A Long Week

this week was a long one, but a good one. on monday night we hopped on a train to olomouc, a city in the east central czech republic, to stay the night. the next morning we got on a train to prague. when we got there we had lunch and then went to the church building to listen to elder pearson. he spoke for literally four hours straight, but it was not boring at all. he gave us so much good advice, and everyone in the room is defnitely a better missionary for having listened to it. we have made some goals to apply his teachings into our work, and i know that they will be effective. we are really going to concentrate on having the spirit with us for the entire day, and on making planning a never ending process and not just an event that happens for thirty minutes at the end of the day. it was a great conference. and we all learned a lot. if everyone in the mission makes a commitment to apply what elder pearson taught, we are definitely going to see some miracles soon. after the conference we stayed the night in olomouc again, which, by the way, is an absolutely beautiful city. honestly, if i ever get sent to the czech republic, i hope i am sent to olomouc. or prague. yeah, i would definitely take prague. over half our week was consumed by traveling to and from the conference, so we really didn't have much time to work in our area. in spite of that, however, we were able to nab a new investigator last night in the eleventh hour right before we had to call in our numbers to the district leader. i know it's not about numbers, elder durrant and i both know that very well, but we both agreed that we didn't want to be the first companionship in the district to put up a goose egg in the new investigator category after we made that goal to get three every week. on saturday, we went to martin, a little town about 20 mintues outside zilina to have lunch with brat durris, a member of our branch. he is notorious for cooking a lot of food for the missionaries. it was all really good, but it was just so much food. we all made it in to a competition to see who could eat it the fastest. i thought i had taken third place in the competition, but later elder durrant confessed that when he had gone to the bathroom earlier, he had done so to throw up. silver medal for me! anyway, it was just a crazy meal. he made us really good gulas, and after that he brought out a plate full of little cakes and cookies. i thought that the one plate was for all of us to share, but brat durris proceeded to bring out the exact same quantity of food to everyone. after that we had this giant bowl of this syrupy fruit dessert thing. it was all really good, but man it was a lot of food. but, let it be known, that samuel edward meredith cleaned his plate the first time he ate lunch with brat durris. we also worked a little more at romans hut this week. i'm not really sure how much it costs to live in a place like that, but i know its a lot cheaper than actually having a house. there are quite a few little huts like that alongside the river, so it must be a pretty popular lifestyle. it's really weird to see little huts like that so close to the downtown. we were walking through a neighborhood just outside of town this week, and within 20 mintues of each other i saw a family of goats and a family of chickens cross the road. you don't see that too often in salt lake. anyway, it was a good week, and i'm really excited to see what this week will bring. i'm glad to hear that everything with the wedding went well. i wish i could've been there to see that, but even so, i wish a big congratulations to james and lindsay and i wish them luck as they start their life together! i am also happy to hear that dad had a good birthday. if anyone deserves to have a good day, it's him. he always works hard, but he's worked especially hard this year to lose all that weight. anyway, i hope everything is going well there, and i hope you will all continue to sent me your emails and letters!

cau
sam

ps-scripture of the week: proverbs 17:28 this one sounds like it was written by dad or possibly grandpa gary