Called To Serve : Elder Josef Ashworth: Wesołych Świąt. Szczęśliwego Nowego Roku!

So this week has come around so fast. We've been up to no good as usual and transfers are soon approaching. I'm not too nervous, I'm just happy to be spending Christmas here in Lublin with the Brothers.

We had our exchange with Elders Haskett and Barlow this week. It was a good time. I've never been around Elder Haskett until this transfer so it was good being around him for a few days. The exchange started Wednesday night after English. For English we decided to practice writing letter to Santa. So we went through a bunch of ways to start letters, the most commonly picked being 'Yo Santa waddup'. It was a good laugh as usual, especially when Elder Dooley wrote that he wanted a pet dragon for Christmas as he doesn't like paying for his bus ticket, he's one of a kind haha.

So on Thursday, our day started with us being fed breakfast by Elder Dooley, although the pancakes he made were terrible. He got up way earlier to prepare them and woke me up with the question..'do you have any eggs? I only have week old rotten eggs', well I didn't have any eggs so he continued to make the pancakes with rotten eggs..to the surprise of Elder Dooley they didn't taste too good. So we frisbeed them off our balcony, which amused us for a few minutes. We left the house around 9am and tried to catch everyone going to work and school, we have these '#ŚwiećŚwiatu' cards that we need to hand out before Christmas, we have a few boxes of them, so it seemed a good time to go and hand them out early. We went for some hot chocolate again at a place called 'U Szewca' on the rynek, looks just like an English pub, the hot chocolate is so good too, another bonus being that the United V Palace game was being shown on the TV so I got to watch about 30 mins of the game. Get In!

That evening we were invited round to Ela's house as we arranged to cook for her to repay her for all the meals she's made for us. All 6 of us were there and we just made some proper missionary food, chicken and rice with some potatoes and salad, not too similar to a Classic Polish meal either. It was a solid evening, good people, Christmas music and all that.

Friday we had our Friday night movie playing at the chapel, we finished the rest of Meet the Mormons and we had a few people show which was good. A guy called Marek came who we meet with from time to time, one of the nicest guys I've met.

Saturday came around and we took a trip out to Świdnik for some service. Always a blast when we go out there. this time round, we shovelled coal, it confirmed Elder Hansen's thoughts of Eastern Europe..he said 'this is what I imagined when I thought of things I could get up to on my mission'. We shovelled a ton of it...about 1000kg of coal..and then threw it down a shoot into her basement. It was epic! Lunch came, prepared by Beata's mum, which is always quality food.

The bus ride home was long, by accident we took the longer route home, which is why it was longer. But it worked to our advantage as both Elder Huffman and I were able to chat to the people that sat next to us. Of course the two girls that get on the bus would take the empty seats next to me and Elder Huffman over the many other empty seats.

We arrived home to a very misty and foggy Lublin. We had a bizarre idea for English planned which involved a backwards theme. So for the night we referred to each other as our names but backwards, and we wore our clothes backwards and we walked backwards, faced the wrong way, and just made a fool of ourselves as usual but it was funny.

Sunday we had our special Christmas sacrament service which involved our branch choir and reading of the birth of christ from the bible, it was nice. I did the narration of the story in Polish and Elder Huffman read it in English. The 4 of us Elders and Michael sang a rendition of 'oh come, oh come, Emmanuel', it went alright I suppose.

Then came the injury from the week. I shaved this morning before church, got to keep control of the beard you know, I threw my razor on my bed (as you do), then when I got home after church I jumped on my bed and somehow managed to slice my hand a few times on my razor. Who knew that a 4 titanium blade Wilkinson Sword razor from Rossman could have been so deadly! It legit didn't stop bleeding for about 2 hours. So stupid haha.

Sunday night we had a dessert and games night with the branch and friends at the Belo's home. It was good to be together before people go back home for Christmas.

So by next week I'll have my transfer call. We'll see what happens. So we have a cool day planned today. We're eating after this and then going shopping for a bit. at 15.30 we're going ice skating with some friends and then at 18.30 we have a bowling family home evening activity planned. So today is kind of a chill out day.

It's not snowing at the minute but it's been snowing, it's been down to -5 most nights, so it's cold.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas.

Take it easy!

Starszy Ashworth 🎄.