Cool Connections.

So where do I start with this week...

Another week down and not much to talk about, but we've had some good experiences.

We've been having a lot of fun this week with English contacting. We went to a stationery store to buy some clipboards, made this little sign-up sheet and have been going around town having people sign up on the street for our English class. It's worked pretty well and people always are willing to chat. It's a much easier approach too. A lot of people speak English here. A cool little miracle that happened, well not a miracle, but just a quick answer to a prayer we had one day this week. Before we left the house we had our usual companionship prayer and in the prayer Elder McMaster asked that through the day someone would approach us who is prepared. As we came out of the shop a guy came up to us and asked if we were Mormons, to our surprise we answered 'yeah we're actually missionaries', he said cool can I have a Book of Mormon? Luckily Elder McMaster had one spare, so we gave it him, unfortunately, he lives in Gdansk and didn't want to meet straight away with Missionaries, so we settled for giving him our number and are waiting for a call. This happened just 1 hour after we left the apartment. 

On Wednesday we had a trip out to Katowice for Zone Conference. It was a long day, a long conference in the heat. At the start of conference, President told us that we could take off our suit coats if we wanted, I was the only Elder to keep mine on, President looked at me as if to say 'what are you doing?', I looked at him and said 'I'll keep mine on because I look good in it', he started laughing and then got my attention again and said 'it still doesn't help you', so yeah I got wrecked by President haha. Overall the conference was good. It was nice listening to all the leaders who had prepared messages for us. A lot of it was based on Faith and how we can better present ourselves as representatives of the Chuch. 

Saturday we had our standard sports activity down at the park. We're becoming regulars down at the Boisko now, we turn up and everyone says hello to us. It's a good few hours kicking a ball about and chatting with the lads down there. Elder McMaster and Groseclose were laughing at me because I always get proper serious. My hamstring was hurting, and it could have snapped I'm pretty sure if I stretched it too much, I sprinted after the ball and it went out of play, then I kind of leaned over and said out loud 'I can't do this, my leg hurts so bad', after I said that I tackled this guy and smashed the ball as hard as I could at the goal, it made them both laugh anyway haha.

Sunday was a good day. Alex cooked some food for us after church and we spent a few hours round there, talking and playing some games with a few other members too. 

Good company, good food, solid day.

Alex 

Here we all are with Alex and Spencer Kimball who is visiting for 3 months.

The girls in the photo are from Utah - they're here as part of a study/teach abroad programme.  They teach English here for 3 months - they go home in about a month and then we get another group of 5 girls in Krakow.  The lad at the front is Spencer Kimball - he taught me in the MTC.

Note from mum - cool connections:-

In 2004 we went on a family holiday to New York and spent a week visiting church history sites around Palmyra.  We visited the Whitmer home where the church was organised and where there is a beautiful visitors centre with original artwork and an amazing bronze statue of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.  We were the only people there apart from a missionary couple - an Elder and Sister Kimball.  When we said we were from England Elder Kimball mentioned that we may have heard of his great grandfather who was one of the first missionaries to England - Heber C. Kimball (of course we had!!)  Elder Kimball proceeded to show us around the visitors centre and shared his testimony with us.  He was particularly interested in talking to Josef (aged 8) and Ben (aged 6) as we stood in front of the bronze of Hyrum and Joseph Smith and he shared his love for them and was grateful to us for taking our family there to visit.  It was a really special moment.  Now fast forward 11 years and who should teach Josef in the MTC but a recently returned missionary from the Poland Warsaw Mission - Elder Spencer Kimball, the grandson of the Elder Kimball we had met all those years earlier!!  We have only just realised the connection but think it's pretty amazing.