An American Slovak in Slovakia

Photos to come



Well, we've officially started this last week of the transfer, it's been rather short according to me and the time has gone way quick. This week has actually felt a little bit longer than some of the previous ones for some reason, I'm not actually sure why. After every week I look back and think about how fast it goes but it feels like it was ages ago since the last time I emailed. This week was about the same just felt a little bit longer and feels like years since the last time I emailed. This week was good, we had some success and things just kept on going and I'm preparing for a really great and busy last week of the transfer, there's multiple reasons as to why it will be busy and multiple reasons as to why it will be great but I suppose I should tell you all about the adventures about this last week and then I can talk about this upcoming week. Well, here we go.

 

Well this previous week we had some fun things, we found a cake in the store for a very cheap price so we bought it, it's a really good cake and we ate that for District meeting and we had some fun activities. We found pretty well, we have a meeting set up with a guy we talked to for a really long time, he was really nice and a really cool guy who was soldier during communism and he was pretty cool. We're excited to talk with him, and we basically just tried our hardest to do as much work as we possibly could. We've been asked to work very hard these next week’s so that we can be very effective through Christmas time because typically in the past mission slow down and people aren't very productive and Christmas has always been known to be when people slack off and stuff like that so we're trying to make it extremely productive. This week I also start tithing settlement for all of the members. I have pretty much everyone set up from Zilina and have to have the missionaries set up everything for members (in Banska Bystrica)when we go down there for the Christmas party. I hope that I can get them all done before we leave so that I don't have to go back down again. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if I have to go back and then also I have to go to Zvolen so that I can get everyone done there too, because apparently we're supposed to try our hardest to meet with everyone so that they can declare their tithing status for themselves, and then it's up to me to declare for the rest of the people. It's a cool thing and it's a very spiritual thing, I've already had one with my first Counsellor Samuel, and that one went smoothly I think . It's going to be great these next weeks and I think I'm going to have a blast getting to know these people even more. We also had our cultural night this last Friday.  It was okay.  We mainly just hung out at the Christmas markets and ate some sausage and saw a band play.  It was nice, but not the greatest thing I've ever been to.  We were going to try to go to the catacombs but unfortunately they decided not to go this week and are going the week after.  We can't go to then because we have a concert scheduled then.

 

This week with our investigators, at least as many as we could, we met with the family and we organized a dinner for us at their house on Thursday that Elder Dupre is excited for.  He loves getting dinner from other people and not having to make it himself. We met with them and it was okay.  We weren’t able to meet with them twice this week for another reason but they're doing fine, I really think that they have a ton of potential, it just depends on taking it slow with them.  They progress and I really think it's the best approach that we've got with them. We've met with our Norwegian friend and he asked some great questions and he said something that was really quite profound.  He said that he believes that if a church is true it has to be one church, no 2 churches can be true. He also said that this church sounds the most fair or the most loving, which is completely true.  When you look at it. Which church says that every single person, even if they aren't baptized on earth can still go to heaven and what church says that all people will have the chance to hear about the gospel, it's just ours. We also talked with our Chinese friend again and he opened up a little bit, he asked about how to pray and he asked about how he can know if our church is true because everyone says theirs is. It's a question that plagues the world and really only this church has the answer that isn't based on human thinking, we need to ask God and he'll tell us. Other than that there's not much more else to report, everything is going fine.

 

Well, I'm excited for this following week because we have a plan to meet with our new investigators, it's also transfer week meaning we get transfer calls and get told with whom we're going to be with.  It's all Elder Dupre can talk about lately. We also get to eat at the family's house which we're pumped for. Then we're also planning a concert for this Friday which we hope people will come to and we hope it will be good. We aren't the best of singers so. Then on Saturday we have the Christmas party with the Branch in Banska and we're going to be there pretty much most of the day so it's going to be a great. It should just be a good good week, plus it's going to be Christmas soon. We're going to be able to skype for Christmas this year so I'm excited for that and to hear about everyone's celebrations. This time is really going to just fly by.

 

Well, that's everything that I've got for ya'll, thanks for all the support, I forgot if I said happy Birthday to Dad last week but if I didn't I'm sorry and Happy Birthday, you're getting old. Have a great week everyone :)

 

Elder Ferrell