A Good Week

Ahojte!

Famous church building in Banska Bystrica

Hey all, what's up? I really have no idea where to start, I guess that's going to be a common theme for my emails, haha. Um...well, we make German pancakes and that French Toast I love all the time. This sounds so wonderful until you find out that we ran out of Mapleine last week. I thought that that was just something you could get anywhere, it's just this little bottle where you put half a teaspoon in a pot with some water and sugar and you get 3 cups of pretty decent tasting maple syrup. Then I found out that the only Maple Syrup they have here is like 15 Euros for a little like 1/2 liter thing, it's TERRIBLE. So I petition you my family, please send me some Mapleine, I don't need very much, but these things require syrup and we can't get any without having to forgo eating for a while. Anyway, thanks so much in advance, and hey, Mom, you should organize a big family home evening and read from Quentin L. Cook's address to new mission presidents from like June or July, oh my gosh, talk about deja vu!

So anyway, my investigators are either doing really well or really badly. For example, on Sunday we had the best day ever and had 3 investigators at church--I'm so happy about it. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there was an investigator who suddenly was wanting to meet with us more often, which we were happy about until we found out that he was just wanting to so that he could chew us out about being missionaries and tell us our mission is hopeless and try to get us to leave Slovakia. Thank you Grandma and Grandpa, your advice on talking to Catholics has helped us a lot. Suffice it to say that now I'm fighting for a baptism so that my trainer can have that (he has yet to participate in one), before the end of his mission. One thing that we've found works pretty well ever since we started using it yesterday is just be shameless. Haha, by that I mean, the people here really don't enjoy accepting service of any kind so that kind of stuff really doesn't work, so instead, we simply ask them to help us and when they ask with what, we say we're missionaries and we need help finding someone to teach, do you know anyone who's a strong believer in Christ? So far it's worked every time.

This week we're trying to work specifically on a couple of people. First, there's a member here who we're trying to just make contact with. We know her phone # and where she lives, but the man of the house always answers the phone or the doorbell, it's SO annoying, cause he's all like, "you came again?!? I'm calling the police!!" And we're just like, "dude! We just want to say hi, just let her talk to us, and you called the police last time and they didn't do anything, what makes you think it will change? We're not doing anything wrong." The first time I was actually kind of scared until I saw him, he's like 5' 0". But the poor lady, I'm 100% sure this guy is at LEAST verbally abusive and I mean, he won't even let her answer her house phone, which does NOT have caller ID, we know this. Keep us in your prayers there.

Fun photoshopping. Chris and his trainer

Our other investigators are flourishing because our finding is gradually getting better as I improve in the language. Last week we had 6 new investigators, you should have heard our District leader when we were doing call-in reports about it. Now all I'm hoping for is to be able to get all of them to be progressing and then baptized. This last week we had just the coolest training ever. It was in Brattislava, and my goodness, President McKonkie is just inspired. We talked about Branch-building, which is where I got that talk I mentioned earlier. We need to get the attitude that we're on a normal mission out of our heads. Slovakia is different from every other mission in the world, and we need to start acting like it. Remember how last week I felt a little bit stifled by the amount of rules? Well President said to us yesterday that if it isn't in the white handbook, it's not a rule. Holy liberation Batman! Haha, everything is so much easier to work now, when I suggest we do something in district meeting or at the apartment, instead of hearing, "Well something we couldn't do when we were on a mission in Africa was...," or "When the last mission president was here we weren't allowed to do that...," I hear, "well is there something against it in the White Handbook or Preach My Gospel?" I. Am. So. Grateful that the Lord has heard my prayers and that President feels like spiritual creativity is required for the people here. The first thing I want to try this week is go contacting to teach piano lessons for free, with the only stipulation being a 45 minute lesson and then a 15 minute spiritual thought. I think that that would be just amazing here and it would help the people not only to accept us, but I'd get to be around pianos a lot more than I already am, and hopefully a real piano, not just a keyboard. Haha, remind me to try and get into Grandma and Grandpa Burton's will for their piano. And the Cabin.

So I'm swiftly running out of time, but I'm a firm believer in the creativity of groups, so I'm going to put forth the question, what should I try? Do you have any exeriences from your missions that you'd think would help me here in Slovakia? How do you think would be the best way for me to contact someone, what words would help you be interested in this church?

This is their grocery store.

In answer to this week's questions, the weather is very moist. It's gross nasty almost rain. It's super misty and there's mud everywhere, but it's about 50-65 degrees every day, it feels like March or April here in January. It's very strange. At the grocery store every week we usually buy 8 litres of milk, and just whatever we want for us to eat that week, like for French Toast, we'll get some cheddar cheese (SO expensive), and some of that potatoe bread I've talked about before called knedličky, and we usually get a big thing of about 32 eggs every week. We usually have to buy flour every week, and we always get more ingredients for Halušky So that's bacon, potatoes, Brynza (Sheep cheese), Smotana (it's like sour cream), and onions. I still hate onions, but I'm finding that if I can't taste them they don't bug me so that's good. Thank heaven's we DO have a washing machine right next to our shower in our apartment, but we don't have a dryer, so we hang our clothes on this little rack in the winter and outside in the spring summer and fall. It's hard to say if everything's pretty close, I know that the Zone Leaders always get put in Banska Bystrica and Zvolen because they're in central Slovakia so it's about the same distance everywhere, but that distance is about 2.5 hours in every direction. Yeah, driving all the way across Slovakia is like Orem to St. George distance, isn't that crazy? And if you're referring to like grocery stores and stuff, yeah, we have a Billa (It's just like Smith's Slovak Style) right across the street, and right behind Billa is this awesome track and outdoor gym we go to every day. It takes about half an hour to walk from our apartment to our building (that picture of the street is the one the church building is on, leading up to the Namestie), and about 20 minutes to drive to Zvolen, so that's about everything. We usually do walk everywhere we go because we have a limit to the # of miles we can use.

Thanks for everything.

I love you all,

Starší Chris Brousseau

Šťastný Nový Rok!

(Editor's note: This blog post is out of order. We didn't have time to create a blog post last week. We think you will love this letter!)

Čauko!

^^^Isn't that the BEST expression? It's like ciao, but diminuitive, so it's like a cute little bit of ciao, cause I only wanted to send a cute little bit of ciao home to you...anyway...

New coat and scarf by Tracy

So this last week has been just crazy. I honestly don't know where to begin, I guess Monday...So we found this store that has a suit that's normally 450 Euros on sale for 130, and I'm thinking that might be a worth-it investment for a missionary to make in his mission, but at the same time I'm thinking, "it's the beginning of your mission, why aren't you waiting till the end to spend the Christmas money on things like this?" but then I think it's 100% wool for crying out loud! So yeah, that's a dilemmna, but I'll ponder and pray on it so not a big deal at all, especially, like why am I even thinking about money at all, this should be a spiritual mission. While we were walking away from the store and I was thinking all that, I caught a glimpse of something I had yet to see here in Slovakia. Someone was drinking a Sprite on the namestie! Just a regular normal Sprite! I couldn't believe it, I wanted to go ask them where they got it, but we had an appointment to get to and I wasn't able to, so I'm still without regular things like that from America. Sorry for this first paragraph, I'm still trying to get my thoughts together cause everything's just crazy right now. Um, so I didn't get the suit, but I'm still considering/wanting it really badly, any advice? But on to better things that are far more important, like church in Zvolen! I heard once that cigarette smoke was the best smell you can smell during church but I'd like to submit that it's actually Christmas Punch. In Zvolen we had a congregation of entirely investigators, it was SO cool, and I honestly could see each of them being a member there, it would just be amazing, and I hope sincerely that it plays out that way.

Chess board made with post-its

So Tuesday was P~Day for us, and we got to head to Zvolen and watch a bit of a movie at a missionary couple's apartment! We watched like the first hour of 17 miracles, it was cool, but I didn't watch any of it. I was sitting at the table writing New Year's letters cause I felt like I'd seen that movie too many times back home anyway. But the celebrations here are massive! Every day literally is a holiday, like yesterday I didn't get to email because everything was closed because it was 3-kings day, and there's another holiday every day of the year, the just obviously can't close down everything for every single one, only about 1 of every 4. But they sell huge fireworks year-round because they set them off for nearly everything--they did on new years eve, and new years day, AND the day after that, and yesterday, AND Christmas and every other holiday, there's just fireworks constantly going off. Through all of this, it's pretty difficult to get any work done, we hardly got any lessons last week, which meant we were finding...all the time...When my trainer went on an exchange in Brattislava last week, another elder and I had a 5 hour block where we just tracted. Not even because we planned it that way, we just had 3 lessons cancel, and man do I HATE tracting. What this is all coming to, (I promise I'm still positive and happy) there is that a good thing came from all of this. During weekly planning, I expressed to my trainer that I am sick and tired of "finding" and we need to start getting some referrals, and I gave a good 20 minute monologue of just how this all needed to happen with things like finding at colleges so we can get some younger, more connected people interested and stuff like that and we really have taken it to heart, and we are working our TAILS off in order to get a branch ASAP now. While we've been doing this, I've really felt this feeling of boldness come upon me and you know what? It's working. I can't wait to have call-in's this week and tell the AP's that we have 6 new batismal dates, yeah, that's right, SIX! We have one lady and her son set up for the 1st of February, and we've only had 1 lesson with them! She's brand new and just golden. I can't wait to see what the Lord has in store for her. Then we're working on getting 2 families into the branch, either of which would allow us in Banska to move from being a group to an established branch and then the work would really just shoot forward because we'd be able to issue callings and not have to worry about keeping our members motivated as much any more. That's my vision for Banska this year. I need to have a self-sustaining, and self-motivating branch that gives referrals to missionaries and positive peer-pressure to each other! I really hope that I don't get transferred away, but I know that that very well could happen. Transfers will be issued February 3rd, and I'm sort of dreading it, but we'll see what happens, I know I just need to "let go and let God" at this point.

Walking around town

So, a little more about these investigators: The first family: they are an older couple, he's 66, and his wife is like 50, and they have a house in Banska, and he built his own little cabin up in a teeny village about an hour away called Latky. They're taking care of their 8-year old granddaughter and wow is she just sassy, the main phrase I hear out of her is yes, AND???, it's so funny. But they're just amazing. The first lesson we taught with them was the plan of salvation, and you should have heard the man at the end of it, he was like, "I have something to say...the catholic church has been around HUNDREDS of YEARS and they have all of this mixed up, and here you 2 young boys come in here and just explain it all so SIMPLY!" exactly like that, and then when his wife gave an our father at the end of the lesson, he was just like, "I hate that prayer, it's useless, why can't you pray more like them, they talk about specific things and don't memorize anything, that's how I want to pray." And Money in the bank at the end of our 2nd lesson with them, he prayed! I'm so excited to keep teaching them, the husband was made for this gospel, he reminds me so much of my grandpa, it's wonderful. And the second family are this adorable little family that were found a long time ago but dropped because they didn't really have time for religion at that time. They speak english to us but it's really slow, and so we keep speaking Slovak back, but they insist that they want to speak English with us so that's how it works. They're a Christmas miracle, where we were in their neighborhood during Christmas eve visits and we just on a whim went over and asked if we could come in and share a spiritual thought, and they said yes! It was so cool, they like hunkered down and were ready for a big hour long lesson with their 4 daughters all in their pajamas and just looking at us so intensely, it was so cute. The oldest is 10 by the way, and all of them were really disappointed when we ended after just 15 minutes, and I can't wait to go back this week and teach some more, they didn't have more time to meet until after the new year so we actually have them on schedule, and it's just going to be SO great.

Library where they send emails

There are a lot of people where this is the first email from me they're reading and I just want to apologize real fast that it's taken this long. A quick shout-out to my MTC teachers, thank you SO much for all of your help, I really felt prepared to work coming out here. Thanks so much for what you told me about your MTC experience, it really helped me to see all of the good things that were happening and that I was learning and helped me see that I didn't need to focus on what was hard or what I didn't like. Thank you so much for all of the listening you did, it really helped me to de-stress, and just the fact that you weren't scared to go off topic or be silly I know didn't only help me feel comfortable. Haha, I think I'm getting to know you better out in the field than I did in the MTC because everyone still has stories about serving with you, especially because my trainer knew you so well! Anyway, I'm so grateful that I was able to spend time with you in the MTC as well, and that you got all of my video-game references, but were able to stay focused on teaching, that's been a big help out here in the field and I've been doing a lot of looking back at your example of how to laugh and joke for like 3 seconds and then be back in teaching mode. Thanks again to all 3 of you, I wouldn't have had half of these exeriences if I hadn't learned how I should act and how to speak from you first.

Iconic church in Banska Bystrica

So that's about it, everything here is going great, my new favorite food is fried cheese, haha. I'm having trouble figuring out how people here live, because everything comes out here so much later than it does in America, like at a resteraunt the other day I say a huge premier commercial for Harry Potter 7 part 2, which is coming out here in theaters later this year, and I just couldn't believe that people just wait that long to see it, when it's been out on the internet and in other countries for (how long now?) months and months, and also how they don't just get sick of American culture just being all over the place. It's just crazy, but I wouldn't want to be anywhere different.

Milújem Vás,

Starší Chris Brousseau

Relying on Miracles

Čauko!

Chris, in his apartment

So I'm still here in Banska Bystrica just livin' it up. For anyone who happens to be wondering, this city is a bit smaller than Orem is, in both size and population, so yeah, it's pretty small, but it's full of personality. A little update on the suit, I've decided not to get it, I'll see what I can do when I don't have to worry about lugging an extra suit between every transfer. I can't wait to see how everything here is meant to turn out because, my goodness, the people are just ridiculously kind and amazing and nice and friendly until you start talking about the gospel. Then you've just insulted their very souls. We're teaching this doctor. He was accepting the gospel really well until we told him that we don't baptize babies and then he just flipped out at us. He went to Mass on Sunday and texted us throughout the whole service. He was like, "I feel SO fulfilled right now, your church never fulfilled anyone!," "Look at my preacher, he's so wise!," and just other stuff like that. We were actually getting a kick out of it, especially because we know he's gonna cool down and beg us to come back in a week. He's done this kind of thing before.

Library--where Chris writes emails home

Chris' street in Banska Bystrica

As far as I'm concerned, I am sick and tired of planting seeds. After my trainer and I had our little like re-awakening thing, I'm determined that there's gonna be a General Conference talk about Slovakia sometime soon, and I want to be right in the center of involvement there. I do not care about odds in the slightest, nor do I care about where other missionaries have failed. I wish that people here would stop telling me things like, "well my other companion never did that," or "Another elder tried that once and this happened," my mission is and was always meant to be different than theirs, and I'm ready to succeed, and success in my mind is far from seed planting. The field is not "white, already to harvest" everywhere EXCEPT Slovakia, so I'm going to do my harvesting. There had better be some success in store for me because the Lord knows better than anyone that I'm going to be giving this my absolute all.

Chris and his trainer

I feel so stifled here as far as creativity goes--I swear there's a rule against everything. I really want to change the dynamic of "finding"--make the people come to us so we can automatically sift through those who wouldn't be interested. Apparently, we aren't allowed to do that. We aren't allowed to do any concerts outside of Christmas, and when we tried to get this thing called tabling going, where we just set up a table and wait for people to come to us, we got shot down at the Metsky Urad, so that's not working out, and I just can't think of a good way to make that happen. Any ideas? Anyway, I really am doing wonderful and I'm so excited to finally get the ball rolling so that I can have some real success.

We've been having some REALLY good contacting sessions this week because my trainer and I have started contacting with the attitude of, "I'm not going to find anyone, I'm going to teach everyone." We've found that if you go into it with the attitude of teaching right off the bat instead of basically begging for interest, people listen more often. We've been finding some really cool people who I can't wait to send you baptismal pictures for. But that's pretty much all I have time for this week, Love you all!

Milujem ťa,

Starší Chris Brousseau

Christmas in Slovakia!

Ahojte!

I am SO excited to email today I can hardly SEE STRAIGHT, haha. I will be emailing all about the last 2 weeks, and I apologize right now to my fam that Skyped with me, they might already know a few of these stories. So...first off, what the heck, why does my sister get a car?!? Ok, got that out of my system, I don't actually want an answer, I'm sure that will be taken care of when I get home...*wink*

Alright, so last week before Christmas was just wonderful, I couldn't believe all the success we've been having, we got 16 new investigators that week, and we are struggling now trying to schedule when we can meet with all of them because we're the only 2 missionaries here so it would be impossible for us to do splits. I'm praying that with the Lord, we're going to be able to make all of that work, because it feels like this city is ready to light up in missionary work.

Now, to my sister: Well everything, where can I start? This is the warmest winter they've had in like 35 years or so, there's no snow anywhere. Everything except Europa (the mall) is something really old that has been refurbished and is being used as something else now. It is SUPER foggy here, especially on the border with the Czech Republic, btw Banska is in the middle of Slovakia so thank heavens I don't have to associate with that border very much, it's just straight up unhealthy, but so foggy that you can't even see your hand in front of your face with a car that has its brights on behind you (I tested that, it's true!) but most of the time it's pretty ok. It is really quite a nice atmosphere most of the time, and the people are generally very helpful. When we contact in English for our English class, most people stop because they think we need help finding something, and actually, when we DO need help finding something, people will stop whatever we're doing and just lead us there no charge or anything, it's amazing. My companion...hmmm...is really motivated, and he's really calm and composed. 

The food here is all SUPER heavy, like they put on their menus exactly how much mass is in every meal, and it averages about 300 grams, but goes up to about 1500 grams on some meals. Everything is really tasty though, you can tell that they really pride themselves on their traditional cooking, for example, one Christmas tradition is called Kapusnica which translates to saurkraut soup. I know, I know, it sounds nasty, but gosh, it is some heavenly stuff, it makes me wish that Christmas is year round. It's like this spicy sour cabbage soup with sausage and ham and it's just SO good. Or like Svickova, what I had my first day here. it's this tenderloin steak in the middle of this plate just FULL of sauce, like seriously, you saw the picture, there is more sauce than anything else. The goal is to use the knedlicky (pieces of bread) to soak up the sauce and finish the bread, the sauce, and the meat all at the same time. It's actually really rude to finish one thing before anything else in a meal,  because the meals are all geared towards the last bite, in which you are supposed to have a tiny bit of everything still on the plate so you can finish it all at the same time in the last bite. I'm working on making a missionary recipe book for myself, and I'm regretting extremely forgetting my recipe box at home because I'm just stuck with the recipes that are in my head, but I'll be sure to copy everything down and make some for you when I get home, haha. 

As far as the music goes, we hear American music nearly all the time, because the Slovak bands aren't very good, and the people like American stuff more anyway, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to be up to date or anything, you should make a Spotify playlist of every song that you think that I would like that I'm missing that I'll listen to when I get home or something, that would just be wonderful. Little kids are entirely too cute here, haha! They are just so sassy but they're just little and they do all the things American kids do like run around and scream for no reason, or cry when their mom dresses them up in some cute little bear suit that they don't want to wear, even though it will keep them warm, and laugh at the funny American missionary (my companion), which leads me to my news!!! On the 26th of December, make note of this, I got asked by a lady on the street if I was native!!! I was so surprised, especially because I didn't even really say anything, we were contacting about family history, and I just used the word for geneology instead and basically I just said, exactly that, we teach a course every Tuesday for everyone that would be interested in becoming closer to their ancestors and she said, "Ste Slovak?" Then she looked at my nametag and was like, how do you speak so well, french people are not very smart. And I was just stunned, so I just said I'm a quick learner, but she's the only person who's done that, but most of the kids think that I'm native just because they don't really understand the difference in accents yet so they talk super fast to me and it's so cute, they're so matter-of-fact about everything, like I cased something wrong the other day, I think it was just river which is rieka, I said rieku when I should have said Riekym, and this little girl was just like, "I don't know why you said that you silly, nobody wants to walk in a river, that would just not be the smartest thing, especially if you aren't having any purpose, I mean I don't have that gladly at all!" Because the cases change the meaning of the words, that actually makes sense, just btw. I don't really get to play any sports, just because pretty much the places where people play sports in the winter is in Switzerland and I'm not allowed to go there... But in the summer time if I'm still in Banska, there's a sweet outdoor basketball setup right next to the apartment and we have a pretty good ball we could use, so that would be cool. But I hope that answered at least most of your questions, and maybe created a few more.

So last week I had the opportunity to go all throughout my mission with 3 other Elders and do singing displays and concerts because somebody said that I could sing to President and he assigned me. We did concerts in lots of places, and that was a Monumental amount of travelling, but my favorite one and it has the best story too was Uherske hradice in the Czech Republic. We drove there and got to where we were supposed to do our concert like 4 hours early, it was this huge outdoor cafe with a stage and everything like they do concerts there all the time, and so we had the opportunity to practice singing a bit and get our parts for the quartet down, we sang an arrangement of "Beautiful Savior" in Czech, and "Lo How a Rose E'er Blooming" in Slovak, and I did a piano solo and also had to accompany another elder when he sang a solo of "Come Lord Jesus to the Manger" from "Savior of the World." I had to learn that whole song in 2 hours because he decided to tell me 3 hours before our first concert that he still needed an accompanist, I did not appreciate that, but I played it pretty well and in this city I had learned and gotten it all down by that point so it wasn't much trouble, I still just felt conflicted about playing for him, but anyway, it astounded me here by how many people showed up, it was completely full with like 250 people sitting and another 50 standing up just watching us and I was even more astonished to learn that there were only like 5 people there who weren't members of the church. I'm used to having maybe like 3 people at church who aren't missionaries and we got to sing with a choir of members that came there too, and it was all just so amazing, I wish I had video-taped something, but I was too focused on being there and meeting people and playing/singing so I forgot and I just got kind of a lame picture of the 4 of us. 

After that, we had to drive to Brno, where we were going to sleep before we went to Praha (Prague) the next day. Our GPS (we named it Tomaško) lead us on this super creepy winding windy road through the dwarf mountains and we passed through like 6 towns where the population was less than 100 people on their little signs that I'm sure no one has read in 30 years because there's a freaking FREE-WAY we should have been on. But our GPS is crazy and doesn't know it exists. It got so soupy foggy that we couldn't see anything. Like all we could see was that our lights were on, we couldn't even see how far they were shining. And I started to get really scared that something bad was going to happen, and we all were for a little while but it only lasted about 10 minutes and then we all just had this peace come over us. It was so cool; we felt like we were literally in the hand of the Lord, and we navigated through by using the GPS just because it knew where the turns were and which direction we were pointed and somehow we stayed on the road, and no axe murderers were hiding in the trees and we saw like 500 Christmas trees that were bigger than our apartment building (seriously, they're huge), and we made it to Brno safely. It was just so cool to actually see the prayers that people offer for missionaries every day truly work in my life and to see that we are protected from ALL harms, in every sense. The point is that when we're here, it doesn't matter what we're doing, the Lord always makes sure that we are protected and that good comes from whatever happens. In my case, about a week before Christmas, we got one of the drunk guys as a new investigator! Anyway, just some amazing experiences that I know can only come in a place like Slovakia right here, right now, just for me.

In conclusion, I just want to thank everyone for their Christmas wishes and for all of the gifts that I received, I was so touched by the presents that I got, like this guitar pick that I'm wearing around my neck, or this amazing scarf that I'm matching my companion with, the wishes really do mean everything to a missionary, and I want to with each of you the same love and success in everything you're working for right now.

Milujem ťa!

Starší Chris Brousseau

Safe Arrival!

We received this email today:

"Dear Brother and Sister Brousseau,

This morning Elder Brousseau met his new companion. Attached is a picture for you to enjoy.

Today they will travel to their area called Banská Bystrica.  It is a town approximately 9 hours away from Prague by train, in Slovakia. There are just the 2 Elders in that town. However, they aren’t too far away from a town called Zvolen which has another 2 Elders and 1 Senior Couple.

P-Day is next Monday. Elder Brousseau will contact you then to share his adventures."

Chris is growing a little with each passing day. The MTC is sort of a spiritual greenhouse where a missionary has a lot of experience and inspiration crammed into a very short period of time. Those of you who have been following the blog will note the remarkable growth in Chris already. We are looking forward to continuing reports from Chris and we're planning to update the blog weekly, so check back frequently!

Thank you all for your support for Chris and our family! Your love blesses and strengthens our family each day.

Here are the first pictures from Prague:

Chris with President & Sister McConkie from Salt Lake City!

Chris with his first companion

This is a map of the Czech/Slovak Mission. Chris' first area is a city in the center of Slovakia called Banská Bystrica. It required a nine-hour train ride from Prague!

We're On Our Way!

Čaute!

Chris' MTC District

So this is my very last msmku here in the MTC! I can not believe every day how fast it has gone by. The MTC is a wonderful place, it is very hard to get used to all of the rules, like no music at all anywhere, but every one of them is in place for a reason. The hardest part for ME to get used to, was, say you're the best at basketball...No one cares. Or you have the most scripture mastery scriptures memorized...No one cares. You could be growing up to be the next prophet and no one will [care] about you any more than [any other] Elder... The only thing that gives you like ANY status here is where you're from, where you're going, and how well you speak your language, which is exactly what everyone tells you NOT to compare yourself to. I've never felt the spirit so strong anywhere else.

This is the group traveling to Prague today!

So in this last week, let's see...We got our flight plans! We leave at 7:30 am on Monday and fly from Salt Lake to Dallas, Dallas to London, and London to Prague. I'm really nervous about going because I'm finding more and more the differences between Czech and Slovak, and I'm scared I won't be able to understand very well, but I'm praying for comfort and peace and that has been working really well so far. We got challenged at in-field orientation yesterday to give a mormon.org pass-along card to someone before we meet our mission president, so I wrote pamätajte prósim o Ježišovi Kristovi on the back, and I'm not expecting much from it, but you never know.

So time for a 'tender-mercies-of-the-Lord' story. On Sunday sometime, I left my journal somewhere, I still cannot think of where it was left, but I was so worried because there's a lot of stuff in there, you know? And I wasn't really freaking out about it, but I kept looking all of Sunday night, and all of Monday too, then on Tuesday when I had finally just gotten it through my head that it was gone and I just needed to start over with a new one, I checked the mail after dinner, and someone had found it and MAILED it to me! My goodness I was surprised, but it was so cool to be reminded that the Lord takes care of the little things too, not just the crazy huge life decisions.

Here are the Slovak missionaries!

On Sunday, I got to see the Character of Christ film from David A. Bednar, and for all of you planning on coming into the MTC, don't do what everyone tells you to, they don't understand what they're talking about. Save that film for the week before you leave. It is so worth it to wait because at the end of your stay you're in more of a missionary mindset and are more ready to understand the message that he is trying to convey. His main message is about how every time when we would turn inward in pain or fear or selfishness, Christ turned outwards, like for example, read the JST after Christ had been fasting in the wilderness for 40 days and Satan was tempting him. In the Bible, he calls angels who minister unto or help him regain his strength. In the JST, he sends the angels to John the Beloved who is in jail instead of helping himself, he helps others every time. It is absolutely stunning to behold the magnitude of his love for each of us.

So nothing really happened the rest of the week until Thanksgiving, which was awesome! We started out our day with a devotional from Russell M. Nelson who talked about how we can turn gratitude into revelation, both from God and about ourselves. I love apostles, all of them have such an intense love of the gospel and of God. I got to sit on the front row, like close enough to see the shine on his forehead kind of thing, I felt so lucky, he kept looking RIGHT at me. Then later remember how I made it into 3 musical numbers? I thought that was cool, but not very amazing because I saw there were like 45 different groups of people trying out, so I was assuming there would be like 15-20 musical numbers or something like that. Turns out, there were 4, and I was in 3 of them. I was so surprised I was almost too nervous to play, but I went up and played through my fear and did really pretty well. On Harry Potter, I only made 1 mistake, and people have been telling me at least like 15 times a day since then that they loved it and were so impressed, it's been really humbling for me to see how much people appreciate things like that. The duet I did with the fiddler went wonderfully, I didn't have a hard part, and he's like 'my cousin-good' so it was cool. Then on the Joseph, I actually got my confidence up enough to look right into one of the cameras while it was on me and wink. Everyone laughed except the MTC presidency who happened not to be watching at that moment.

Chris playing piano for the Thanksgiving Program

Anyway, it's been a really fun week and just an overall great experience here at the MTC. An update on my investigators, we got a new one on Tuesday, who really isn't interested in the gospel and I can't see it going anywhere. Another man got baptized and confirmed on sunday, which was awesome, and another man was baptized on Saturday last week. I'm ready to go out and declare the gospel in a real setting, we've been practicing street contacting, and gosh it's too awkward, but I think I'll be able to get over that pretty soon. I think it's about high time I gave another testimony in Slovak, so here goes.

Ahojte, mojí kamáratkí. Dufám že viete že žije našých spasiťel. Viem toto a viem tiež že môžeme robiť ničo ako potrebujeme postrednictvom uzmierenia Ježiša Krista. Viem že potrebujeme vidieť že naš ciel predtým ako a pótom ako ideme na misia je posvať ostatných aby prišli ku Kristovi tým, že im budeme pomaháť ziskať znovusriadené evanjelium postrednictvom viery v Ježiša Krista a Jeho uzmierenia, pokania, krstu, a daru Ducha Svätého, a vytrvania až do konca. Môžeme posvať nikto, viem to s mojou celý srdce. Tiež viem že oni budú počuť lebo to nie je nový pre nikto. Už vieme toto evanjelium, musime to najst zasa. Je to môj svedectvo o pracu misionarom a hovorim tieto veci v mene Ježiša Krista amen.

MTC Christmas lights are on!

(Google translation: Hello, my friends. I hope you know that our Savior lives. I know this and I also know that we can do as we need Nico postrednictvom Atonement of Jesus Christ. I know I need to see that our goal before and then as we go on a mission to help others to come unto Christ by helping them we help to acquire znovusriadené gospel postrednictvom faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, and perseverance to the end. I know it with my whole heart. I also know that they will be heard because it is not new to anyone. We already know this gospel, we have to look it up again. It is my testimony about the work of missionaries and speak these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.)

Milujem ťa,

Starší Chris Brousseau

(Editor's note: we were able to speak to Chris on the phone this morning during his time at the SLC International Airport. He left this morning for Prague and will likely arrive early Tuesday morning, Mountain Standard Time. He sounded so excited and so nervous to get started! Please keep him in your prayers.)

Thanksgiving!

Ahojte!

These are the missionaries traveling next week!

So this week has been so crazy. But there's some big news in order! First off, I just received my travel plans to the Czech Republic! I am so excited, we'll be departing next Monday, and they sent that we need to be prepared to face subzero temperatures from the FIRST MINUTE we step outside of the Airport! I am so beyond excited, this whole experience will be so crazy for me, I'm going to love it. The other big thing I'm excited to tell you about is...............I got to Skype on Monday with my investigator's mom!!! Haha, and Guess who she is?!? She's the lady who translated the Book of Mormon, AND Preach My Gospel into Slovak! I felt so inadequate talking to her, but we were able to bear our testimonies, and she said she was very excited to have missionaries like us coming into Slovakia, because apparently they only send the best, haha. Some of you may be wondering right now, "wait, I thought she was an investigator..." Good wondering! Keep it up! She IS a legitimate investigator who lived with her dad (her parents are seperated), and I am so excited, she goes home this week to go talk with her dad about letting her be baptized.

Writing and illustrating at the MTC

So let's see, what else happened this week...hmmm....Even MORE good stuff! I got a PACKAGE from my best friend this week! I opened it up during class and when I saw who it was from and all the stuff in it, I just started to cry, I am so blessed by you people. You are the most perfect friend I could ask for.

In other news, yesterday I tried out for another musical number because the first one went sort of ok, and the MTC president's wife had me stay and evaluate other performances with her, and suffice it to say, I tried out for 1 performance, and I just got letters not 10 minutes ago confirming I will be playing 3 times in the Thanksgiving Day devotional. I'm not sure how I feel, I'm like beyond nervous, but at the same time, I'm sort of excited because I'll be playing for 1 or more apostles. I'm playing Hedwig's Theme, I'm accompanying a girl who is singing a medley for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and lastly, I can't believe I'm doing this, but I'm doing a duet with a fiddler on the Orange Blossom Special....I'll be playing the cello on that last one. I feel so humbled that these talents that I've always thought were cool, but never really put any store in are being so immensely appreciated by the MTC, especially from someone who doesn't play hymns.

Chris' b-ball blackeye

Anyway, things are going wonderfully, and I am so ready to leave and go to the field in a little less than 2 weeks. This is my last real P~Day in the MTC because of Thanksgiving next week, so I don't know if I'll be able to email until December 9th (Mondays are my P~Days in the field), so if I don't get to say it before I go, I love you from the very depths of my soul, your support has meant everything to me here in the MTC. I know that missions are hard, and it already has been hard, but I also know that with support like what I'm getting, I will never have to feel like giving up. I am prepared to go and spread the work of the Lord in every land and tongue, and more importantly, I'm prepared to lose myself doing it. I will serve a complete, full-time, honorable mission.

Milujem T'a,
Starsi Chris Brousseau