Charakter

no, i didn't spell that word wrong. that is just the slovak spelling for the work for "character" and character is one of the big advantages of serving in a small city. although it is flattering that some of you think i'm serving in a big glamorous city like prague (i'm actually not serving in prague for those of you who are still fooled by the address that constantly abides on my webpage and my sacrament meeting program), really these smaller cities like banska bystrica have something that bigger cities just don't have and that's characters. when you live in a small city of less than 100,000 people and you are constantly walking on the main square every single day, you are bound to run into the "regulars." in my 4 months in zilina i racked up quite a few friends by contacting on the main square, and so far banska has been the same way. for example we have one character here who everybody calls "elvis." he's this guy with long black hair and a high, whiny voice who just talks to everyone on the square. he was being his normal self today when we were out on the square. he came up to elder smith and i and offered to sell us a picture of himself. we turned it down because the banksa east apartment is already the proud owner of one for some odd reason. i guess he has had some good business in the past. i guess anything is more successful than his other current business venture--trying to sell elder nichol his watch...for a million dollars. i guess it can't hurt to try. anyway, that's just a taste of the interesting people here in banska bystrica. in the end i think that is what determines the value of a city is the caliber of the people. yes, prague is a much more beautiful city than banska, and zilina, and bratislava, and probably any other town i will serve in. prague has nice parks, museums, cathedrals and historical sites, but there is one thing they don't have...and that's elvis.

 

ahoj'te

sam

A salute to slanina

we had another transfer this week. i have a new companion now, but i think i should take a moment out of this journal entry to talk about my old companion elder bacon. what a guy. although, i'm so excited for this next transfer, i was pretty sad to see him go. serving with him was just so much fun! allow me to explain. elder bacon is just this cutest little thing to ever come out of provo, utah. he's a little more quiet, and is just the most polite human being you have ever met. this works against him sometimes in the mission field, however, because it makes him an easy target for pranks from his companion. like the time when elder nichol and i were on an exchange together and we found elder bacon and elder taylor and ambushed them with snowballs, that was fun. my favorite, though, has to be when i used the light switch (which is outside of the bathroom) to turn the lights off on elder bacon while he was showering. it was so hard to contain my laughter as i heard "o, no...the power is out" coming from the bathroom. i ran to turn off the lights in the rest of the apartment. when elder bacon got out of the shower, he opened the door, turned on the light, and realized that it was all a big prank. i just smiled and asked him in slovak how his shower was. when most people would have given me a good punch in the stomach, elder bacon just smiled and laughed. he was such a good sport. i had all of these ideas for pranks i was gonig to play on him this transfer, but o well. i'm still in banska, so that's fun. i'm serving with elder smith, who i served around in blava. he's great so i'm really excited about that. we also have a new zone leader whose name you will recognize. he's a missionary that's one transfer older than me, and his name is elder durrant. with elder nichol still in the picture, we truly have the district of dreams in the city of dreams.

 

ahoj'te

sam

The new year

my celebration of the new year this time was different than it has ever been before. it consisted of being home at 6pm on the 31st, cooking some halusky for dinner with elder bacon, watching missionary training dvds, and preparing my lesson for priesthood the next day. that's not to say, however, that there weren't a few exciting things here and there. we were able to have lunch at a members house on the 31st. it was there that i ate rabbit for the first time. every missionary has to have some sort of interesting food experience so i was excited to have that one (rabbit tastes pretty darn good just fyi). after that, while we were home, i got to witness a slovak-style celebration of the new year. elder bacon and i watched as a bunch of teenagers lit of fireworks on the lawn out in front of our building. all of the fireworks were stuff that would get you the death penalty if you were in the state of arizona or utah. with that on my mind i slowly became just a little bit jealous. the one time i'm in a place that allows the purchase of bottle rockets i'm living under a system of rules that strictly forbids even thinking about buying them. o well--i guess i could always just move to wyoming...ok maybe dangerous fireworks aren't THAT great. anyway, i'm excited to start up a brand new year. i feel like i made some good progress in 2011 and i'm so excited to see what i and my fellow elders can achieve in 2012. prajem vsetkym stastny novy rok!

 

s laskou

sam

Ja sa potim

ahoj from zilina. sorry the letter this week is a little bit late. yesterday was a holiday here in slovakia, so all of the stores were closed, including the internet cafe. this is the last week of the transfer. we find out where we are going on thursday and on saturday we move. its weird. this last sunday very well could have been my last in zilina. it was weird sort of having to say goodbye to everyone. i really dont want to leave. ive grown to love this city so much, so i would be more than happy to stay at least another transfer. we will find out what happens on thursday i guess, but just as a heads up, it is very possible that i will be writing this letter from a completely different city next week. im going to take a shot in the dark and say that i will be in kosice. anyway, this week was a pretty good one. elder romero and elder walker were able to find a really great woman for our area when they were together on an exchange, so we are really excited about that. we are teaching her later today, so i am excited to meet her and get to know her a little better. we also made a little bit of history this week when elder romero and i went over to the seidl home with alessandro to do some home teaching. we are the first home teachers to ever be in their home, and im sure that we wont be the last. it sounds like a worthless accomplishment, but i really think that is proof that the church is growing here. there are so many things that we have in america as church members that we probably take for granted, and home teachers is definitely one of them. it was so great to see how happy the seidlovci were thanks to our visit. sunday as i said was interesting. i sort of had to say goodbye to all the members because transfers are this week, and they are all out of town this week on a temple trip in frieberg, so that might be the last time i see a few people here from zilina. i also had my last performance as the designated branch musician. elder walker and i sang a duet of abide with me tis even tide to open the meeting, and then later i sang and accompanied myself on to think about Jesus from the primary song book. it was great. anyway, the subject of this email is the slovak phrase for i am sweating. i say that because it has been unbelievably hot this week, and also because i would be lying if i said i wasnt nervous for transfers. everyone is assuming that i am going to train one of the new missionaries. i would be really excited if that were the case, but that would be quite a bit of responsibility, especially for someone who will only be on his third transfer in the country. so, if that does end up being the case, just pray for me extra hard. i hope that everything back at home continues to go well. keep me apprised of everything that goes on. even if you dont think its interesting, i just might. love you and miss you all! have a great week!

čau!
sam

A slovak fiesta

this week was pretty solid. it was pretty simple. we went out and we worked. when we worked, we worked hard. because we worked hard we were rewarded. we were able to find a lot of new potential investigators, which i am very excited about. we are already harvesting the fruits of our diligent labors from last week. we just met with one of those potentials right before i came to the internet cafe. we gave him a book of mormon to read and he is very interested and curious. we asked him if he would pray to gain a testimony of the book of mormon. he said that he needs to read a little bit first before he can decide if it's something that is right for him. i promised him that if he read sincerely, he would quickly find out that the book of mormon is the book for him. i'm really excited for this week. we got some good things set up last week, and i think we are going to have a lot of opportunities to teach this week, which i'm really excited for. i'm really sad that we haven't had as much of a chance to teach this transfer. i've always thought that elder romero and i were a pretty good teaching tandom and i think we are finally going to be able to put that harmony into a little more practice this next week. we also got to do a few fun things this week. on friday, for example, elder romero and i went to the house of the big member family here in zilina to cook them some mexican food. they benevolently call elder romero either mexican, or mexico, even though elder romero has never even been to mexico. from the first week of the transfer, they were begging elder romero to come and cook enchiladas for them. on friday we finally had the chance. i think the chimichangas we made were pretty good. on saturday, we had our branch vylet (trip) with all of the members from both zilina and banska bystrica. we went to blatnice where there are beautiful caves and also a castle. it was a great trip. it was a lot of fun to get out and see some of the beautiful nature around here. mostly, it was great to be able to spend some time with the great members that we have here. i have made some really great friends over the last few months, and i'm so grateful that i have been able to serve the last four months in this wonderful branch. all the members here are so fun to be around, and they are all such great examples of disciples of Jesus Christ. transfers this time around are on a saturday. a week from thursday we found out where we are headed. the widely held belief is that i am headed to trencin to train. i would be glad to do that (although nobody knows anything about transfers yet), but i was also thinking on saturday as i was sitting roasting a sausage over the fire, that i sure do like zilina. it will be hard to leave this city, but that's nothing compared to how hard it's going to be to leave slovakia in a year and a half.

s laskou
sam

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

Never Enough

this was a great week. i will start off right away by sharing the cool story that happened to us. elder romero and i were contacting on the town square on tuesday and we contacted a girl. we started talking and it turns out she is a slovak native who lives in idaho of all places. she knows quite a few mormons and was interested in learning more. we set up a meeting. before the meeting, she asked us if she could bring her cousin with her to the lesson. they both came and they both had a lot of questions for us. we answered all their questions and gave them books of mormon. we met with them again on satruday and had an even better meeting. they had many more questions for us. they are both really curious and really eager to find the truth. we read from the book of mormon and watched the joseph smith restoration short film with them. the spirit was really strong. silivia (the woman who was recently baptized here in zilina) was there to help us teach both lessons. after we watched the video, silvia (sounding like she had been a church member for most of her life) bore testimony of how she is just so much more happy now that she is a member of the church. she testfied of joseph smith and of the book of mormon and of prayer. with the influence of the spirit being so thick that you could cut it with a knife, elder romero simply said: "so, what do you need to do?" the response the girls gave was just as simple as the question: "read the book of mormon and ask God if it's true." it was fantastic. Majka is going back to idaho, but we gave her a firm commitment to contact the missionaries there. Eva, however, is still going to be here in zilina, and we are looking forward to teaching her again. it was a great week. i feel like we have really been rewarded for our patience and diligence. if there is one thing that i have learned so far in my nearly 6 months as a missionary (yikes!), it's that the Lord, as long as we're faithful, will never hang us out to dry. we had a great week, and i'm looking forward to this week. i shared the story with elder nichol (who is now a zone leader). we talked about what a great experience it was. after that he asked me a question. he said: "now you've just gotta do even more next week right?" i assented. his response: "yeah, it's never enough, is it, elder?" he was right.

s laskou
sam