Transfer 7:October 10,2016

This week has been super awesome. I'll just start out by saying that I think the Lord wants my companion and I to take a break from Missionary work because now we're both not feeling well and were told by President's wife to stay home and rest. Nothing that you need to be concerned about, simply a little nausea and some headaches. It's been going around the mission. Classic start of winter here the Czech Republic. Started wearing my coat again. It suddenly changed at the start of last week. Monday it was warm, Tuesday it was fine, and then BOOM, suddenly it was rainy and cold. It's stayed this way since then, and so we've been adjusting to the change. The leaves are starting to fall, don't ask me why they don't change color first. The laws of chemistry don't work in the Czech Republic I guess... the leaves are green and then ope-they're on the ground. The Members here have been feeling the surge of spiritual power since the formation of the Ward. Our new bishop is busy conducting interviews and organizing the Ward into a more unified unit now that we've, in a sense, absorbed Zlín Branch. We, the missionaries, are still working on uniting the two groups as well, Elder Merril, our District Leader, asked us the other day for the phone numbers of all the UH members, so we sent those to them. The Ward is preparing to have our Christmas Concert. We practice as a ward every Sunday after chruch. Sister K plays the piano every Sunday and her husband is suffering from back problems but continues to work harder than he should, and their sons are just so full of life. They're such a Mormon family, I'm not kidding, if they lived in Utah, nobody would think anything of it, they are just such a Mormon family they would fit right in. Sister K is directing the practice of the concert, which we'll be having here in UH. The songs that the ward has chosen to sing are awesome, along with some Czech Classics. Most of the songs we're going to be singing are in English. Lemme tell you, it's super funny to be talking to everyone in Czech, and then suddenly Everyone is singing in English. What adds more to this surprise is hearing them all speaking English with their Czech accents haha! After District Meeting this week, we walked out of the church building here in UH, and we didn't know what to do because the Zlín Elders had unexpectedly received a call to come to service in Zlín, so we had to cancel our finding time in UH. With the unexpected change of events, Elder Andersen and I were left with two hours of time that we were expected to fill somehow. When we walked out of the church building with everyone, I suddenly felt the phone vibrate in my pocket, I answered it, and said, "dobrý den, tady jsou misionaří z Církve Ježíše Krista Svátých Poslednich Dnů, mluvite s Starším Deanem" "Hello, here are the missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day saints, you're speaking with Elder Dean." I heard the man on the other line, (in czech of course) "Hey, this is Milan, can we meet today?" I scrambled through my brain to find the name "m" and then replied, "we have like... 6 people named M who we're teaching..." he replied, "M Z." M had met the missionaries several months ago, they had given him a book of Mormon but they lost contact with him once he got too caught up in work. We had previously tried to contact him but he was never available. Eventually we gave up trying to work with him because we believed her was not ready nor progressing. We set up with Milan for that day just 30 minutes later. At that meeting, he came, saw us, we greeted, and then when he sat down he pulled out his Book of Mormon, it looked used, and there were tuns of papers stuck in the pages. He looked up at us and said, "I read it, all of it." with further conversation we realized that M, despite what we may have been thinking, WAS progressing. the Lord had been working with him this entire time. He had finished the book of Mormon. What added more to our surprise was when he said, "I know that it's true." since this time, M has been progressing ridiculously quickly. He even came to EIGHT HOURS OF GENERAL CONFERENCE and he was able to spiritually retain most of it. when the spirit is with a person, they understand the Gospel. M is on date to be baptized in 2 weeks. Don't be suprised

if that changes to 3 or 4 weeks though. He's got some steps to take before he's ready. S Laskou, Starší Dean