Week 22: Faith, Blind Loyalty, and Doubt

Which two of those from the title are related?  Faith is described in The Book of Mormon: "And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true" (Alma 32:21).  

What if someone believes or hopes for things based off of it being convenient for him?  That's not real intent to find truth, which can occur in and out of religion.  That leads to blind loyalty, where one has no experience to verify the thing in which he believes.  One may cite proof, or evidence, which supports what he believes, but there are many evidences in the world that seem to conflict with one another (if we had the full picture and knew all truth, no evidence would conflict).  One must have personal experience, desiring to find truth and act on it.  

Where to start?  The scientific method goes as follows: observation, hypothesis, experiment.  I saw that faithful members of the Mormon church had a certain countenance or feel about them.  That was something that I desired.  I hypothesized that if the LDS Church was God's true church, it would help me or anyone else reach his and my potential.  I experimented, and I'm glad I did.  

I can personally tell you, based on personal experience, that if you want to find truth and are willing to act on the truth you find, read the Book of Mormon, take discussions from the missionaries if you're not a member, do what you can to find out if this is God's church.  I promise if you're sincere in your search, you will find out that it is true as I have.  

But don't take my word for it.

1, 2. Sestra Alžbeta (looks a little like Bob's mom Regina)

3.  Comp doing his thing

4, 5. District meetings can get crazy

6. This looks pretty communist

10, 11. Pretty wild thunder storm

12. Brat Sharp's trainer! Served here 4 years ago. (Sharp was one of my MTC teachers.)

Everything else is just sick scenery 

Week 21: до свидания

Maybe some of you are wondering why I sent my group email 2 minutes before curfew.  I'll have you know that we were kept out late for a good purpose, and we technically didn't break any rules.  But that's a story for after the mish.

I bought chicken nuggets about a week ago.  They looked American enough, so I figured I'd just heat 'em up in the microwave one day and have a quick, easy meal.  When it finally came time to eat them, my companion had made pasta.  "No way," I told him, "I've been waiting to eat these nuggets, so I'm gonna eat them."  So I heated them for a few minutes in the microwave, but they came out cold.  Hm.  Gave them another couple of minutes, still cold.  Third time's a charm, they finally came out warm.  Just as I went to take a bite out of one... what the?!  They were raw!  Great.  I wasted so much time by then and my food still wasn't ready.  I tried cooking them on the stove, but that didn't go well.  The pan was slightly tilted, so half of the nuggets were bathed in vegetable oil and half were untouched.  It was quite the contrast.  I don't know where to rank that experience on my many failed cooking attempts.  [That would be below mac and cheese and above his attempt to hard boil eggs.  Once, I asked him to hard boil 24 eggs.  He cracked open 24 eggs into a pot, covered them with water and turned the burner on high.  It was the worst.]

In the middle of our church meeting, a lady walked in whom none of us recognized.  Turns out, she came from Ukraine seeking work.  From the hotel in which she stayed, she walked 20 kilometers to a bus station, and then a bus took her to Trenčín where we had church.  I was blown away!  She brought two of her friends who were not members of the church, and they didn't speak a lick of English nor Slovak (they spoke Russian/Ukrainian.)  Only the member spoke... something.  Some mixture of Polish/Russian/Ukrainian, but thankfully she understood Slovak completely.  Amazing we even understood her at all.  

Week 20: Sleeping on the Job

A few examples to illustrate how tired my companion and I are in the mornings:

Woke up.  Companion said, "Do we really need to exercise if we have Sport's Night tonight?"

"You already know!" I said.  He hit that snooze button so hard.  (We won't do that again, I promise xD)

Another morning, we woke up and began our prayers.  I finished first, and then just sat on my bed for a while.  Wow, my companion sure has been praying for a while.  Wait, did he fall asleep?  To test my theory, I turn on my electric razor for a second to make some noise.  Sure enough, he begins to stretch as he wakes up.  Klasický.

***

We participated in an annual halušky-making contest.  There were quite a few people there and around 8 teams participating.  Of course, we were the only Americans, so it was no surprise to anyone when we showed up without some necessities to make halušky.  But miraculously, there were kind people there who helped us get what we needed, so shout-out to them.  Our team name was "Mormoni."  We had to catch our bus back to Trenčín before we found out who won, so I'll keep you posted.