The booze bag incident and other hijinks

here i am, once again, sitting in the internet cafe, while the owner watches a "mash" episode dubbed in slovak. what a marvelous country i live in. this week was pretty good. we definitely had our share of disappointments, but the blessings still far outweighed those. i don't know if i mentioned this last week, but the last time we met with our investigator eva, she told us that she had just lost her phone, but that she sees us all the time in town and that she would run us down when she saw us. i have been praying so hard that we would run into her this week, but so far, no dice. i really hope that we see her around town this week. that would be fantastic. this week was kind of interesting because elder tomlinson came down with a pretty bad virus. that meant that elder romero and i had to split time staying with him, while the other went our with elder walker to make all their appointments. i'm not happy that elder tomlinson is sick, and i hope that he is better soon, but he being sick gave elder romero and i the opportunity to teach silvia a recent convert lesson. we talked to her about preparing to go into the temple, which she will be able to do a little less than a year from now. she is such a strong member already, and i think she will be for the rest of her life. i am so blessed to have been here in zilina to watch her conversion process. it feels so good to be a part of someone's progression towards making sacred covenants with the Lord in His house, the temple. i didn't sing in church this week. instead i gave a 15 minute talk on personal revelation. part of my talk included a quote from elder bednar's most recent conference address. as i was preparing for my talk, alica (the youngest child in the big member family here in zilina--she's the cutest little girl in the world) approached me and asked "do you know why elder bednar is the best looking apostle?" i told her that i didn't know and asked why he is the best looking apostle. she said: "because he has slovak ancestors." i thought that was pretty funny. speaking of funny, you are probably all wondering what in the heck i was referring to in the subject of this e mail. the story starts last transfer when i bought a little ruksack to carry around while contacting. it's smaller, lighter, and just overall better than a backpack is. anyway, i took my bag with us to lunch on tuesday at slovenska koliba (one of my favorite restaurants here). i set my bag under my seat. when i picked it up again after lunch, i realized that it was wet. i lifted it up to my nose, all the while praying that it was just water. when the bag approached my nostrils, however, my worst fears were realized. it was beer. apparently the people sitting behind us had spilled their beer on the floor. anyway, that was almost a week ago and my ruksack still smells like cierna hora. so i ask you, if any of you have any ideas regarding how i could get the booze smell out of my bag (i'm sure you all have much experience removing the stench of alcohol from various accessories), i would really appreciate it.

cau'te
sam