Letter from December 15, 2014

Nazdar Vsetci,

Hey, I'm going to keep it pretty short and sweet today, I have been extremely humbled. It's not the bad kind of humbled either, I have just seen SO much kindness around me in the past week that it's pretty hard to keep all of my emotions together. I absolutely adore Christmas. Atheist, Catholic, Mormon, Muslim, everyone is nicer during Christmas. But that's not the point. The point is, this holiday has an innate holiness about it, which pleases me greatly. If I could have followed one person around on that night more than 2,000 years ago, and talked to them about it, it would be the angel Gabriel. His perspective would be truly unique. I have a feeling that he had some trouble containing his excitement when he brought those good tidings to the shepherds.

Snap, where's my enthusiasm going?!? K, here's a really quick run-down of the awesome happenings of Zilina, Slovakia.

First of all, gosh, these members are SWEET! Haha, I'm finally serving around Sister Seidlova, who's daughter helped me with my Slovak in the MTC, and with whom I actually got to Skype before I came here. SO COOL, she's a true rock in Israel (not THE big one though, that's Jesus. But probably she's one of the little rocks who's pretty close to THE rock of Israel.), and it really shows whenever she's around, she refuses to speak with missionaries in English, despite the fact that her English is nearly perfect, just because she wants the missionaries to practice and truly be great at Slovak.

Second, Chrismas carolling in Slovakia=Success! Haha, we learned something very very important when we went, which I feel like if we apply to our missions hard-core, will improve our effectiveness monumentally. I noticed that at every door where we asked the people there whether we could sing for them, they said no, and it was super awkward, but then every door where we just started singing bez suhlasu (without asking), they loved us and it was an awesome experience for everyone. I feel like some missionaries are really just too scared of bothering people that they don't save anyone, and unfortunately, I can see myself in that group a lot of the time as well. AWESOME CHANCE TO IMPROVE!

Anyways, I'm so stocked, the Christmas markets truly are unbelievable, I can't wait to send pics, we got to go and see the Markets in Brno as well at the training, SO cool.

I love you all, and if you have any questions or comments, please forward them to my parents, who will promptly bring them up with me during our Skype session on Christmas.

<3<3<3

Elder Brousseau