
Dalibor, an awesome recent convert. He came with
Dalibor to church this last week! He's a cool guy and has interest in learning
more, so we're setting up a meeting with him this week! We also started teaching
another guy last week, who is awesome - he has absolutely NO
background in religion, has no idea who Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the
Holy Ghost are, but is so open and willing to listen, learn, and try! He said an
amazing and humble kneeling prayer at the end of our lesson with him last
Tuesday, and is starting to read the Book of Mormon. I'm super excited for him.
We have quite a bit of potential building up in our area, and we just pray for
people to make the step of faith and start to come unto
Christ.
3.
What have you been emphasizing in your zone training? How are your districts
doing? - the Zone is doing well, there were 2 baptisms just last week in
Bratislava, which was wonderful! We're continuing to emphasize teaching skills
and being bold in our invitations. We won't have any more conferences or
anything until next transfer, but we love our zone and all the
missionaries!
4. Any
more to share about Martina and Eva and their video experience? Have you seen
it yet? - Nope, no news. But I hope that it turns out great! The guy who filmed
it was apparently the same guy who filmed the "First Step" video about Daniel
Askari, which turned out amazing! So I'm hoping that it comes out soon so we can
use it as a teaching and finding tool!
5.
What did you in your P day today? - not much yet, just drove to email after
washing the car and doing our studies. But we're going to the center to see the
Brno Dragon today! (it's this humongo alligator and is legendary here - look it
up on google!)
So,
other than that update on the investigators, I wanted to share an insight
President Irwin shared with me during our interview we had last week. He said
that we constantly need to make deposits into our spiritual bank and make sure
that our withdrawels don't run us dry. He said that major spiritual experiences
in our lives are like big deposits into a spiritual bank - baptism,
confirmation, baptisms at the temple, receiving the priesthood, endowment,
marriage and sealing, general conference, etc. - but they will only carry us so
far if all we do is withdraw from our bank - by not reading our scriptures every
day, by not praying or by justifying a quick, practically memorized prayer as
sufficient so we can jump into bed, by not coming to church or by not listening
in church, etc. It was a wonderful insight that made me realize that every day
we need to be mindful to make those little deposits - by choosing to be kind, by
smiling, reading our scriptures, going to church, magnifying our callings, doing
our home and visiting teaching, etc.
So keep
your balance strong, family! I'm sure working on mine and am trying to deposit
as much as I can every day. I love this work and love each one of you. Have a
wonderful week in Maui!
S
laskou,
Starsi
Mullen
