ja vam poviem jednu vec...

cau!
sorry for not telling you this last week, but this week is transfers and that means that p day is on wednesday instead of monday. i am still writing you from zilina, but now i am e mailing you sitting alongside....elder romero! i have a new companion. it was hard saying goodbye to elder durrant. he and i have become really good friends over the past two months, but i am really excited for this next transfer. we have a lot of work to do, but elder romero and i are definitely capable of it. let's see, what happened this week....i guess i should mention the fact that i had an opportunity to sing once again this week. i sang "how great thou art again" in sacrament meeting, but this time is was singing in czech, so it was really "jak mocny jsi." the bigger twist in the whole thing, however, was the fact that i had to accompany myself. i had never done that before. i think it went pretty well. i did my best to add on a thing or two to the piano part to make it more interesting, and i think it was pretty good. we are teaching a really musical guy right now. his name is tibor and he is a retired organ player. he plays a lot more than that, though. he claims that he plays on 15 different instruments. he says that twenty years ago he was one of the best trumpet players in czechoslovakia. he was apparently one of the lead trumpet players for the soviet philharmonic and apparently played the trumpet for fidel castro once. holy crap. what an interesting life i lead. this week was kind of frustrating at times. we got shafted on a lot of meetings...A LOT of meetings. it was hard but i think we still ended the transfer on a pretty good note. i at least have a hilarious story to tell this week. elder durrant and i were standing at the atm to take out some cash. in the window of the bank, i saw the refelection of a man staggering towards me. he approached elder durrant and i and sure enough, he was drunk off his you-know-what. he comes up to me and gives me a huge hug. eventually i shook him off, after which he began to speak. he said (in slovak, mind you): "i will tell you one thing, i am a jehovah's witness. for a long time i have wanted to speak with you." at this point he stopped speaking, pointed up toward the heavens and said: "i am searching for truth. i want to talk to you about... JEHOVAH!!" after that, he stopped speaking again, staggered around a little while, almost fell over, staggered towards me, grabbed me, and gave me another huge hug, this one 10 time bigger than the last. i thought my glasses were going to break. luckily elder durrant was there to get me out of his death grip. anyway, thought you would be interested to hear that story. i hope mom isn't to worried about me after having read that. anyway, it's a new transfer, and i'm really excited. hope to hear from all of you again soon!

ahoj'te
sam

Solid Week In Zilina

cau!
this week was a pretty successful one for us. as elder durrant said the other day "the Lord blessed the crap out of us!" it was that kind of week. of course, we weren't without traveling this week. we stayed another night in olomouc on our way to brno for zone conference. once again olomouc is BEAUTIFUL. we got to do some contacting there, which was interesting considering that the people in olomouc don't technically speak the same language that we do. we had a good conference in brno. presiding was elder stephen kerr of the area presidncy. he gave us some great advice, and he also has a heavy scottish accent so that made it even better. i sang a solo of "how great thou art" with elder bodily playing the piano. it was really good. after i sang president irwin gave me a big hug and said: "i'm so glad you're in my mision!" that was nice. we met with our baptismal date ladislav twice this week, and he continues to accept everything that we teach him. elder durrant and i were talking the other day and we were wondering if we would have that kind of faith if we were the one investigating the church. i honestly don't know if i would have as much faith as ladislav does. i have never seen someone so willing to accept a new teaching--a teaching, which to other people just sounds, quite frankly, weird. it is hard stuff to accept stories about fourteen year olds having visions and ancient records buried somewhere in the ground in new york. it's hard to so readily accpet that, but that is exactly what ladislav has done. we also issued another baptismal commitment this week to one of our other investigators, peter krizik. we weren't originally planning on giving him a date, but the lesson went really well, he accepted the doctrine, and we felt promted to commit him to be baptized. he accepted. it was definitely a miracle week. i look forward to this week too. apparently ladislav's mom would also like to join the church, so we have set up a meeting with them soon. we are excited to meet her and give her the same commitment that we already gave to her son. we also met another man this week, tibor, who seems to have a lot of potential. he is a really nice guy and actually is a retired organ player, so i have talked to him a lot about music. we should be able to build a very good relationship. we have set a goal for ourselves to give him a baptismal date this week. i am confident that he will accept it. it's hard to believe that this is the last week of the transfer. the last two months have gone so fast, and (according to every other missionary ever) it only goes faster and faster after that. it is the season for transfer prophecy. it really is interesting trying to predict where everyone will end up. if i had to compare it to anything, i would compare it to filling out a bracket for the ncaa tournament. you have to take into account odds, statistics, match-ups--you have to analyze who's hot and who's not. my prophecy for myself is this: i am staying in zilina and i will be in a (wait for it) TRIPANIONSHIP. that's right. elder bodily is going home this transfer, but he is going home halfway through the transfer to make it home in time to go back to school, so he has to be in a threesome. he and elder nichol, my district leader will follow up train me. elder durrant is going to banska bystrica to be the district leader there. keep in mind these are only guesses, but you should also keep in mind that i usually have very successful ncaa brackets. anyway, it's been a good week and we are really excited for this week too. we are really going to try and end the transfer on a high note.

sam

Servus

greetings from zilina
this week was a pretty solid one. i guess i should start by talking about my trip to vienna. it wasn't very long, but it was still pretty cool. i just had to go there and give some finger print samples for my visa work. after that we only had about 45 minutes to hang around the city before we had to hop on another train to get back to bratislava. what i did see, however, was beautiful. i got to see the big cathedral, which although beautiful was under construction at the time. i also saw the big opera theater where they are currently performing mozart's "the magic flute."i will be sure to send pictures next week. i don't have my camera with me because we decided to email right after going bowling (yes, bowling in slovakia). today has been a sold p day so far. this morning we all went out and bought zilina soccer jerseys. they were pretty expensive, but they are way awesome. anyway, this week was pretty successful for us. we still haven't heard anything from our two original baptismal dates eva or pavol, but this week we were able to pick up a new baptismal date named ladislav. he is a fantastic man. he has had a really hard life filled with a lot of bitter trials that he doesn't deserve, but those experiences have made him really humble and ready to hear the gospel. we taught him the first time this week and he expressed to us a desire to find out if the book of mormon is true. he also told us how good he feels when he is around us.  elder durrant was quick on his feet and issued him a baptismal date, which he accepted. we met with him again a few days later and he had already read through chapter eleven of first nephi (that includes the introduction and all that other stuff too, mind you). we were shocked. even the most golden investigators don't take to reading the book of mormon that quickly. obviously, we are very excited for him. the only thing we have to do now is keep him on the right track to baptism, something that is, granted, harder than it sounds, but i really think he is going to make it there. one of the biggest questions elder durrant and i have, is who is going to be here to see him get baptized next transfer? i can't believe my first transfer in slovakia is almost coming to an end! it has gone by so fast! everyone is already have striedanie prorotstva (transfer prophecies). the widely accepted theory is that i will stay here and serve with elder nichol (our district leader) and that elder durrant will go to kosice with elder williams. we will see what happens. anyway, other stuff...hmmm....oh! this last week in church i sang in a quartet with all the other zilina elders during sacrament meeting. i'm the only one of the missionaries in this city that has any real musical experience, but i think we sounded pretty good! we sang the slovak translation of joseph smith's first prayer, which we will also be singing at zone conference this week. elder nichol told president irwin that our district sings better than any other district in the mission, so when president heard that he gave us the assignment to sing this week. this assignment, however, came after president had already asked me to sing a solo at zone conference, so i will be doing two musical numbers this week at the same conference. i am going to be singing how great thou art while elder bodily, one of our zone leaders, plays for me on the piano. elder bodily lives in banska bystrica, though, so i'm not sure how he and i are going to practice before the conference on friday. hopefully everything works out. this week was father's day, which they do also have here in slovakia. i hope everyone there had a pleasant father's day. i wish i could have been there to celebrate with you. anyway, keep praying for me, my companion, and our mission. we need all the miracles we can get out here. 

cau
sam

Tak

this week was kind of an up and down one. the beginning was pretty rough. as all of you know, we've been working with an investigator named eva. up until now she has been our most solid investigator, but on tuesday we got a text from her saying that she now that she is working she wants to spend all of her free time with her family. we sent her a text back saying that we would love to teach her whole family, but we haven't heard back from her. we are really worried that she asked her husband about the baptism finally and he was not a big fan. there are really a lot of things we don't know, but that is just our best guess. we are really praying that somehow she makes her date. after we got that text we were pretty devastated. our one solid investigator had just told us that we couldn't meet any more. it was pretty hard, but elder durrant and i decided that we were just going to forget about it and continue to work. the Lord definitely rewarded us for having that good attitude because the very next day we almost broke our record for lessons taught in a day, and we shattered our record for new investigators found in one day. in addition to all that, our other progressing investigator with a baptismal date, pavol, called us and told us that he is back in slovakia and wants to meet. we are going to try to meet with him this week and just instill some confidence in him. he has been trying to quit smoking and has been having trouble with it. our plan is to give him a lesson on free will and how we can always choose to overcome our trials and difficulties. we also want to fast for him and give him a priesthood blessing. i think if we can just get that one lesson with him, things will get back on the right track. honestly, if he was just able to quit smoking soon enough, he could still be baptized at the end of the month. we did have one baptism this weekend. alica seidlova, the youngest child of the big member family here in zilina, was baptized on saturday. it was really cool seeing a baptism in a river. the missionaries sang as a sextet "o radosna chvila" (now let us rejoice). i thought we sounded pretty good! i really whipped these guys into good singing shape. all in all it was a great baptism. we even had a "guest" at the baptism. i sent a picture of him to libby for all of you to look at. after the baptism we all went to the seidls for refreshments, which was great. this week is one that we have some really high hopes for. we are looking forward to possibly teaching pavol a few times, and also we found some pretty solid people this week that we look forward to teaching. also, on thursday president iriwin is coming to zilina. as far as we know he is just coming to hang out and work with us, which will be cool. really, president irwin is an amazing  person. also, tomorrow i am hopping on a train to bratislava. we will stay there for the night and then in the morning elder durrant and i will hop on a train to...(drumroll) VIENNA!! i have to go there to do some sort of visa work, so elder durrant and i will be there for wednesday afternoon. i know grandma and grandpa will be excited to hear that. i will take as many pictures as i possibly can and send them to you next week. hope everything is good back in da 'hood

miss you all!
sam

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

Este Pracujeme

this week was a little more rough than the last few have been. sadly, we didn't meet one of the goals we set for our companionship, although that isn't for lack of trying. we worked hard the whole week, but for whatever reason it was just harder this week to find people to teach. we had specialized training this week, which was great, but it did take up a whole day of work. also on friday and saturday it rained horribly, so contacting was a crapshoot. what we did in that situation was we found people who were walking to the train station or something who didn't have an umbrella and we would walk with them so that they had some protection from the rain. everyone was really appreciative, but that kind of work just isn't really conducive to teaching full blown lessons and getting new investigators. on saturdays, there aren't very many people in town. on the weekends, everyone goes to their little domcek (little house) in the mountains. in addition to that it rained all saturday. we called it dokonala burka (perfect storm). pun intended! anyway, it wasn't quite the successful week that we were hoping for, but in spite of that, there is still reason to rejoice. eva, one of our investigators with a baptismal date keeps on progressing. we still don't have her date moved up, but she has still expressed no concerns with any of the docrtrine that we teach. this week when we taught her we were talking about her asking her husband for permission to be baptized. she hadn't done it yet, but we committed her to do so this week. when we were talking about it, she said she doesn't know how he'll feel about it, but she knows what she wants and she wants to be baptized. that was very nice to hear. we are going to try to meet with her twice this week, and we are really going to encourage her to come to church and we are really going to try hard to get something set up with her husband. i think if we just went out to lunch with him so we can show him we are normal people that would go a long way. anyway, even though things didn't go as we had planned them, there were still a lot of miracles this week, just like there are every week. i mean, an investigator with pretty much no previous religious history accepting the law of chastity right off the bat is pretty miraculous i think. just when you start to get a little discouraged the Lord blesses you in some way that just makes your day so much better. for example, yesterday elder durrant and i were sitting on the bench in the namestie. we had just called in our weekly numbers, which we thought were very disappointing. we were sitting on the bench wondering what went wrong this week when all of a sudden this guy comes up to us and offers to buy us a kofola (a czechoslovak brand of cola, which, i might add, is way better than coke and pepsi combined). we sat down and had a kofola with him and asked him why he wanted to have a kofola with mormons. he said, i just needed to do something nice. i know you guys are just here trying to help people, and trying to help them improve their lives, and i know how hard it must be to be away from your family and your friends for two years. it's so great that a guy who doesn't even know us was willing to do something like that. we talked a little more and get this....the guy works at the local theater in town as a stage manager, but in his free time he is a musician. he plays (wait for it).........THE TUBA!! what?! i said. "i freakin' played that in high school!" turns out they are doing a concert this week on the town sqare for some fetival going on. maybe i can turn a chat about the joys of playing the tuba into a conversation about the gospel. uvidime ( we will see).
love you all!

cau
sam

ps. go mavs!

The week of the transfer (I hope)

ahoj!

this week has kind of been an up and down one. we have had days of great success this week, but we also had days of disappointment and struggle. one day this week were able to teach 6 lessons in a day (which is really high here). in total, we taught 11 lessons this week, which is outstanding because hitting double digits for lessons in a week can be pretty rare sometimes. 11 is good, but when you consider that we taught six in one day, we really could've done better. work was also made more difficult this week by the fact that we had to be in brno on sunday for a district conference. because of that we had to travel to bratislava on saturday evening, and then travel all the way back from brno to zilina on sunday. essentially, we missed out on a full day and a half of work because of the conference. anyway, we are hoping that this week is going to be really good. i think this week has the potential to the best week of the transfer if we really dedicate ourselves. we have a lot of lofty goals that i really think are possible to attain. first there is our weekly goal of three new investigators. the last two weeks we have had two, which is good, but it's still not up to par. this week we've set a goal to get four. i really believe we can do it. our other goals are centered around our progressing investigators. one of the people we are teaching right now, ferry, has been investigating the church off and on for about three years now. we met with him once like three weeks ago, and then told him to call us if he ever wants to meet again. this last week he called. we taught him a great lesson on free agency. we just threw out like a million great scriptures from the book of mormon. he thought it was a good lesson too; he was taking notes. after we were done going over the scriptures elder durrant said: "do you think nephi was a real man?" he said yes. after that i said: "that means that you think the book of mormon is true and that joseph smith was a prophet." he agreed to those two things. this week we are going to meet with him again and we are going to issue him a baptismal date. he has had a date before, but we are hoping that this time around he will be more mature and more prepared for baptism. we are also still trying to get eva to move her baptismal date up. we will be able to meet with her more often now that she is done with school, so we are hoping that she can make some really quick progress and find the strength to ask her husbands permission to get baptized. we really want to meet with her husband just so we can explain to him that we are normal guys just like him and that we aren't brainwashed robots from the church like some people think we are. i think once the people of slovakia just know who mormons are, the work will start to take off a little more. everyday we have to explain that we chose to be here, that we aren't brainwashed, and at least 3 times a day we use the phrase "nie sme jehovisty." we are not jehovah's witnesses. anyway, i have really high hopes for this week. we have also set a lofty goal for slovak speaking. we are shooting for 90 hours of slovak this week. we have set that goal for the last two weeks and fallen short, but this time we are getting it. anyway, if all these things work out, it is going to be a marvelous week. i know as we strive diligently to achieve these goals, the Lord will bless us and we will be able to achieve every single goal we set.

ok time for a funny story time. on thursday we went to roman's house. roman is an eternal investigator, who knows that joseph smith was a prophet, who knows that the word of wisdom is from God, but still won't get baptized because of his beliefs about the fall of adam. essentially, he believes that adam and eve were supposed to remain in the garden forever. when satan got adam and eve to eat the fruit, he backed God into a corner. essentially he believes that in the beginning, satan forced God to sand-bag. according to roman, this whole existence, this earth (and the atonement) were all plan B. anyway, beacause of this conflict of belief we quit teaching him but offered to meet with him again if he wants to. so, about a week ago we ran into him and he told us that he was building a house and that he would like us to help him. we agreed, so on thursday we walked across the river and walked up to his "house." we were astonished when we saw that it was just basically a hut made out of tall planks of wood stacked against each other. in the front of the hut he has some vegetables growing, and in the back of his house, he has a solar panel for electricity. i don't feel like i'm doing it justice at all. i mean, the guy lives in a hut on a river bank! what is this, burkina faso? anyway, it was quite the experience. when we were walking back, elder durrant said do you think that hut was big enough to have a shower in it? i said no way. no we know why roman always smells so bad. he is a perfect example of that distinctly slovak body odor, which smells like a mixture of smoked meat and regular BO.

anyway, i hope you are all doing well i hope you will continue sending me letters and emails and such. it's always nice hearing news from across the pond. keep elder durrant and i in your prayers this week. also pray for our investigators. we need some miracles this week, and i know we can get them if we just pray.

sam