Chris' Special Tie Knot

Chris' Special Tie Knot

Friday, March 14, 2014

Troubled Times, but Good Times

Ahojte!

Chris and his companion
So sorry about last week, I really had like nothing as far as time goes, which is an overstatement unfortunately, so I'll do my best to remember all of the amazing occurrences which took place. First off, I'm completely ok, but we're getting more and more people fleeing from Ukraine to places like here and other parts of Slovakia, and I'm getting kind of antsy not completely knowing what's going on. I DO know from one of our less-actives about whom I'll talk some more in a minute, that there is an actual war going on in Ukraine right now, despite what the news is saying. Russia is asserting their dominance and taking back that strategic peninsula right above the Black Sea. I hope that everything gets figured out soon, and that our mission continues to remain untouched by this. Keep us in your prayers, there are a lot of new refugees here in Trenčín.

Trenčin, Slovakia
On a much brighter note, I can't believe that I wasn't able to write last week about this, I fulfilled one of my ultimate missionary dreams! We went tabling, an idea my trainer and I were working on when I got transferred, and I pushed it through the Metsky Urad here and made it happen! It was like 40X better than I expected it to be. I was out of my mind surprised when we had been doing it for like 2 minutes and a lady just WALKED UP TO ME and started talking to me about the class... For those of you who don't understand already, missionaries almost NEVER have anyone come up to them, we always go up to the people, to have somebody walk up to me is absolutely monumental! I was just floored and almost didn't know what to say to her. The other part, which kind of scared me, but is really memorable was about 5 minutes into it, we had just started to get some names and #'s for our class, when the police pulled up in a big van and one of them got out and walked up to me and I was SO grateful that we had remembered to bring our paper we got from the Metsky Urad saying that we were allowed to have a table on the nam there, there's no way that we would have gotten out of that one without a fine, even though we WERE legal if we hadn't had the papers. So that was one of my dreams fulfilled this week...

Chris' new tee-shirt from the pro bball team in Banska
Should have kept his elbow in... :) 
The next one happened on Thursday of last week, when we had our exchange. It was really strange for me to be on this side of the exchange, I'm used to being left by my companion, not having to accept 2 new people into my apartment and expect to feed them 2-3 meals and let them use my wonderful shower and everything like that. It was way weird for me. The amazing thing was getting to be companions with my trainer again for a day, that was SO cool! This is the city where he was trained, actually by that teacher in the MTC who knows a family in a stake. So what we did, which I am terribly looking forward to when I'm about to go home, is we looked up some people that he found and taught, who had been dropped, and we went and gave them a teaching again, and I have some amazing news. 2 of them are actually restarting to investigate the church! This gives me hope for all of the people who I have found who have lost interest, especially the ones who were doing so well. One of the people we are starting to re-teach has SIX pages all to himself in our area book, which total a crazy 64 lessons. He's been taught everything twice and refused it because he wasn't [ready yet]. When we went and visited him, he had lost 45 pounds, he now has an amazing job, and he's a go-getter ready for life, and he's looking for true repentance so that he can go forward without having any regrets from his past life, and seriously, he is going to be the coolest member ever. Another lady by the way is still on the road to baptism, I'm trying to push it to happen while I'm still here in Trencin, but if that's not God's will, so be it.

So then later in the week, we had a practice for our concert which will be happening on the 18th, in which I'm arranging 4 different songs, 2 of which I hate, but I guess I get to change them into stuff l like, which is good. I'm constantly surprised at the musical ability of this mission. A member here asked my companion and I in a meeting we had last week if it was a rule for missionaries that you weren't allowed to come unless you were good looking, and could sing and play at least one instrument. I laughed because he hasn't met another elder yet, haha. Anyway, I'm not having any trouble increasing all of my talents out here, despite the fact that I thought I wouldn't be able to.

He's still a cute boy...
On Saturday the President came to Trencin because we had a big conference on Sunday. I'm not sure what the conference actually is for, because I can't understand the word for it (They don't have a word for it in Slovak or Czech, and my Russian isn't very good yet). But on Saturday I got to teach a lesson with our mission president to an inactive member I referred to earlier. She has both of her sons staying with her right now, because they were fleeing from Ukraine, and oh my goodness, she is an absolute Saint. I just adore her, and President agrees with me that she will definitely be coming back to the church soon, there's no doubt about it, we just have to give her some time, because she knows everything is true and loves the members here and everything else, she's just wonderful. She has the best English of any Slovak I've ever met, and in fact, Mom, I offered her your email if she has any questions about it, is that ok? Because her questions are really hard to answer because her English is so good. She absolutely loves missionaries, and she can make the best tea in all of Slovakia, my goodness. I never had any idea how good fruit tea was before I came here, but I think I'm hooked, it's wonderful stuff, haha. The point of talking about her though, is that just the spirit we all felt being there with her and with president was tangible, I was amazed at her testimony, despite not having been to church in almost half a year, and I can't wait to see her back in our congregation. We also got some first hand news about what's going on in Ukraine, about people getting shot in the streets and other really scary stuff, so just keep the Ukrainian, Russian, and Slovakian missions in your prayers, I don't want to test how far the Lord will actually go to protect his servants.

Milújem ťa,

Starší Chris Brousseau



No comments:

Post a Comment