Can I train the british kid?

this week was an up and down one. like any normal missionary week, there were  some definite disappointments, but also some great triumphs--triumphs, which of course outweighed the disappointments. we have tried really hard now to set up meetings with our investigators with baptismal dates. we got "beaked" again quite a bit this week.we didn't meet with any of our progressing investigators this week at all, but that wasn't for lack of trying. we had so many meetings set up with all of them, but they didn't come to a single one. i'm not really sure what to do. i'm not wholly opposed to meeting with them, but if they aren't going to show up, then elder romero and i shouldn't waste our time preparing lessons for them. we are thinking really hard about dropping them all. when i called in our numbers this week, i called in that we have 0 progressing investigators. in essence, this week we started at square one. we did a lot of finding. we spent hours out on the town square contacting people, and we were definitely reawarded for our diligence. we picked up a few new investigators this week that we are pretty excited about, and we have quite a few good potential investigators lined up too. this saturday my boys from cajakova (zilina south; whenever someone send me a letter they are actually sending it to the other elders' apartment because we dont' have a mailbox at our apartment--just so you know), had a baptism. we did the baptism again in the river, and it was marvelous. i am so lucky to have had a front row seat for silivia's progression as an investigator. she has so much faith and i think she will be a strong member for the rest of her life. i sang for the baptism in a quartet with elder macneish, elder butler, and elder walker. we sang the slovak version of "i am a child of God." it sounded great. after the baptism, silivia bore her testimony. she sounded like someone who had already been a member for most of her life. after the baptism we went to the Seidls' house for refreshments as always. we may not have too many members here in zilina, but the members that we do have are absolutely marvelous. just before i came to the internet cafe to email, we threw a surprise birthday part for petka, another one of the great members here in zilina. the other elders had asked her for help teaching a "lesson" this morning, but instead of having a lesson, we all yelled surprise, sang, and had cake. i think petka really enjoyed it. she deserved to have a great bithday with all the effort that she puts into the missionary work here in zilina. anyway, i think it's time for the funny mission story of the week. this weeks story isn't so much funny as it is worthy of a twilight zone episode. i got a letter last week from my good friend anna. it had been a little while since i had heard from her, but apparently a lot has happened since we last corresponded. she told me that she got set up on a blind date with this british kid who her dad knows through work. the date went really well and they hung out a few more times before he went back home to england. soon they started talking about the possibility of anna coming to visit him in england, which she did a few weeks later. while she was there, he got his mission call to serve in (you guessed it) the czech prague mission speaking slovak. can you hear the twilight zone music? i sure can. i was pretty shocked when i read that. he's in the mtc at this very moment. i had an interview with president irwin this week when he was here for the baptism. he asked me if i had any questions. jokingly, i replied: "my one question is this: can i train the british kid?" president irwin laughed and said: "well we are going to need four trainers this next transfer." he would be the easiest greeny ever! if he didn't want to go contacting or something, all i would have to say is: "that's fine, but i'm telling your girlfriend that you were too much of a wussy to go contacting." advantage: meredith. anyway, i hope you are all doing well across the pond. hope to hear from you all soon.

ahoj'te
sam

Looked at my kingdom I was finally there, to sit on my throne as the prince of--zilina

the title of this email is apparently what elder romero as he stepped off the train and onto the platform at the main train station here in zilina last week. i guess he was excited to live in "the palace." i thought that was funny because i always appreciate a "fresh-prince" reference. this week was good, bad, and okay all at the same time. we had a lot of meetings set up this week, but most of them were "beaked," which in czech prague mission lingo means we got stood up. it wouldn't be so frustrating if it wasn't our "strongest investigators" who were standing us up all the time. we are going to have to change the baptismal dates of both peter and ladislav now because none of them showed up to church in spite of the fact that both of them agreed to come. wieh we meet with them next, i'm just going to give them a little bit of "reproving betimes with sharpness but afterwards showing forth an increase of love" action. hopefully that will make them see that these meetings that we set up aren't just a contigency plan that you only show up to if you don't find a better offer. anyway, hopefully we see some improvement out of those two this week. we were able to do some better contacting this week because the weather was a little better. it has been really hot and really sticky the last few days, but you know what? it's a billion times better than rain. it's also a billion times better than snow. i just love the summer. i do, however, wish that zilina had a 7-11. i always think a slurpee sounds great after 3 hours of contacting out in the hot sun. in america today is free slurpee day as a matter of fact, so i encourage all of my readers to take full advantage. anyway, contacting was a lot better this week, and we met some pretty cool people with whom we have set up some meetings, so hopefully we will be able to teach a few more lessons this week. things are going well with elder romero. he is a great guy and we get along really well. he's really funny and when he gets sarcastic he sounds like a cartoon character. i know that he and i are going to work hard this transfer, and i think we will have a little fun on the way too, so i'm excited to see what next week brings. i guess it's that time in the email where i tell you guys a funny story, so here is the funny/interesting story of the week. friday was zuzka's birthday (zuzka is one of the members here in zilina). she invited all the missionaries to her birthday lunch at the harley davidson pub...in vrutky. that is not a typo. not only did the harley davidson motorcycle company decide to open up a restaurant in slovakia, but they decided to open one up in vrutky, which is a dumpy little puny town about 30 kilometers outside of zilina. there i ate what was the closest thing i have had to a real burger since i was set apart as a missionary on the first of march. we all had this spicy jalepeno soup, which elder tomlinson (british elder) couldn't really handle. soon after we ate the soup he said "mam vietory" meaning literally " i have winds." i think you can all guess what he was talking about. anyway, things continue to be great here. this week will be an exciting one. silvia, one of the investigators being taught by the elders in zilina south, is getting baptized this week, so we are all really excited for that. be sure to keep me updated on all the goings on back at home. love you all!

cau
sam

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