This email probably won’t be too long, I’m writing it from the car as we drive to a city called Znojmo, which is on the Austrian border, but I’ll try to include the important stuff. There are also a lot of pictures from this week that I’ll send when I have WiFi later today.
This week Elder Papworth and I had a lot of open days, so we spent a lot of time tracting and contacting people on the streets. Our mission is having a big push to find new ways of talking to people, so we tried a couple this week. The most bizarre one was Ping-Pong on the Náměstí(town square). We just hauled our Ping-Pong table out onto the street and asked people to play with us. We were surprised at how good some people were! Elder Hamon, who is a senior missionary from New Zealand was there helping us and he is also a Ping-Pong master.
We also attended the local Kostel this week with a friend who is currently taking lessons from us. Kostel is what they call their Catholic Cathedrals. It was an interesting experience, and the building was gorgeous. It was also a good opportunity to interact with our religious people in a mostly non-religious country.
Due to poor planning this week and some moldy bread, Elder Papworth and I ended up not having any food left for the week on Saturday. We somehow made it through, but that’s also where the subject of this email comes in. We decided to get kebabs for lunch on Saturday because we didn’t have any food at home. It just so happened that both kebab shops in town were closed. We decided to just go to this little Indian restaurant down an alley, and just so happened to run into a really cool man who was quite interested in learning more about what we teach. That’s a rare occurrence here in Jihlava, so we were very excited that we actually found someone with interest. The spicy food part came right after that. I was told I would not be able to find any spicy food in the Czech Republic, because Czechs just don’t like spicy food. I had assumed it was true because up to that point the “spiciest” food I’d eaten was some poppy seeds. We decided to ask and then order the spiciest dish in the restaurant, and we were not disappointed.
Well, that’s about it for this week. We spent a lot of time talking to people this week, trying to find ways to help them in whatever way we can. For most people that means they just talk to us for a couple of minutes about their life, but some actually want to hear about the blessings that the Gospel can bring to their lives. It’s a great opportunity to really share how much the Gospel of Jesus Christ has changed my life and why I’m thousands of miles from home trying to teach people about it.
Nashledanou,
Starší O’Barr