Feliz Navidad

I guess I should say Pekný Vianoce as I ought to be speaking more Slovak.... :)

A thousand aplogies for no update on Monday (I'm sure all of you just look forward for those Monday updates) but because Christmas is this week our p-day was moved to Wednesday so we have time to travel to Prague --- for Christmas!

Last week, if you remember, we were going to help our one lone investigator quit smoking. Well, that didnt turn out so well and we are no longer teaching him. So we are just putting all of our efforts into finding more people to teach! Its funny, a couple weeks ago we had the best week in terms of numbers that Bodily has ever had, and this week we had the worst hes ever seen. Its a good thing I like talking to people....

On Wednesday I went to my first zone conference in Zlina with all of the Slovak Elders. (The entire country of Slovakia is in the same zone!) It was great to meet all of the missionaries Im serving with finally and to have a real interview with my mission president. I love President Irwin, he and I were able to really talk about things that were on my mind and he pretty much told me to get over myself. lol Something I try to remind myself to do everyday.

After the conference Elder Bodily, Bacon, Nichol, Butler and Evans (who, oddly enough, knew my old roommate Victor back in Kentucky, small world. We swapped some Vic stories. Good ol Vic.) anyways, we all left for Bratislava that night because we had to go to VIENNA for our visa work the following morning. Why we had to go to another country for our Visa work was a question that was never answered, something to do with the EU though. We spent the morning and afternoon in Vienna with our attorney, Andrea, and her assistant Miriam. Vienna is such a beautiful city and we all had a blast. A nice little break from Trenčin for sure! The Visa stuff should be fine now and I shouldn't have anymore problems. I think FBI just has to do another background check. Funny thing about my passport that I never noticed is that my birth date is wrong! No one has ever noticed with the exception of the attorney (the Church only hires the best apparently) who told me to not worry about it. So well see if I can sneak past the FBI yet again....

When we got back in Trenčin Bodliy and I planned for our week and talked about how we can apply the things we learned from the Zone Conference. We got pretty pumped up about the rest of the transfer. I brought up my little street display idea again as the APs discussed how that was pretty successful for them in Prague. This has been something that I have been wanting to do for literlly WEEKS, but we weren't sure how well it would work in Trenčin. And Bodily was a little nervous about talking to the "city hall" people about making sure its legit. I wanted to make sure we don't run into any problems with the city. Despite his uneasiness my stubborn my-way-or-Ill-refuse-to-cooperate attitude kicked in and are going to try it out next week. :)

Im also working on being less prideful and learn how to compromise.

Friday we had a full day. We voluntered at an elementary school. We followed the English teacher everywhere and pretty much just sat and asked/answered questions with the kids. It's kinda funny seeing that even though I am thousands of miles away from "normal", people are pretty much the same. Teenage girls are too cool (more like shy?) to talk to you and the boys are fooling around. Teachers all act the same way and just the way the school felt was the same. The teacher we were with is hilarious. Favorite lines of the day: "Girls, why are you so quiet?? Quiet girls never get married you know!" and "Can you "kill" other things? Like can I kill a chicken?" There was a question about whether or not someone used the word "kill" correctly. I just said, "Oh, you can kill anything that's living." (Meet the Parents reference, anyone? kinda sorta?)
We then had our little branch Christmas party, that was a lot of fun. As an activity we put together a little emergency kit that fit into a little matchbox. I had a hard time understanding how and why I would use some of the things in it and was told I was a terrible scout. Do they know me or what?

On Monday Bodily was sick so we took a day off and let him recover. I held my tongue the WHOLE day. I have become incredibly anxious when I am not outside moving. So I wondered around the apartment all day and tried concentrating on reading Ensigns. I did a pretty good job. I discovered that I hate being inside the apartment--I feel like I am wasting my time. I know that we needed to-- if we didn't it could have taken longer for Elder Bodily to recuperate, but I still hated it.

So now we are in Zlina  as part one of the trek to Prague and tonight we will be going to Olomouc and stay with the Elders there. Tomorrow morning we are going to Prague for our Mission wide conference. I am way excited to get with all of the missionaries as well as see my two sister missionaries from the MTC. We'll spend the whole day in Prague. I'll be sure to keep an eye out for Tom Cruise. (word on the street is that he's filming Mission Impossible III there --sounds like my mission right now... lol) On Christmas Eve we'll be spending the night with the Zlina Elders and then back in good ol' Trenčín for Christmas. We have a dinner with a member that night so I don't want anyone feeling sorry for me!

Next week is transfers week so my update will be on Wednesday again!

Čau!
Elder Williams