This is it....the final post!

I'll start by sharing two experiences we had this week. The first taking place on Wednesday as we were in an area of Krakow called Chełm. We had a few hours to knock on doors and so we got a bus not really knowing exactly where were we going but knew the general direction. I felt as though we should keep going and so we went almost to the end of the of the line. We got off in the middle of nowhere and walked up the hill, I tried talking to a man walking towards us but he said he had no time, that's the classic response here, I don't know what he didn't have time for as we weren't close to anything haha. We kept going and found this sweet little road with a few houses on it and at the bottom of the road was a load of farmers fields, quite the scene it was. It was about the 6th or 7th house we knocked on and this lady opened the door, so I introduced myself and told her that my companion is learning Polish and would like to share a message with her and her family. To my surprise, there was no hesitation at all and she invited us right in. We met her 3 children and proceeded to share a message about family, what made it even better is that the father of his family was from Wales so his wife and all his kids spoke wonderful English which made it nice for Elder Asendrych as he could share a message with them in English. We were asked to stay a little longer as she was making some food and so we stayed and ate with them before leaving a copy of the Book of Mormon, saying thank you and heading back out on to the streets. I was happy that Elder Asendrych was able to have such an experience.

Another cool thing that happened this week took place in Costa Coffee not far from the rynek. We planned to do weekly planning there whilst enjoying some hot chocolate, it's getting colder now! Anyway, we sat down at the table and I walked over to hang my coat up when this lad asked me what the name tag was all about, so I told him we were Mormon missionaries, we were speaking English because he was from England. He looked at our hot chocolates and said 'Mormons drinking coffee?' we laughed and told him it was hot chocolate which he thought was funny. we ended up having a good chat and got talking about how he used to live in Manchester and was given a tour of the new YSA building there when it was first opened. The missionary gave him the tour was only Sam Bytheway who I know very well from his time in Oldham. It's a small world, I bet whilst Sam was on his mission he never thought he'd give a guy a tour of a building who would then meet me on my mission in Kraków.

We had our district conference in Katowice this weekend and it was a time of learning, listening and reflecting. We were able to listen to two talks given by our mission president and a number of other talks from leaders. members and recent converts. It was also a time of goodbyes, this trip to Katowice was the last time I saw a lot of my friends and people that I've grown close to over the past two years. I was able to see President Najberg, the first Polish man I met in Poland, and my first Branch President. I approached him after the meeting asking him if he remembered me, his response was one that put a huge smile on my face, he said 'of course I remember you, I remember like it was yesterday! are you still kicking a football around these days?' It was nice to be able to speak with him and understand him, as I couldn't do either in my first transfer. 

Now for some concluding words. I've learnt a lot during my time of service, a lot of things about myself and a lot of things about other people. Happiness is one of the greatest feelings in life and we experience it when we serve others and live close to our Heavenly Father and His son Jesus Christ. This church is the true church of Jesus Christ, restored through a living day prophet. My favourite scripture as of recently is found in D&C 19:23. Peace is a word I've given much thought to because peace can come in many forms. The true peace that we find in Christ is through having a sure knowledge and clear conscience that our sins have been forgiven and forgotten. Conversion is a lifelong process that continues even after this life, let's not forget that only through daily repentance can we reach our true potential. 

I love this work, this church, my family and friends, and I love this country!

Let's be those members who follow the Prophet!

Sorry that I haven't written something for the blog in a while, it must seem as though I've not had much to talk about.  I'll start by sharing a few things from 2 weeks ago. 

A funny story is that I hid from Elder Asendrych haha. He went out back to take out the rubbish after we got in from the days work. I took the opportunity to scare him a little, it was really dark outside too which made it better. I hid in my wardrobe, very obvious hiding spot I thought and I even left the door open a bit as a clue. I watched him through the crack of the door as he crept around saying 'Elder, Elder are you here?' he was so confused. I couldn't really fit all the way in the wardrobe so i had to hold this awkward squat, I counted it as leg day. He knew I was hiding and I kept letting out laughs which brought him into the main room. He threw something over the door because he was convinced I was hiding there. Eventually, he slowly approached my hiding spot, I didn't even feel like jumping out at him anymore because I had so much entertainment watching him, so when he opened the door I just stared at him and he started laughing.

We had zone conference in Katowice. I thought it was the last time I was going to see a lot of people so I said all my goodbyes, but then realised we have district conference (stake conference) in a few weeks so I'll see all my pals again. Zone training was a good deal. We spoke a lot about finding and how we should teach when we find and find when we teach. Our attention was turned to the parable of the talents, how we can learn a lesson from that in relation to commandments and the missionary handbook. Sometimes we don't always understand why we must keep commandments and do specific things, especially as missionaries sometimes the smallest rules can seem silly, but we have to be of the mindset that in the end we will be blessed, in other words 'be made ruler over many things'. 

This week as all the students are back the city has been bumping with young people. We've been out and about talking with them all about English, we also bought an American football to throw around as we talk with people, they're always drawn to it as not many people play the sport here. Hopefully, as we put the effort in to make people aware of the class they'll start coming.

We had Elders Reid and Huffman over in Krakow for the past few days on exchanges. As I've said many times before in the past it's always good to have Elder Huffman around. We spent some time together talking with people in the city, we met a nice young man who we hope to share the gospel with. 

During the week for 2 or so days I wasn't feeling too great, I caught a bit of a cold in the night and so woke up not really wanting to get out of bed. I think being in this state led me to have some mental dreams. I had one dream this week in which I had a baby but it wasn't really a baby because it was a phone, and this baby phone had a scorpion tail that kept scratching my thumbnail. In my attempt to get rid of it I put the scorpion phone baby into a chocolate wrapper and put it in my bag. I woke up and even I was confused as to what I had just seen. I'm feeling 100% now though which I'm grateful for.

Church on Sunday was time well spent, we had a few visitors which is always nice and they were all so friendly and added to the numbers. I translated into English for all the visitors and the English speakers which was a nice change. usually, Elder Litster does it but I thought I'd give him a break from doing it. I had a completely different experience at church because I had to listen, really listen to the testimonies and teachers in order to translate. After the priesthood session, i felt significantly uplifted from the message shared about 'overcoming the world'. Elder Anderson gave a talk this year in April at conference entitled 'overcoming the world', it's a good read! 

A brother visiting with his family got up to bear his testimony during the meeting and mentioned how in order to have the true church on earth and for it to function we need to have Priesthood leaders and believing members who are willing to follow those leaders. Let's be those members who follow the Prophet!

Elder Brown

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.

'You have to enjoy the small things in life, make the most of every opportunity!'

So how has this week been? It's been your classic week, just your ordinary activities and fun, in one of the most beautiful cities in Europe! Sometimes I overlook how lucky I am to be in a place like Kraków, but then I start to focus and get side tracked thinking I'm a tourist and wanting to do all the touristy things. Time is moving, Elder McMaster has moved in and we've had a solid week together, getting used to how we both teach and do things, it's always an interesting part of each new transfer. Being around him in his last transfer is all but reminding me that after him, I'm next. We often talk about the start of our time in Poland, how much energy we had, how much we relied on our trainers, how not knowing Polish made everything hard but yet so enjoyable. It's still kind of the same now, we rely on our companions and instead of worrying about not being able to speak Polish, we're more concerned with how we can use it for the good of others. 

Some things I'll share from the week:

One morning we were walking and we'd just left our apartment, there was a guy in front of us with his headphones on, one of these where you can hear what he's listening to it's that loud. I walked up next to him and just started a conversation with him, saying hello, speaking English, he couldn't hear me so I thought it was hilarious, I kept going but then he took his headphones and I was still chatting away to him..I realised that now he could hear me and the most awkward conversation started ha ha, caught me off guard. 

One of the days this week we were English contacting and ended up inviting some girls from Liverpool to the class, they laughed and told us where they were from, I got chatting with them with McMaster in awe at what was going on, two English people having a conversation. we helped them find a place to drink, they had no idea where they were, can't say I've ever done that before. I hope they remember their trip to Kraków.

I'm happy. This transfer has a totally different feel. We cleaned our apartment properly and then the landlady sent round an actual cleaner who spent 13 hours scrubbing the place, it's so fresh.  The lady that cleaned our apartment has to be one of the nicest ladies I've met. She was friendly. She had us meet her family over skype and as we left she even joined and knelt down in prayer with us. When we got back at the end of the day, after all day cleaning, she welcomed us home with a smile and asked us how our day was, if we managed to do some good for people. As she finished and packed her things up and left we gave her a book of Mormon in Ukrainian and hid inside a bit of money. We wanted to thank her in some way for the service she offered and for being a genuinely nice person. We don't know if she'll read it but we told her as she left that it will bring her joy and happiness.

Saturday was cool. We went to the park to play some footy but of course, as it does every Saturday it started hammering it down with rain, we got soaked but we played on. The surface we play on too get's proper slippy, I could run and slide about 10 metres. Anyway we had a good time and it taught me a small lesson that you have to enjoy the small things in life, make the most of every opportunity.

I taught a joint Priesthood and Relief Society lesson on Sunday. I taught about Baptism and started off by asking everyone present if they remembered their baptism, pretty much the whole hour went by,  us just talking about memories from our baptism. Maybe that's something we could all do more.  I don't know..just food for thought.

Have a good week!

TRANSFER #10

Hello, everyone! It's the start of a new transfer. This morning Elder Groseclose and I helped put Elder Hadfield on his train to Łódź. It's about time President kicked him out of his second home. I'll miss his constant tiredness and how he was always just so hot, I'll also miss how he walked, he has a funny walk and slams his feet down, sounds like an Elephant haha, I wish him all the best in Łódź and hope that he'll find his field. My new Companion is Elder McMaster, he's in the group ahead of me and I've now served with 4 of the 5 elders from that group, I've been blessed with some quality companions.

We had a good last week together. On Wednesday Elder Fuhriman got a call from President telling him that he'll be going to the office, that he had to pack up his stuff and be ready to leave by Thursday. So from Thursday morning, we were in a trio. It was funny because all week we were winding him up saying how he'll be the next Office Elder. 

On Wednesday Elder Hadfield and I was cleaning our apartment because we had inspections at the end of the week. It was like 4 pm and someone rang our doorbell, we let them in the building and had no idea who it could be, I peeked through the eyehole to see a few Jehovah's Witnesses standing at our door waiting to share whatever message they had planned. As it's what we do here, try and talk to people, I gave them time and allowed them to talk to us about the Bible and what it teaches about the resurrection, as we replied and told them that we too are missionaries for our church their whole demeanour changed and they started asking us questions about the Book of Mormon and what it has to offer on the Resurrection, asking us 'what if; questions..we had a good discussion and bore testimony on what we know is true, i ended up giving them my number as they want to set up a meeting with us but with English Speakers from their side, we'll see how it goes. That evening we met up with the Elders and had some solid dinner at that pizza place we went to with Alex, also it was kind of last week of the transfer celebrations and Fuhriman's last night in Kraków.

Thursday was the start of the adventures of the Mighty Trio. Groseclose (aka Big Dumplings), Ashworth (aka The English man that nobody understands) and Hadfield (aka Tired man). Honestly, we had a blast together. We sent Furhiman off on his merry way for his 4-month spell in the office, long live Elder Furhiman!  Alex came to Kraków to spend some time with us, he met us at 3 pm and we went out and did some contacting for a bit before it started to throw it down. We headed over to the chapel and found Rafał, one of our mates, just sat outside the lift waiting for us, he told us he wasn't going to be at English nor would he have time to meet with us but he showed up which was nice, we just sat down and chatted before English class started. We hadn't planned anything so I pulled something out the air and we played just a memory game, hid loads of random items under a blanket and then they had to try and remember as many of the items as possible, it was good for vocab and pronunciation, it worked out decent. A nice touch to end the day was meeting Dallin Jeffs and his parents, Jeffs was my second companion and I have some good memories from serving together in Poznań all that time ago. Weird to think that I'm further on in my mission now than he was when we served together, time has flown by. Anyway, his parents were sweet and were kind enough to buy us some dinner, Jeffs loves his Kebabs so of course we went to the 'go to place' for missionaries and had some good food, certainly filled me up. We talked about all the things we got up to in Poznań and talked of his experience with coming back with his parents. if you're reading this Jeffs family, thank you! 

Friday we had cleaning checks and we did ok, enough that our apartment is safe to live in. We had an appointment set up with this fella in a town called Myśleniec, about 45 mins outside Kraków, this man is a member that got baptised in Austria but recently moved back and wanted a visit from the missionaries. The pictures of us eating lunch with the little fluffy dog are from this trip. It took us absolutely ages to get out there as the traffic in Kraków is terrible, we were sat on the bus for an hour before we even got near the border of the city, I took my shoes off and had a nap. We got there and the man was waiting for us at the bus station with his bike, this is all the info he gave us, we had no idea who or what we were looking for, in a foreign city, looking for someone we've never seen before, we turned the corner and out of the crowd of people we picked him out, we knew it was him, he greeted us, and we started the few km walk back to his place. We were greeted then by his 1 and a half-year-old fluffy puppy named Czarek. The sweetest thing I've ever met, reminded me so much of our Oscar back home, just in the way he acted and how he thought he was the toughest thing about. Myśleniec is a beautiful place, small and quaint, reminded me of Springhead, hills and small houses, few schools knocking about. I think I played with little Czarek the whole time. Piotr made us food and was happy to have us round. We chatted about his life and we told him about ours, all whilst sat in his front garden. He then walked us back to the bus stop and sent us on our way home. Nice guy, hope we can go out and visit him often, help him out with the work he's doing on his house and in his garden.

Saturday was the day of transfer calls, the day all the missionaries are stressed out, wondering when President will call. I was sure I was staying so I was cool and wasn't expecting a call from him, Hadfield, on the other hand, had his phone in hand all day waiting. To take his mind off things we went to Bobby Burger for lunch, the burgers they have there are solid! he called during our few hours in the park playing footy. We found a bunch of lads and made some 5 a-side teams and played for a few hours, getting to know them, talking to them about why we're here and that, it's a good way to talk to people about our church, at least I've found it to be effective. When they see how I play on the pitch, they think to themselves..how is this guy a missionary, I've gotta figure him out and ask him questions..always works. I love a game of footy! President eventually called and told Hadfield his fate, He's off to the Boat (that's what Łódź means in Polish).  That evening we had another Lucas dinner at his home. Ribs, shepherd's pie, goats cheese and bacon, salad, smoothies, he made the lot! 

It's been so hot this week. I have a video of me pouring water all over myself in the street to deal with the heat, ask my parents about it if you want to see it. It felt so good, but I wouldn't recommend it if you don't fancy being wet all day. 

We had a good week, I'm ready for this new transfer! 

Wish you all a good week, do some good! 

Elder Groseclose

Elder Hadfield

Dallin Jeffs was in town

can you see us?