Dear Everyone,
Crazy that another week has already come and gone. The weeks have definitely started to resemble how weeks at the Academy went. Days feel like weeks and weeks feel like days. That is a good thing, though. Means I'm busy. Brought my journal again so here was my past week:
Tuesday (last P-Day): After eating, napping, and e-mailing, we went to the temple. Only my second time and it was of course great. Very peaceful, and the exact thing us missionaries need after a busy week. We spent a good amount of time in the Celestial room which was osum. Just a great feeling in there and I think so clearly sitting in that room. Had a devotional that night from an entire family. They have 9 children and all have served missions (the 9th is currently serving in Soul) and they are spoke for 5 minutes each then the dad finished off for about 15 minutes. Lots of notes and tips on how to take advantage of our time as missionaries and serving the best we can.
Wednesday: Wednesdays are the worst day of the week. Day after P-Day, and we have to wake up early for a 615 service assignment AKA cleaning toilets. But other than that this past Wednesday was sick! Our District was selected to meet/interview with the radio hosts from the largest radio station in South Africa! They are not members but broadcast MoTab and other church affiliated stuff so they wanted to learn more about the church. They have 7million+ listeners! They were fun to talk to (they speak English) and were so happy to be here. They didn't interview us like we expected but they did ask me why I was serving a mission, especially in Africa? I probably gave some cheesy politically correct response, but hey they loved it. As a District we sang "Called to Serve" to them in Portuguese. You should have seen their smiles. Bball gym opened today and it was a blast to play a real sport and sweat.
Thursday: Got a new investigator named Isa. He is 19 years old and his family is very religiously diverse but he is Christian. Elder Ence and I taught him about the Plan of Salvation and committed him to baptism the first lesson. That was a neat experience, and I am excited to teach him 4 more lessons. Irmao Belchoir taught a powerful lesson on the importance of prayer from 3 Nephi 16-20. It is one amazing gift we have that we can, at any momemnt, in any situation, ask our loving Father in Heaven for help or tell him how grateful we are and He will answer us. That night Elder Ence, Elder Couch, Elder Christiansen, and myself took the two bags of Glo-stars Meg and Kimbo sent me and put them up in our dorm room. We make them spell MOZ (for Mozambique of course) and then took the extra stars and underlined it. I will have to send a pic later.
Friday: Irmao Belchoir picked up right were left off with our lesson Thursday. This time he taught a crazy good lesson on the Plan of Salvation. It is the Perfect Plan of Happiness. The cool thing that happened Friday was this thing called the TRC. We meet with real members of the church who don't play any role, they just act as themselves and we go in and meet with them for 20-30 minutes and share a message like missionaries would do to members. Only we do it in Portuguese. It was really fun. The first guy we met was an RM who served in Portugal. He had a thick (kinda ugly) accent and spoke very fast. He was difficult to understand. The second elder gentleman was from Brasil. He was so funny and just a pleasure to talk with. I understood about 70% of what he said and was able to say back to him about 50% of what I wanted to haha.
Saturday: We taught 2 investigators, Isa and Paulo. Isa had work so we only had 5 minutes to talk so not much happened. Paulo is kind of indifferent to the Gospel so we were not particularly influential on him this lesson. Saturday was great, though. We had about 14 Elders and Sisters in our room when we were supposed to be studying, but we started going around and each person talked about why they decided to serve a mission. It got super deep and was one of the top 3 most spiritual experiences of my life so far. There are a lot of great missionaries in my zone.
Sunday: We have 3 hours of church; Sacrament, Priesthood, then a District meeting. The zone leaders, which includes myself, taught Priesthood on the topic of Repentance. It was in English. Sacrament is the only thing on Sunday in Portuguese. The devotional Sunday was good but I didn't write much down about it. We got to watch a film after, though. It was of Elder Bednar when he came to the MTC for Christmas a couple of years ago. He spoke on the Character of Christ. It was again one of the top 3 talks I have ever heard. It is hard to think that I represent Christ as a missionary, or any missionary for that matter. How can we, as people with so many inadequacies and faults, represent the one Perfect person to ever walk the Earth?
Monday: Not too much happened. We did get to teach Isa, though, and it was the best lesson we have taught for a while. The Spirit was just right there guiding us and touching Isa.
So life is not too bad here at the MTC. Although I don't really think it could be for me. This place is a breeze compared to last year. I am constantly having my patience tested by other missionaries, though. I cannot begin to number how many WIERD like WWWEEEIIIIRRRRDDD missionaries there are here, but I realized something this week. There are a lot of WEIRD people in the world, and need someone to connect to... who better than some of the missionaries I have met here?! I started to Book of Mormon over when I got here and as of today I am in Alma 17. Just about right at halfway. Got to keep going if I am going to finish before I get to Mozambique. I am not too out of shape, at least I do not look that out of shape. I haven't weighed myself lately so I can't say exactly how much I have gained, but after 50 minutes of basketball my knees are done and my back is tired and I already feel shin splints coming on. Sweet athleticism right? Well I appreciate all the love and support. And the help with visas, credit cards, and inserts. You all are the best. Eu amo voces muito!
With Love,
Elder Hruby
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