Transfers and a visit to Toruń

It's your boy, Elder Ashworth with another edition of 'things that happened'.

Let’s start with the news of the new transfer. Saturday was the day of calls as usual and it was probably worse than the last transfer, just so many nerves flying around. President called around 3pm... you probably all know by now but I'm staying in Poznań for another 8 weeks and I'm serving with Starszy Freeman. The English lads are taking over Poznań. President asked me to take over as District Leader too, so I have a bit more responsibility this transfer. It's going to be fun though. 3rd and 2nd transfer elders together, bring it on!

I enjoyed the 4 weeks or so weeks with Elder Liechty though, he's a good lad. I'm happy that he gets to return home to Szczecin.

So last Monday was the trip to Toruń. Hopefully I’ll be able to send some pictures but the computer is being a bit temperamental. The place is beautiful and I would recommend it to anyone who takes a trip to Poland.

Toruń from a distance.

The Gingerbread museum in Toruń

I forgot my planner, so I'm really struggling to remember what happened earlier this week.

Tuesday we had another normal day. We had our last district meeting which was good. We spoke about questions and how they play a big part in teaching. We ended the night with FHE. Probably the funniest thing of my mission happened after FHE. Two of the members stayed and were having a music jam session in another room. One of the members was playing his own composition on the keyboard as Iza, Elder Liechty and myself danced. I got a video of it all and I can't wait to share it with you all.

I'll skip to Friday. So on Friday at lunch time we met a couple from English class at park Cytadela. They showed us around the park and told us stories from when they were younger and what they got up to at the park. The park was a fort during the war and so has all sorts of cool things dotted around the park. We learnt some Polish and they learnt some English. We also had our sport activity at 17.00. A few members turned up which was good. On the park there were around 200 college students playing sport and relaxing. I found a group of lads playing football and joined in with them, I could be a bit physical too which I enjoyed.

We got calls on Saturday as I previously mentioned. That night Elder Liechty and I decided to turn our beds into bunk beds. It was a huge waste of time as we didn't have all the parts but it was fun haha.

Sunday was a good day. We had a small turnout to church but it was a nice service. I taught the Sunday school class. We read and talked about chapter 7 from the teachings of Howard. W. Hunter book. It was hard as I don't have much vocab on the importance of continuous prophetic revelation, but hey ho.

Monday was a loooooooooooooong day. We were up and out by 7 to be at the train station for Elder Vance's train, which he made just as the whistle was blown. Elder Liechty then left at 8. We had to collect Elder Cotou about 10 mins later, who is staying with me till Thursday. We helped sister Dekker with her train transfer at Poznań. Before that we collected Elder Jeffs’ new companion and then at around 2 we had to wait for Elder Freeman to get in before helping sister Dekker back on to her train. So much happened within the day. We spent a good couple of hours at the station. We managed to do it though.

Elder Jeffs 'do something wierd'..Elder Liechty does this

Also last night we had 2 hours contacting in town. We got a meeting set up for Wednesday, we gave out 2 books and got 2 numbers. Pretty successful night. Elder Freeman had his first taste of missionary work in Poznań too which was good.

We've had some bizarre weather too.

The End...

Elder Liechty and I joined the marathon for a few seconds.......

So another week is down. We're into the last week of this transfer and I really can wait for Saturday, transfer call day last transfer killed me. 

So it'll have to be a quick one this week as we're off to Toruń today. It's going to be a good trip, plus the weather is beautiful today!

Monday - Just the usual Pday stuff last week. There was a fantasy/gaming event going on at the world trade centre in Poznań, bunch of people around all dressed up in costumes. I noticed a group of people dressed as wizards from harry potter so i did what anybody else would do, I ran up to them and started shouting spells and doing wand actions at them. They were so confused as to what was going on. That's how I amuse myself these days. Also had some fish and chips that didn't look or taste anything like fish and chips. 

Tuesday - Had the usual district meeting. Tuesday was a slow day, didn't really get up to much exciting. Just contacting and things. It's been a tough week for contacting, there just hasn't seemed to be anyone around to talk to or that wants to talk. We managed to get a few numbers through the week though which is good. FHE after dinner with just the four elders and Iza. We played an intense game of Uno. All rules go out the window when playing with Iza haha.

Wednesday - We had a pretty good lesson with our investigator Dawid. We taught him about baptism and how it's essential and the first step to the goal of eternal life. We read through 2 Nephi 31 with him and talked about it. He's slowly progressing. To finish off the night we had a boss English class with the beginners and then had an even better religious class. We had them translate from Polish to English a few short stories, we split them up into teams to make it more of a competition as to who could translate and write better English. We spoke about the God head for religious class. Who they each are and their roles etc...

Thursday - We spent most of this day cleaning the mess that was our apartment. We had the best news all week in that we could move into the new one a day early. We had so much to do and it took us a good 5 hours to get everything ready and strip the place. We took a break in-between and went to Bożena's for Lunch, probs the best Bożena lunch I've had yet. Just chicken and Potatoes but it was gone in about 30 seconds. 

Friday - Time to move house. We went to the new apartment to collect the keys around midday. We also had the first of our sport Fridays which we're starting to get up and running. We had a few people turn up which was good. We played frisbee in the park and then I brought a footy as well. I just enjoyed smacking it up in the air as hard and as high as I could. Great stress reliever and it just felt good as I've not been able to that for a good 6 months. After sport with help from Markus (member) we moved all of our belongings to the new flat. It took a lot of effort and a few trips but we made it. The new place is incredible. 

Saturday - Not a lot happened. We had a poor turnout to English class. Probably because we had nice weather. Not a lot happened this day but we had a few funny moments. We took a random 2 hours tracting and bumped into an old guy who shouted at us for a good 30 mins as we tried to tell him why we have prophets. We spoke to a guy who just poked his head out of the window, literally just his face, nothing else, for a good 10 mins as we tried to convince him to listen to us. We got locked in an old ladies front garden haha and then got invited into a party, which was tempting, but we decided not to in the end. 

Sunday - Probably the best day of the week. We left the house for church. We had a meeting at 10.15. We noticed as we stepped out of the building that there was a marathon going on. We had no idea this was happening and all the roads were blocked. We were cut off from the side of the city that we needed to get to. We stood and watched for a bit and tried to figure out how we were going to get to the chapel without trams or buses. We had to walk, which was pants as it was raining and it was a good few miles away. So to get into the bit of the city we needed to be in, Elder Liechty and I joined the marathon for a few seconds haha, it was flipping hilarious. We arrived at church and your standard Sunday as a missionary happened. 

That is my week. Sorry it's short but that's all I have time for. 

Things that happened in Poznań this week.

Hello one and all, welcome to the first instalment of 'things that happened in Poznań this week'.

I call it 'things that happened' because sometimes as missionaries we look back on the day and write down all the 'miracles' that happened through the day. It just ended up us writing things that weren't really miracles, so I changed the miracles section in my planner to the 'things that happened' section. Creative, I know.

It's finally getting warmer here which means tracting without coats.
We look like proper missionaries now.

I don't even know.....

After Emailing on Monday we went to Park Cytadela and played frisbee or disk or ultimate, whatever you want to call it. Then topped the night off with a bit of tracting in an area I've never been to. We didn't have any success but we spoke to an old-ish man for a while. We chatted about all sorts, after talking for a while he realised we're not Polish and brings it up by saying 'you speak kind of crappy, you're not from here are you?' I just said assumed he was complimenting our Polish and didn't realise till afterwards he just straight up said we were bad haha. They’re to the point are the Polish.

This is the Grand Old Library.

Took this this morning of 'most teatrainy'. The busy tram stop where we do a lot of English contacting.

more of the city

Through the week we re-watched all the sessions of conference in English. So Tuesday for district meeting we put one on and had a relaxing morning before hitting the city and doing some contacting. On the chalk talk we drew another puzzle on the floor to get people's attention. It involved numbers and a pyramid but no maths was involved. It was fun, hard to link to the gospel, but we had a laugh with it. Elder Liechty and I managed to place 2 books and get 2 numbers, which is a good use of time on my eyes. We should be setting up with at least one of them this week, the other guy was interesting as he had no belief in any God, by the end of it we managed to get him to agree that there is a God and he took a book. The night ended slowly with a poor turnout for FHE, and then some English contacting. Tuesday was our best day numbers wise.

We got to the chapel early on Wednesday to watch another session of conference. I think we watched the priesthood session. After that we went for a classic KraszKebab lunch, 15ZŁ for what missionaries say is the best kebab place in Poland. We had another decent contacting session after lunch with the other two elders. We had a lesson with one of our investigators before English. English was ridiculous. We did an overview of the 9 tenses we've done with them over the past couple weeks. It was stressful but we managed to get through it. We also had 5 new people in the beginner class who had no idea what was going on haha. Then you get the regulars who just argue with each other, it's a good mix. 

Thursday we got up and did all the normal business, eating, washing, eating, studying, eating and probs some more eating. The weather has been kind of crappy so we watched another session of conference and combined it with lunch. After that, you guessed it, we went contacting. We didn't have our usual Bożena meal again, so we went to the chapel to go over our lesson plan for a man named David, who referred himself. He seemed pretty set for the meeting but then didn't show as he had work. Spoiler alert...we eventually met with him on Saturday and he came to church on Sunday!! We met one of the sickest guys whilst out contacting around tea time. A man called Maciej, he was so open to talk and was asking us all sorts of questions. He couldn't remember his number so we had to give him ours but we had no pen...So I went and asked a lady in my best Polish if I could borrow a pen, she ended up letting me keep the pen which was nice of her. Maciej thought i was 'brave' and slightly weird that I’d just go up to a random person and ask them for a pen. I’ll tell you something, it's a lot easier asking for a pen than it is to go up to someone and talk about The Restoration haha.

mmmm pizza

Friday we had out weekly pizza planning session. This time we just settled for 2 pizzas. The highlight of the day was going to Iza's house and teaching her a lesson on the church and Joseph Smith. She's a member but sometimes forgets things. Also we had to walk her 93 year old mum around the front room. I didn't know she could move. We were in another room and I heard moving, next minute she's standing with her walking frame, it freaked me out big time. Friday night tracting turned into a miss when we got on the wrong tram, we decided to hit some blocks close we could see which is where we took the cool sunset pictures.

This view is from the top of a tower block that we tracted.  We had a beautiful sunset
and had a good view of the Lech Poznan Stadium.

The stadium is huge.

Saturday is just your standard advanced English class day. We did tongue twisters with them and it was flipping hilarious, we also asked for some Polish tongue twisters so they could have a laugh at us too. We managed to meet with the referral David after arranging a new time. We taught him a good first and invited him to church. He's excited about all the new doctrine and teachings we're showing him which is nice to see. He's incredibly difficult to understand though which makes teaching him real fun!

David came to church!! He stayed for all 3 hours too which was mint! It worked out well to as Elder Liechty and I ended up having to teach Sunday school. With only 2 mins of prep we taught the plan of salvation which happens to be the second lesson and David was there to listen. We tried contacting after church but everywhere around the city there were these post Easter Catholic festival things going on. People singing about Christ and dancing. I wish I had my camera on me, it was definitely interesting. It made talking to people about our church tough though as everywhere was highly populated with Catholics. We finished the evening with the last session of conference. We watched the Saturday Afternoon session. Elder Bednar’s talk was quality.

Till the next instalment of 'things that happened', seeya!  

So we're going to be on the radio....

Bonjour, oh wait wrong language, dzień dobry was! I'm still incredibly funny if you were wondering. This week has been a week full of sunshine, mouldy apartments and park contacting!

Tuesday 29th (My Birthday) - So I already sent a picture home but for those who didn't know I turned 20! I appreciate all the birthday emails I received and it doesn't mean I don't like you if I didn't reply. It was a decent birthday; the fact it was Pday made it a little better. It rained really hard all day which ruined our plans of hiring bikes and cycling around the city so we decided to do an escape room, the 4 missionaries, Marta and her friend. This one was so cool, we started blindfolded and locked in 2 two separate prison cells. The story and theme of the room was your standard zombie apocalypse and you're the last alive and a scientist had come up with a cure but died and so you had to figure out all the clues, find the antidote and then escape. I don't know why this sort of thing hasn't hit the UK yet, they're so fun. After that we got ice cream, I had a huge thing of oreo and snickers ice cream. The only thing I bought myself that day were two pads of squared paper, ooooh interesting I know. I prefer the way my writing looks on squared paper, don't really know why I’m telling you this ha-ha. Also that day during email time I forgot to email president, things happened and I ran out of time. He let me off nicely though, so president if you're reading this, cheers, again. We had FHE and then finished the night with some English contacting.

Wednesday - In the build up to konferencji generalne our focus whilst doing finding activities was the prophet and why we have prophets. After lunch we did a chalk talk, which involves chalk and drawing something on the ground that we can use to get people to stop and talk, hence the name 'chalk talk'. usually we write scriptures, but this time we drew two stick figures, a yellow stick man and a blue stick man and they both were saying 'Jestem prorokiem'. We had the question above 'kim jest prorok?' and we asked people who they thought was the true prophet. After their guess we went on to explain that the Blue stick man may have been a prophet, but unlike the yellow stick man he didn't have the proper authority of God. It was a fun little activity. Through the chalk talk I was kind of distracted as there were so many nice cars driving around, you know me and my cars. Saw the nicest Ferarri F12 and I was buzzing and nobody understood why. There was also a really loud RS5 cruising around. Enough of that though. Before English class we taught one of our investigators the tree of life and what everything represents. We got creative and drew it out using our artistic skills. Then came the English class. We taught the Future Perfective tense (whatever that means) to our beginner class. I've learnt through teaching English class that my English grammar is terrible ha-ha. The religious class went well though, we showed those who stayed a talk from conference by Thomas. S. Monson. They seemed to enjoy it. Finished the evening with English contacting and ended up sharing Ether 12:4 with a homeless man.

Thursday - it was a nice day so we decided to go contacting in the park behind our house. The park used to be an old fortress during war times, and there are still remains that you can see, the park is huge! Just before dinner, Tea time for all those who refer to dinner as lunch, we went to Iza's house. Iza is a member in the ward and she invites us over once a week so we can sing to her 93 year old mum who she looks after. I've been round a few times but it was Elder Liechty's first time and boy was he in for a treat! It's one of the more bizarre experiences I have. Her mum is deaf so when you speak you have to grab her hand, she's in a bed so you have to kind of lean over and then scream down her ear ha-ha. In the night we went tracting by the Lech Poznań stadium, made me miss football a lot as I’ve not had the chance to play it this transfer.

Friday - Crazy start to the day, I found out that I was being mid transfer transferred to serve as Zone Leader in Warsaw..........April Fools.

MY BIRTHDAY PACKAGE FINALLY ARRIVED, after many phone calls with the shipping company and all sorts of bad words (joking mum). After going mental that my package had arrived We went contacting in the park again and had one of the best contacting experiences of my mission. We were walking around and having no luck for a while and then I spotted a guy sat alone on a bench looking over the park, so I kind of snuck up on him and started a conversation about the weather of all things. Not long until we were talking about the gospel and missionary work with him. We spent 40 minutes with this man, nowhere does time go quicker than when you're in a good contact with someone. We finished with bearing testimony, before handing him a book, he thanked us and then we left. The spirit was present, nothing has come of it yet, but it was an experience I hope to never forget. Later on in the day Elder Jeffs and I had a pre radio show interview with someone from Poznań International Radio. So yeah we're going to be on the radio, it's all in English as the radio station interview English speaking people from across the world that live in Poznań. The segment will be about us as Members of the Church and certain views and beliefs we have. I'm not sure when, probably in the next two weeks, you'll be able to find a recording of it online. Should be fun :)

Saturday - We had another beautiful day in Poznań! Contacting in the morning down at Fredry (the Uni/busy tram stop area) and did another chalk talk. Maybe this happened on Friday, I can't remember but we put a puzzle on the floor. 9 squares in a 3 by 3 lay out and they had to pass through all 9 squares with just 4 lines. I probably didn't describe it that well. It worked really well and had all sorts of people trying it out and stopping and talking. We had another English class but without advanced lot this time, we had 3 show up which was good as we could make it more personal. We played the 'desert island' or shipwreck scenario game where you're on a ship that is sinking and you had to select 5 things out of 18 that would help you survive. It worked well and we had a laugh with them. At 6pm we watched the Saturday morning session of conference.

Sunday - We spent all day at the chapel because of conference weekend and we watched 3 sessions throughout the day. At 11 we had the Priesthood session shown, and had a short food break before waiting for more members to arrive before showing the Saturday afternoon session. We had a 2 hour break for lunch/dinner and talking before showing the Sunday Morning session at 6pm. It was a good day, all the sessions are shown with Polish dubbing over the top. I might not have understood everything but I could get the general jist of what was being said. We're showing the sessions in English through the week on different days so I’m looking forward to that.

Today being Monday, we got haircuts this morning. I look pretty good, Liechty's is alright I guess ha-ha. We're planning on going round the mall for a bit before heading to the park to play some Ultimate or some frisbee or whatever you want to call it.

I hope you all enjoy this week’s info, I spent nearly 90 minutes typing it all up. Till we meet again, do widzenia

In Park Cytadela I thought I could sit in the hole under the tree but it's actually an old staircase that goes underground.  It's blocked off but is still pretty deep.

We bought 3 pizzas and had a weekly planning party.