Tomas Update: Week 22 in Trenčín

Ahojte! 

Yet again a wild week, it seems like it never calms down out here. 

Tuesday we raked a ton of leaves for the local family center, and for once I actually enjoyed it! When you don’t have your own yard you end up missing that stuff I guess. Then the other big thing was Magic night, pretty average although now we have like 10 people coming which is cool, it’s grown a lot. 

Wednesday we spoke a ridiculous amount of Ukranian, we had like 3 Ukrainian lessons and a class, it was crazy. I barely spoke any Slovak that day but I made a bunch of progress, I’ll get there someday. Our member Ruslan ks so good at teaching (I bet the degree helps) so we are really moving. 

Thursday we headed out to Žilina for district council, then back for a lesson with another Ukrainian man (only our 2nd in person!) with guest appearances by the Jihlava elders, who were in for police work the following day (nothing illegal, they just need to get some paperwork done for residency cards). One of them is a native Ukranian so he saved the lesson, Roman ks pretty hard to understand. We also went and got a bunch of papers notarized which was fine I guess?

Friday we got the work done (in Žilina again), then trained back to Trenčín and quickly packed, then trained to Bratislava and met up with Kevin and our branch prezident, and then drove to Prague with a quick pit stop at a Czech KFC. In Prague we swapped companions with the Mladá Boleslav elders and I sent off Theodosis for a day with yet another native Ukranian elder, and me and elder Osborne continued in the car to Frieberg, ending the night in some random German penzión not too far from the temple. That was super weird, we couldn’t understand anyone and we were just kinda in Germany, which literally isn’t even our mission anymore. It was definitely cool though. 

Saturday morning we ate a German breakfast, then headed to the temple with everyone and did some baptisms, which was the first time for many new members that were there from across the whole mission (there were like 30 of us total). I got to practice my Czech since the words haven’t been translated into Slovak yet somehow, so now I have a bit of an ř/ě. Very new experience. We then got out, took some pictures, and stopped by the Frieberg town square on our way home (went to blava, then trained to Trenčín) and my wallet is now considerably lighter after all the trains this week. Overall 10/10 experience, you appreciate it a lot more when you have to travel so far. I will definitely appreciate being closer to a temple back home. 

Then Sunday we had a very quiet day at church, most of our members were in other branches for the day, and then had a nice quiet afternoon which was good because both of us were tired. I don’t have much else to say really. 

Monday we went and visited Vrátna dolina again, although we spent the entire hike inside a cloud so there was 0 view of the fall colors. It was fun though! That’s still my favorite hike I’ve ever done out here and I will continue to return. 

Pictures:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/GHgGUxN4X6y5nvio8

I’m doing so well out here, the work is moving really fast and we are just doing so much every day! I’m sure I missed out on a lot that happened this week but that’s the general gist of it. Hope you’re all well and safe. 

S láskou,

Starší Cundick