“did you see that?”

Visa renewal in Prague

Hey Family,

Good letters from all, Hurrah! The big news of the week is that it is official; the only months on my mission that I have not seen snow are June July and August. As of last Friday September 26th winter is here, snow flurries and all. It’s weird to see snow falling along with the fall leaves, really pretty though. It definitely didn’t snow this time last year, but they’re always saying last winter was a warm one.
Actually the big news is investigators. We’ve got some. I was just thinking on one of our many bus rides between cities that with the exception of our golden investigator who didn’t work out when I was a greenie, I haven’t had any real investigators my whole mission. We’ve had a few people that on paper count, or that we were technically teaching but no one who the gospel was really coming alive for, someone who was asking real questions and seriously “investigating” the church. And that I wanted to really have someone to really teach with Elder Taylor. We worked hard last transfer to get the work going but with no visible success, but with a resolved effort to just keep working and not worry about it being a trial of faith or some test for me, and just keep working and now we have two solid investigators and one solid contact who will be one just as soon as his schedule opens up. They are an nice older man we tracted into named Sergey, a very orthodox Russian who didn’t even want to talk to us at first but we kept at it and he eventually gladly took a book of Mormon and said he’ll test it out and have many questions for us(!), and Galina a nice neighbor to an inactive we work with often. I know that just because we have some good prospects that doesn’t mean the work has totally turned around and all trials are ended, but I’m remaining optimistic with them and if none of them turn out, we’ll still keep at it and be grateful for the period of time where we were teaching and testifying about the Gospel of Jesus Christ to people who were actually interested in coming unto Christ.
All sounds well at home, I recon I’ll miss all of my siblings weddings while I’m out here if this business keeps up. A funny two part story: On the nice walk home from teaching Galina for the first time, we walked down a dark street where we soon noticed two men just sort of standing in the middle of the street, like they were waiting for something and as we crossed them we passed a black, metal reinforced briefcase just sitting there by the curb waiting to be pick up in the pitch dark. It was one of those times where you know something’s up but can’t say anything about it until a good distance away and you whisper out of the side of your mouth, “did you see that?” Good times, also on that same way home, we passed a man squatting on the ground making a cell phone call with a woman on the ground a few feet in front of him sort of writhing either in a high amount of pain or in a just plain state of high. We were already late for getting home and I tried to see if I felt a prompting to do anything and I felt for some reason all would be ok, so we continued to hurry home when I notice a cop car coming by, so I felt I should wave it down, (a bit of risky venture considering some mission lore about a certain Elder Snider whose jaw was broken by a policemen) so I did, told about the woman and they went to go check it out. So we felt reassured for doing what we could and staying within the rules. Yay for reassurance.

Welp, gosta go,

Love,

Elder Magleby