A Couple of Noteworthy Experiences

Elder Shirley with the other Uherske Hradiste missionaries on a tower that they climbed on P-day

The tower

Climbing the tower

View from the tower

August 1, 2016

Hi!

Most of the week was the same old stuff, but I have two stories that I would like to share. 

On Tuesday, we went to a little village outside of UH. The person that we wanted to visit couldn't meet with us. So we thought of a second person that we had tracted into a few weeks before. We drove to her house to see if she had time. This lady is like 70 or 80 years old so she was home and she let us in. She has a history with the church that goes back about 20 years. She had met with the missionaries many times and had even gone to church. As we talked about the Book of Mormon with her, we found out that she has one and has already read it. Twice. We asked her what she thought about it and she said that it was the second time she read it when she realized it was true. She believes that we have the true church on the Earth. So right away we said that when people find out that our message is true, they get baptized. We asked if she would be baptized. She said “no”, only because her family goes way back in the Catholic church. But it was a cool experience because I realized how powerful the Book of Mormon is. When people read it with real intent, the can know the truthfulness of it. 

The second experience happened on Friday. I had an exchange with an Elder in the district. We had a pretty successful day and taught some pretty good lessons. We met with one guy in a bar, (because that is where everyone goes), and taught him. We were about to leave and it started dumping rain. So we waited under the little tent thing outside the bar for the rain to stop. One guy that was in the bar saw us and came out to talk to us. He knew a little about our church and just wanted to talk about why we have the Word of Wisdom and the Law of Chastity. And of course, you can't get too far with a man that is completely drunk. He wanted us to drink a beer pretty bad, so he bought one for us and put it up next to our mouths so we would drink it. Of course we just kinda turned away. And then he was looking at my tag and decided that he wanted it. He grabbed my tag and put it in his pocket and wouldn't give it back. Pretty annoying guy haha :) Our investigator, though, stole it back from him and so I got my tag back. Pretty fun experience haha. 

In answer to your question about what some of my best teaching experiences have been, one that stands out for me was about 3 or 4 months ago when I was training. We met a guy on the street and he had some really weird beliefs, but Elder Lovell my comp felt impressed that we needed to call and set up another meeting with him. He knew we taught English on Wednesdays so he said he would come to that. He came and we stayed with him afterwards and had a lesson. As we talked and discussed more about what he believed, you could definitely feel the Spirit. I couldn't even tell you exactly what we taught, but I remember feeling that the lesson felt really good. In fact, in the middle of the lesson, our investigator Jirka talked about how to know what church is true. We had an impression to just kneel down right there and have him pray. So mid-lesson we got down on our knees and he prayed. Right after the prayer we asked him what he felt, if he felt that our church is true. He said yes, your church is true, I feel it. And so we invited him to be baptized and he said yes. It was an awesome experience.

Overall, this was another great week! Love you all lots!

-Elder Shirley