Cześć wam.

Cześć wam. Hope all is well. Everything is good here..we've had an eventful week here in the small city of Lublin. 

We'll start with Tuesday.  We had a solid district meeting, full of the spirit and scripture reading. We read stories from the Book of Mormon and discussed what we can learn about obedience from the verses we read. Obviously, we read about the strippling warriors and how they carried out every order with exact obedience, they didn't fear as they knew they would be spared through their faith and obedience. That's how we've got to be!   We had a short finding activity afterwards in which we didn't see any success, we tried though which is what matters. That day Elder Kapela and I had a train to Warsaw as we had an exchange that week with the Assistants, Elders Quakenbush and Cowley. Solid comfy train ride. We got a text to tell us that they couldn't get us from the train station so we had some directions to follow.  We didn't have much time to get there to be in for 9 but that wasn't a problem. We stopped for cheeseburgers which is a must.  Then we saw Elders McMaster, Connelley, Byrd and Blackwell in the dworzec grabbing a snack. Elders Byrd and Blackwell are new in the country.  Elder Blackwell says.."you sound like an Ozzy. where you from?"..not for the first time has someone asked me if I'm Australian..must just be my Americanised English! We managed to get to the apartment though off Elder Cowley's directions - kind of a miracle really. Chatted for a bit and chilled out.  I love being around other missionaries, especially when you're good friends with them. 

We woke up the next morning and worked out to the sounds of a Warsaw member reading the Księga Mormona. In a way it was motivating. I always eat a 100g packet of rice before working out, Cowley and Quakenbush thought it's a bit strange.  I just tell people 'you don't look as good as me without eating rice at 6am'. We had pancakes made by Elder Quakenbush and then we hit the studies. Elder Cowley and I had a lesson straight after with some cool guys from Ukraine,talked about prayer and the sabbath day. We went home for lunch and had some chicken curry and then had a finding activity at what is known to missionaries as the fish bowl. This place is by a park in centrum, and is an entrance to 3 different underground metro lines.  So many people pass through there so it's a good place to hand things out and talk.  It's kind of round shapes which is why it goes by 'fish bowl'. Both Warsaw districts and us were there so there was a decent number of us.I spent most of the finding activity with Elder White, he's a new trainee.  I got to know him and we had a good chat about things, he's a funny guy. The evening was cool, we went for Kebabs in centrum with a less active Member.  It was a beautiful evening, perfect weather, good vibes. 

Thursday we travelled home, we got home safely with no train problems this time. We didn't have long before we started the next exchange with the Elders here in Lublin. We went home, we had lunch.  I worked out and cleaned, and then we packed new clothes and headed over to the other Elders place. I was so buzzing to be having another exchange. That evening we had a finding activity and just chilled and chatted, spoke about the exchange and what we wanted to achieve. I worked with Elder Huffmann on Friday and we had a blast. We got on a bus and went out pretty far to visit a former investigator.  He lived on a nice plot of land in the countryside in the fields. Polish countryside is so beautiful, just rows of fields and farms, cherry trees and cornfields, they grow just about everything here. We had to sprint back to the bus stop which was a while away as the buses weren't too often and we had other plans. We just about made it though. We went to visit a less active member who lives in a bit of a sketchy part of town. Of course, we had a fun experience which involved a really drunk lady. We got off the bus to see here a lady saying 'proszę pana, proszę pana'..I turned around and saw a lady hanging on to the bus stop with all her strength, now I thought she was blind as she was kind of moving her head around and her eyes were all over the place, turns out she was just hammered but,  too late I'd already gone to see what was up. She grabbed on to me and could barely stand so we walked her a few feet, she wanted us to walk her home but we had no idea where she lived. We told her to sit on the grass but she wouldn't, so we kind of let go of her and helped her slowly fall to the ground. We called her husband and he came for her.  We just looked at each other afterwards in unbelief. Strange experience. The less active person wasn't home so we went back to the chapel for a bit. the best bit of the day happened at the end of the day.  We were walking down the street, it had been a long day, heads down and then all of a sudden, I just heard a bang, Elder Huffman had planted his face into a street sign haha!  It was hilarious and cracked me up so much - we were in stitches. He bruised his nose too. I'll remember that story, hopefully forever. 

On Sunday we didn't have church, there were no church services across Poland as the Temple in Germany was being re-dedicated.  Every current missionary and those returned missionaries will know how long Sunday was without a church service. Just think of having to find an extra 4 hours of activities to fill the day. 

We tracted all night and had no success, just people shouting at us from their windows, we had a guy come down from whatever floor he lived on in this block just to tell us we're not welcome and attempt to throw us off the door step.  Just a taste of what Alma and Amulek and the Sons of Mosiah experienced.  We have a long way to go.

Take care, do some good and I'll speak to you all next week! 

Warsaw