[Dear everyone, here is the latest letter from Joseph that we just received this morning. I hope you enjoy it. I hope this letter finds you happy, healthy and safe. It's hard to believe that it is already June! If you have a couple minutes, Joseph would love hearing from you. Simply respond to this note - and I will forward your response to Joseph. Thank you for your love and support! Your prayers and definitely appreciated! Joseph's editor - BWS]
Dear Family and others,
I got transferred ... sort of. The Sisters and Elder Darrington and I just switched apartments. There were a couple reasons, but I think in the end the Sister won out since their new apartment is much closer to the city center. Well, not much closer, just closer. It is funny now though, because our area is ČBud North and the Sisters are named CBud South, but we are both on the southern end of the city. Now, with the switch, we, ČBud North are on the South side of the city, in an apartment more southernly located. Probably not that funny, but missionaries find many odd things amusing.
Well, to begin, I think that I was able to balance out and absorb Elder Schindler's second law of Spiritual Physics. That is that for every beautiful, uplifting spiritual experence, there is an equal and opposite crash into disparaging gloom and spritual depression. The key I have found to working with this is to know it is coming. Allow me to explain. Every time the Holy Ghost testifies to us, we are built up and empowered by the third member of the Godhead [the Holy Ghost]. We feel his presence, and can feel the love and knowledge flooding into our minds. However, we can not maintain this feeling for long. The concerns of life, the distractions of the day and the difficulties of work do not allow for such a high to be maintained. However, there are two options with which one can work. We can elect to let ourselves crash, forgetting all the things we know about life that are good, ignoring the still present comfort of the Holy Ghost, and only focusing on the things we lack and that we are imperfect. Or we can elect to focus on the good, and to come down a level of spiritualality, that is still quite sufficient and beautiful, but cannot equal the spirit maintained in a testimony meeting or a lesson of the gospel. Instead we must focus on the spirit of work and service, of giving real effort in the work of the Lord, which in actuality equals the level of the original experience, it is just so much harder to detect, unless we look for it and remember that God loves his children. Thankfully, I chose the latter option this week.
The mission conference was a wonderful experience. We were uplifted, instructed and corrected, and then we came home and did everything we could to apply what we had learned. This week we worked hard and had some difficult moments, but in the end, we came out winners.
We worked a lot for the Branch President, President Tuček. We helped move and demolish old furniture and haul wood for their new, wood burning stove. I think this week, more than any other week so far, I felt like I was home because of the wood and such.
President Irwin also visited us as a district on Saturday night. He has been visiting many of the districts to teach us on a more personal basis so that we do not have to have a Zone conference and pull the assistants out of their area for yet another week. The focus was mainly on how we need to work together as a district and that we should know each others' areas and investigators as much as we can so that we can all use our combined experiences and knowledge to help us grow. We were also given much counsel on using the area book and how it really is a sacred record of our work here. We recommitted to using it everyday and using it to help keep a record for future missionaries.
Then on Sunday we had our Branch conference with the Irwins as well as the Prague District Presidency. It was a good experience and Elder Darrington and I had three investigators come to Church. Miloslav Rybák, Mirolav Šir, and Bronislav Jamsztav (that is a Polish name by the way). Plus the Sisters had two people there. The chapel was totally full. We were so happy and wished that the same thing could happen every week here.
Some of the thoughts that were shared was one from Sister Irwin that we can really tell how well somebody follows Jesus Christ by how well he treats other people. I really liked that thought. Also President Irwin gave an example of two twin boys; one an optimist and the other a pessimist. Their parents, believing that they needed to be evened out, put the pessimist in room full of toys and the optimist in a shed full of horse manure. Then they checked on them an hour later. The pessimist was found to be complaining about how he did not know which toy to play with next and that in the end the toys would likely break anyway. The optimist was found to be shoveling away at the manure and said, "well, where there is manure, there is likely a pony nearby". I have been thinking about this story a lot and how we really can choose our attitude and how we want to act around people. I hope I choose the right.
This next part I think was our miracle of the week.
Monday went well, followed by a spiritual feast on Tuesday, which, with travel time, took up most of the day. Wednesday turned out to be an excellent day and we were especially blessed to be able to find our investigator Miloslav Rybák. He does not currently have a mobile phone, and since he lives in a small panalak, tries to spend as much time away from home as possible. However, we knew that he likes to frequent the local library, and after only a few minutes searching, we were able to find him. We had lost contact with him as we had forgotten to tell him that we would cancel English class this week due to the conference in Prague, but since we were able to find him, we were able to meet with him twice, teach about the Plan of Salvation as well as the Holy Ghost and the gift of the Holy Ghost. His largest concern at the moment is being able to follow the Word of Wisdom [our Health Code], specifically being able to quit smoking, but he is making progress and cutting down the amount of cigarrettes he smokes each day. He is currently smoking around nine daily.
This is a little more about Mr. Šir.
We also had a meeting with our investigator Miroslav Šir on Thursday. He is a very sincere man, looking for his own spiritual enlightenment. He really wants to hear of our experiences with that, and wants it for himself. He read the Book of Mormon in four days last week, and knows that Joseph Smith did not and could not have written it. He also knows that he must continue to search and to learn and wants to learn as much as he can. He came to church yesterday, but could not stay for priesthood meeting, but did enjoy it and was able to meet several members of the branch. We will be working with him on prayer, as well as teaching him more about Joseph Smith and the first vision. We believe those are key to his own conversion.
The focus of my study this week was on prayer. Sincere prayer is HARD. I do not know if I have really ever tried praying like I did this week, because I have never felt like I put more effort into doing so. For a long time now, I have established habits of being clean so that the spirit may live with me, but the focus needed to really be guided by Him and I needed to learn to speak with my Heavenly Father, which I had put on the backburner. I have been putting it into the foreground of my effort now, and I find that I want to get a lot better at this. I really want the Holy Ghost to be a part of this companionship and I want to come to know my Father in Heaven. This is the recent and continued focus of my study and prayers.
Okay, so what is the Status of Weston's mission papers? [Weston will turn his papers in as soon as his wisdom teeth are removed.] Elder Ingalls' brother already got his mission call, and is gone on his mission, and several of us want to know where Weston will be serving the Lord. Please keep me posted.
Also, I still did not get pictures from Weston. Send them today. Please. [I guess they were too big - and so we need to reduce their size.]
I love all of you and keep up all the things you are doing. Daniel, Good luck on the ACT and keep working hard and having a good time. Weston, keep working hard at McDonalds' and keep doing all the little things, i.e. scripture study and prayer. Here is a suggestion from me. Work on learning all of the scripture mastery from the Book of Mormon and the New Testament, focusing on their doctrine and their references (where they are in the scriptures). That is what I am doing now and i think it could help you as well.
Andrew. I know next to nothing about you, other than your handwriting is still not the best. Work on that. One day a missionary is going to read a note you wrote in a mission area book and he will want to be able to read it without a Urim and Thummim [translating devices].
Twins. You are great. Keep being happy.
I love you Mom and Dad.
Love,
Elder Schindler.
P.S.- not a bad letter if I do say so myself. [I agree with Joseph!] I hope it all makes sense.
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