Week 35: Czeck

Hiya everybody! I dont have a whole lotta time now, so Im going to make it quick!

Fathers day was great over here! My son (my trainee) got me a tie for it :) ha ha

Here's a very happy shoutout to all the Dads out there... Cheers! Thank you for all you do! Now go take a nap, you've earned it ;)

So! Right along with this past week... Miracles in the face of adversity! I love it when that happens! Maybe not the adversity part... But its still great!

So, a little background story, we were teaching this huge family (Called the Miroslav family) all from the Czeck Republic, who had been in the country for about a year. None of them really spoke a whole lot of english, but with the gift of tongues (and the first three lessons in pamphlets in Czeck and English) we were able to progress one member of the family, Olga, towards a solid baptism date! Things were looking great! She had been attending church for about 4 weeks in a row, and agreed with the Church's 'kinyestvi' (priesthood authority) and zna voozeziseni (gospel restoration). I even started to learn a little bit of their language! Anyway, it was about a week before her baptism, and with rising opposition from her catholic friends and some unsuppotive members of her family, combined with the stress of quitting smoking and drinking coffee, she dropped us. Telling us she would still read the B of M on her own, but when she wanted us to come back, she would call us. We were devistated. I was heartbroken. She was so excited and so close, and then just gave up like that. Not only her, but her whole family who we were teaching dropped us as well, a whole 8 people. We were pretty distraught.

But, the Lord has a plan for everything... We still had a whole lot of extra czeck stuff that we could no longer use. So, the next day, Elder Dundee and I felt prompted to try some knocking in a more 'posh' (wealthy) area. The missionaries had tried knocking in the same area many times before with little to no success. But our faith was strong. We knocked 4 different streets for 3 hours straight, with the faith that we would find investigators to teach. We also found NO success at all while knocking. However, there was this man who had just walked bpassed us on the street, whom I saw, chased down and scheduled a return appointment. He set it up for tuesday, and we went and met with him that day. He, and his whole family, are from the Czeck republic!!! And they became new investigators and agreed to all come to church (all ten of them!) Talk about a miracle!!!!

So, long story short, this past week rocked. Doncaster was blessed to get Standards of Excellence again.

Ah! 1 minute lest on the computer! Gotta go!

Love,

Elder Gabriel G. Spencer