Nitty Gritty

Ahojte!=)

Trencin

Ok, so this time I really have no idea where to start, so my thoughts are going to be a little bit scrambled. I'm finding out exactly how spoiled I was my first transfer to have a car, because now, living without the car is SO hard. Not in the city, that's fine, but like on Saturday, we had to go to Brno, which is in the Czech Republic for a Branch Presidency meeting (my companion and I are in the Branch Presidency here). I had never had to navigate through the streets of Brno, which is about 3 times as big as Banska Bystrica, and 4 times as big as Trencin, without being able to use highways and road signs, and it was REALLY hard, especially because this was Elder Ellingson's first time going to Brno with someone who didn't already know the way to the church building there, so we had a bit of an adventure getting there, we never got lost, but I'm not sure we ever really knew where we were going either, but we got to the building anyway, and it was awesome. The miracle about the whole trip was that we didn't ever get time to go buy our bus tickets before we actually had to go, and we've been burned a couple of times for not getting tickets early, and because of this, we were planning all these alternate ways of getting there before the meeting started, but we both just had the feeling to just go up and ask, and we were able to do exactly what we had originally planned with no problem, it was amazing!

Elder Brousseau and his companion

This area is an adventure every single week. We didn't get one lady baptized, not because she doesn't want to, but because she had a doctor's appointment Saturday at 11 am that went until 2 for her back, but I do have good news! I finally got to actually meet her and we have more meetings with her set up, it's going to be SO great to teach a lady we already know is completely prepared and ready. The bad news is that we're going to have to wait at least 3 weeks to have the service because our Branch President is taking a Slovak break because he just had heart surgery so he's gonna go sit in a spa for 3 weeks. The other bad news is that our investigator pool is suffering. No one is answering their phone when we call, the streets are pretty much always dead, and the people on the streets don't want anything to do with us. I think that the Olympics are effectively stopping the work. It also doesn't help now that it's pretty dangerous for Americans to be out on the streets, we've already heard about 3 companionships getting beat up in the last week because America beat Slovakia in hockey 7-1, so everybody hates us for that on top of everything else.

Satisfaction from a good day's work

So yesterday I had manifest to me why I never ever ever ever ever ever EVER want to deal with drinking ever in my life. I already knew that drinking was bad, but I'll be the first to admit I was still a little bit curious anyway, because it's portrayed in the media as something that's cool and fun and it's a party and people are so funny when they're drunk. I obeyed the word of wisdom out of respect to my parents and because I believe Joseph Smith was a prophet, not because I wanted to, and now I am so happy that I did. My companion and I were walking across a bridge yesterday when we saw something happening in front of us and we weren't sure what it was. At first I thought that it was a couple of people beating up a homeless man, which we would have gone and stopped, but then it looked like 2 teenagers were trying to stop a homeless man from jumping off the bridge, and we weren't sure what was going on so we just kept walking closer until we realized that they were trying to pick him up, it was just a boy and a girl and an older guy, probably in his 50's. I immediately walked up and asked if they needed help and the guy said yes they did, they were trying to get this man home and they couldn't do it by themselves. So I made an executive decision for our companionship and said that we'll help them get him home, and the 3 of us picked him up and started carrying him. Let me describe to you now why the word of wisdom will never be a problem for me. This man was so drunk that he couldn't remember how to walk. He had already peed his pants at least once, and did again while we were carrying him. He was making NO sense in anything he was saying and was acting like a 2 year old fighting us the whole way saying he wanted to lie down on the ground and stuff. While talking to the 2 people trying to help him out, it came up that the girl was his daughter, and when she told us that, he heard and yelled to the whole world that she was a very unkind word and that he didn't have a daughter. The young man yelled at him to take it back because she looked like she was about to cry and he just kept saying that his daughter didn't exist. At 1 point because he was kind of heavy and it didn't help that he was being dead weight we set him down on a bench, and then when we were done resting he said he wasn't going anywhere until he had some chocolate, it was SO annoying, we didn't give him any chocolate, we just picked him up and kept going. After we had dragged him about a kilometer and a half, we got to his house and helped them get him inside. These people were SO grateful for our help and I really hope that something good comes of this because they were such nice people and I really like them, they deserve to have their lives improved a bit.

Anyway, I'm still having a blast and missing you all profusely. I love every one of you and hope the very best comes to you throughout the coming year.

Milujem t'a,

Starší Chris Brousseau

New Area!

Trencin is really close to the Czech border

Zdravim!

So I started emailing the pictures before I started this email, and now the computer's going really slow and I can't even tell what I'm writing because the words aren't keeping up with what I'm typing so I'll just send it as is and just pray that I don't make any spelling mistakes, but if I do, please forgive me. asjdflkajrigh

So here I am in my new area! This city is a little bit smaller than Banska Bystrica, but in a country that only has like 5 and a half million people, how big can your cities get? haha, the answer is about as big as a passport photo. Anyway, with it being small, it also has the coolest castle in Slovakia, to which I will be going as soon as I'm done emailing!!! I'm so excited. The whole place is just this perfect little fairytale kingdom what with the castle and just everything about the city, I wouldn't be surprised one bit if Cinderella was based here, you know? I hope the pics I'm sending are doing it justice, they're going REALLY slowly though, so I hope that all of them get through, let me know if you enjoy them, because I have a feeling that some of them are going to be my favorite on my mission.

I'm so excited to work with my new companion! He's from WIndsor, Colorado. I'm a bit taller than him, and he's super chill. Our workout schedule in the morning has changed a little bit because it's a whole lot colder here than in Banska, so we don't go running anymore, but we have a nice pull-up bar here, so my companion asked me to push him at the beginning of the transfer, and now we're doing 45 pull-ups every morning both of us. My goal is to be able to rip off 100 in a row at the end of my mission. He has been here in Trencin for 6 months already, so it will be 8 months at the end of this transfer. I honestly think I would go crazy if I was put in the same area for more than 4 months, but he says he's fine with it because he likes it here.

Chris' new kitchen!

The Slovak here is so weird. We're pretty close to the Czech Border, so people have kind of a mixed accent, and it's a little weird getting used to, but everyone here is SO impressed by my language ability, it's so encouraging to me to get to see the hand of the Lord in my life giving me a real spiritual gift! On Sunday, one of the members told me that I have the best Slovak he's ever heard out of a missionary, and he's been a member for 17 years. I was just floored, especially because my companion was right there, and I personally think that he speaks better than me, but he proceeded to say the exact thing to my companion as well, and my companion agreed!!! I almost started crying, I'm so happy that I've been blessed with the gift of Slovak gab. People on the street every day now are surprised that I'm from America, I can only imagine what it's going to be like at the END of my mission, haha. I love it here though, there are going to be quite a few stories for me to tell in emails, I can already tell, I just hope that I'll be able to remember them all. I can't wait to show you all the cool pictures too, like everything here really is Gorgeous.

I got to go to my first Opera on Saturday!!! It was a Slovak traditional opera explaining all of the differences between each region and every different kind of people found in Slovakia. It was really cool, the actors had a different style of clothing, dance, and singing for each region they represented, and the music was just out of this world amazing, I wish that photography had been allowed, I should have tried to sneak it, but haha, I can't wait to go to more, it was SO cool, and it looks like I'll have a lot of opportunity for that here.

Anyway, I'm excited, we have a baptismal date for this Saturday from someone we found. She was friends with our Branch President in High School, so she's all prepared, and apparently has been to church enough times for us to baptize her, please please please pray that she will accept everything and won't have any problems with commitments like chastity or Word of Wisdom, we need your prayers here. Any way, I love you all so much, and I'm ready to push the work of the Lord forward in a different part of his kingdom.

Milujem ťa,

Starší Chris Brousseau

Will I Stay or Will I Go?

Chris' new guitar:  Jasminka

Well, 

This day marks my very last P~Day for sure here in Banska, which is both sad and exciting for me. This letter will probably be shorter because I'm about to go on an adventure and get my haircut, and I just realized I don't actually know the word for hair...So that will be fun. I'm hoping that my trainer and I both stay here, but I've accepted that that maybe won't be the case. If I do leave, I'll really miss this place, I really want to see some success in this city, but I know that it's good training because I'll for SURE see success if I go to any other areas now. My news of the week is that I got for a Christmas present a guitar. I named her Jasminka, and my goal is to be pretty ok at the guitar by the time that I get back home.

New friends

As far as that piano lessons idea goes, I haven't really had time to try it yet because we had 2 exchanges last week and that ate up a ton of my time what with being in Zvolen which isn't my area for a while, but we did still get a lot of good successful lessons, which was awesome. I wonder what the secret is though, we're teaching a lot of people who have investigated the church for years, but have just never made the step to baptism, and I think our lessons with them are like a counseling session, because they say they feel the spirit every time they come meet with us and they really like that, but when they go back into the world, they aren't sure about the truth of our message anymore. What can I do better to help them see baptism as a necessary step to having that feeling all the time? Because they obviously don't see it now, even though we have lessons about the priesthood and the holy ghost regularly. Any advice? Because you know what's a weird feeling? When you go into a lesson, and there's this awesome 25 year old girl who's peppy and already know's the whole Restoration backwards and forwards and already has a testimony of the B of M, and just accepts everything great, and then you ask her her name and you realize that your MTC teacher actually taught her while he was on his mission, and then you realize that he's been home for 2.5 years and is already married and then you get the dreaded feeling that you're talking to an eternal investigator...

Preparation day in Slovakia

Today is a very important day for me. It is the first day that I haven't been in a shirt and tie so far in the field, and I hope to have many more P~Days like it. Like I said before, transfers are coming up this week, and while I absolutely adore Banska Bystrica, I do want to see other areas, specifically Košice, mainly because I heard that they have this place called Big Burger where they actually have BEEF!!!=D Haha, I've been craving beef for weeks, and I know that's not going to change because nobody has it out here, not even McDonalds, you go up to the order place and say, I want a hamburger, and they ask you, Chicken or Pork? And I just sit there and cry on the inside. It's the worst. On the upside, I've found this wonderful drink called Orangina! It's this french soda here that has like actual Orange peel in the soda, it's SO good, haha. (Editor's note: Orangina is pure French awesomeness!) I think honestly, I like the soda here more than Purple Stuff, and I'm going to go through some serious withdrawals when I get back home. On the Bright side, that's a long ways off still.

Ok, so I think I've had enough of a rant sesh today, so thanks all for listening, I hope that this email finds you having a fabulous day doing your favorite things with your favorite people (minus me of course, hehheh).

Ahojte, ale uvidíme sa čoskoro,

Starší Chris Brousseau

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