Progress & Maturation

Ahojte!

I am so glad that I get to email all of you again!=) We are getting a lot closer to our branch presidency now so I get to practice my English more often and I'm so excited. So first off, last Saturday we all had a devotional about the Polish elders and sisters who left last week and talked about what we'll do to welcome the new ones. It was really interesting to hear about how everyone thought of the old Pols, especially because there wasn't a single one I didn't like or get along with. I didn't say much, but I think that's ok because I'm getting more used to just being inside my head and I like it in there.

Chris with departing Elders going to Poland, 'hanging loose'

The next day was Fast Sunday, and at the MTC boy are those hard. Especially because of daylight savings, we had an extra hour of no food, and by the end of it, I'm sure I was more than a little cranky. The good part about that day was I got to talk to Elder Geirische and we just had like a heart to heart for like an hour, and I really like him. I mean, I did before, but he's definitely my favorite missionary here right now. At the end of the day, this might sound dumb, but we had this amazing experience as a zone. We went and were watching the Book of Mormon movie after the devotional and we were making fun of some of the lines because they're creepy in English, let alone when they're translated into our languages, like this one where the girl asks, " you didn't as my name..." and the guy says, "I know your name." with this really bizarre look on his face and in Slovak it translates back to, " I am already familiar with that which is your father's," and we were just busting up. But the spiritual part for me was that there were no more chairs because the room was so full so we were just sitting on tables and the floor all huddled up together in the back corner with our language headsets on and I just looked around and thought, "this is how we become brothers." It was cool to see everyone together just smiling and being spiritual as a zone instead of being off in companionships or like not paying attention and things like that.

Monday was not a good day. At like 8:30 am I started to feel a headache and I mean, I've been having them, but this one was so bad that I ended up throwing up and my companions were trying to get me to go to the doctor and stuff and I was telling them that I'm fine and they just wouldn't listen so I was just super angry with everyone all day because their voices hurt my head and they wouldn't just be quiet. For all of you who want to serve missions, just know it isn't easy ever. On the roughest days though, I usually come to the point where I remind my self that so far my track record for getting through bad days is 100% and that's pretty good.

Chris with one of his MTC teachers

Tuesday was just normal, I love Tuesdays though. I forgot to say, a week ago the Polskies left us their fridge because I was their favorite elder (especially Elders Retallick, Hubbard, Kimball, and Whiting), so now we have this huge store of cold drinks in our room, it's so wonderful.=) But we had a devotional and I felt really bad because I really didn't pay attention to it at all...I was too busy thinking about all the lessons we teach and stuff like that. I teach André Tuesdays and Saturdays, and he's actually starting to open up to the gospel, I'm really liking that from him. I teach Martin on Wednesdays and Mondays, and he still won't commit to being baptized, but fully believes the church is true, he just doesn't want to change. I should probably explain this before I go into this next part. Most of our investigators are return missionaries from Slovakia who are just role-playing as investigators so they aren't real investigators. But last week I think I might have told you, we were blessed to be given a real investigator from Slovakia named Natalie. She has agreed to be baptized, but we don't have a date yet because her Saturdays are very busy. We meet with her twice a week whenever she can come in, and lots of times she'll surprise us like right in the middle of class or something. I am so excited for her to learn the gospel completely and be prepared for returning to her family in Slovakia (her family is all members except her, it's so golden for us).=)

Wednesday is where everything cool in the week happened. We got our new Polskies, 7 elders and 1 sister. They are pretty cool, especially Elders Taylor from Texas, Weggerson from Oslo Norway, and Garcia from Vienna Austria. I am having such a blast speaking with them especially the European ones who know french, but I'm having even more fun playing basketball now that there are enough players in our zone to have good games.=) but beyond that, I did an activity on page 5 of PMG where you read your ministerial certificate, and I don't know why, but my thoughts all turned to how Christ-like my wonderful mother is. I love you Mamdré, I was straight up bawling during class, and I'm actually tearing up now just thinking about how you've never discouraged me in anything, whether I was good or bad, you always tell me to do my best and help to make sure that I get there. Thank you so much for the package too, it made my week all worth it.

So that's pretty much my week, email me any questions and I'll get back to you next friday around the same time.

Milujem T'a!

Starsi Chris Brousseau