"This here is a commun--- garden." It was quite hard to understand his English as he was a native Slovak.
"A post-communist garden!" I said with a tone of surprise.
"No, a community garden," he corrected me. Oh, that's a difference.
I was with Elder Barton on the train in Bratislava, and we met a lady from Nigeria. She already knew about Mormons, but she didn't quite understand what missionaries were. She thought that we were serving missions so we could go on to being priests, or paid ministers, as a career. She was rather surprised to hear that Elder Barton wanted to study Business and I, while still undecided, might go into Linguistics or Computer Science.
There is no element of self-interest in the decision to serve a mission, to pause our personal lives for two years. We serve because we have a conviction, or testimony, that our message is true. We want to share with others what we have, and we hope that they will choose to accept and act upon it.
Any sincere truth-seeker who is willing to act upon the knowledge that he receives can find out for himself that our message is true. First, one must read The Book of Mormon and pray about its truthfulness. Once he receives a confirmation from the Holy Ghost that The Book of Mormon is true, that means Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God, and by God's power was Joseph able to translate The Book of Mormon. That means The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is God's church on the earth. Anyone can find out whether this is true, if his heart is sincere.
1. A sign said that I couldn't drink from the public water fountain, but it didn't say anything about washing my hands.
2. This is not the communist garden from the intro of my email.
3. Bus with free hot chocolate! Too bad elders Akina + Papenfuss fell asleep. Taken with Elder Akina's camera.
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