Kraków is the place to be!

Cześć wam! Another week has come and gone, quicker than most I would say. I would like to say it's been a huge eventful week but the first week of every transfer, especially after moving to a new city isn't always the most exciting or eventful. I've met some great people though, some we teach, members from the branch here, people that come to our English class, and then the other Elders in my district are quality lads. One thing that's been a blessing of moving to kraków is my bed, that thing is so comfy it's hard to get out of it each morning, I've got some good sleep in though helping me be ready to take on each day with 100%.

On Tuesday night we had our English class, not many people showed up as it was the end of another Polish holiday. Something nice to see is that everything shuts during most of the holidays, shops, restaurants, even the people shut themselves away. The Polish people really celebrate their holidays, with most of them being religious holidays too it's nice to see the respect they show. Kind of makes it a nightmare for us as missionaries though..no shops open to get a snack during the day and the only people on the streets are tourists and homeless people. The English class was good though. It's the same everywhere I go, it takes people a few weeks to get used to my accent, especially the people in the beginner class. It's so funny having me say a word and then listening to an American pronunciation of it, it confuses the heck out of them.

Wednesday night we heard about an event going down on the small rynek. It was a night of singing patriotic Polish hymns, how could we not go and check it out. So at 5:30 we turned up and there were so many people there, there was a huge stage too with people up there who could actually sing, their job was to lead so that people knew what to sing, they probably knew that we were going to show up. They handed out free hymnals too which was a little bonus. The downside to the evening is that it started raining, that's springtime in Poland for you.

Thursday was a solid day. So hot outside and we spent pretty much all day outside until our English class at 18:30. We printed off 1000 English fliers and handed them all out within about 3 days. Elder Fuhriman said he'd had 6 or 7 people call him to sign up, decent ratio if you ask me, has Poznań beaten by a mile! Before English we had a meeting with a 20-year-old girl who is pretty cool. We teach her English and then she's open to gospel discussion afterwards in which we just teach her our doctrine. A lot of people hold back when it comes to listening to our message. Our message isn't that we want to change the faith of others, it's not that we want to force others to join our church, the desire to change will come naturally as you listen with intent to what the messages we share have to offer. Our message is one of turning outward, loving others and showing faith in making the right steps towards something even better than what you think you already have, nothing is greater and more rewarding than the blessings Heavenly Father has for us.

The branch here is quality, we had about 35 people in church this past Sunday which is mint! A lot of international members so lots of translating. Some good testimonies were shared by the members, I got up too just to introduce myself. One of my MTC teachers Spencer Kimball who served here a few years ago was there so it was nice for him to see how much my Polish has improved since the terrible days of the MTC haha.

I'm looking forward to what Kraków has to offer. There's nothing better than going out for the day with the mindset of doing some good.

We got up and went to Auschwitz this morning.  It was a good trip out there, maybe 1 hour on a bus.  We got up at 5.15am to get out there early.  It felt weird being there again, I know it was 6 years ago I was there last but it seemed as if it wasn't too long ago.  

(note from mum:- our local newspaper wrote this article about Josef visiting Auschwitz in 2011 on a school history trip and how his great grandad had escaped from there during the Second World War)