Odhodlanie part II

this week was better. it still wasn't great, but anything would have been better than last week was. we contacted ALOT this week, and we it wasn't completely fruitless. we did get some good new potential investigators, and we were able to find one new investigator. his name is andrej. he is a professional futsol player (indoor soccer...i think). anyway he is a way cool guy but unfortunately lives a little far away from zilina. it will be a little harder to get meetings set up with him, but he is an awesome guy and is really willing to meet. anyway, it was a better week, and this week is going to be even better. something big is coming. we might just hvae to be a little patient before it gets here. everyone else in the czech and slovak republics seems to be just killing it right now, but zilina is just lagging a little bit behind. we're going to close the gap, however, so long as we keep working hard with that same "odhodlanie." there were some cool things that happened this week. i sang again in church (i have now had some sort of musical performance [outside being the accompanist] in sacrament meeting for the last 12 consecutive weeks). i sang and played on the piano a little arrangement of "sweet hour of prayer" that i came up with. sister seidl came up to me afterwards and said that she feels like she is in the temple when i sing. that's my best endorsment yet! definitely something to throw on the resume. we also had a successful sport night this saturday. on wednesday elder tomlinson, elder romero, and i were doing some contacting on the lower namestie. off to the side i noticed a big family throwing around a frisbee. i told them that we play frisbee every saturday at six. they said they would come, and then they actually did! we had a lot of fun playing with them. turns out they are tourists from prague. we gave them the information for the missionaries there. they said they would at least definitely go to english class. well i don't have much more time, but before i go, it's time for the hilarious mission story of the week! this entry happened this morning actually while we were having language study. all of the sudden i heard this loud banging sound coming from the street. after each bang i heard someone yelling at the top of their lungs in the gypsy language. elder romero and i ran to the widow to look down on an old gypsy woman with two kids standing behind her, who was trying with all her strengh to break...a scale. eventually she succeeded and took a metal disc out of the scale and put it on a little rigshaw-type cart with all the rest of the junk that she had harvested so far. elder romero and i looked at each other, laughed and just said "what the heck was that?" it is likely that i will never know the answer to that question.
 anyway, cool stuff happens every week here, even when it isn't your greatest week. if there is one thing that my mission has taught me so far, it's that miracles are commonplace; we just don't notice the majority of them. i'm excited to what miracles this next week will bring!

maj'te sa!
sam