Called To Serve : Elder Josef Ashworth: Germany

Monday, 21 November 2016

Three Nights in Warsaw

This week has been a strange week as we've not been in Lublin for most of it. From Tuesday night to Friday afternoon we were in Warsaw, getting up to all sorts of things with Elders Quakenbush and Mulder, zone conference, MLC and a wild 5:30AM footy match.

Wednesday morning we were up early, as I mentioned before for the football. We had 8 lads there, we just had a kick about in the darkness. It woke us all up for sure. Walking back I was doing some kick-ups and kicked the ball into a big ditch, some work was being done by the side of the road, so I jumped in before anyone noticed and grabbed it. Definitely a 'laugh at myself' moment. Shout out to Elder Mulder for a solid breakfast. At 9:30 we headed back out for an English Blitz by the University. I've never seen so many students! Something we'll start doing here in Lublin for sure. We went back home for studies, can never go a day without studies. The morning of football wrecked us though, as we all at some point had one of those 30 minute long 'prayers' haha. We had a finding activity with Elders White and Sommerfeldt, Quakenbush and Mulder on Nowy Świat, it's all nicely decorated with Christmas lights and it was full of people.

Thursday, Day 2 in Warsaw and the day of zone conference. We left the apartment around 9:30, Elder Quakenbush and I took the car, as we had to give Sisters Dekker and Andersen a lift to the chapel, they both have broken feet, or something like that. It felt so strange being in a car. I miss driving and having that freedom you know. We had a few assignments to make sure it ran smoothly, but that was it for us. Elder Dooley conducted the meeting. Elder Paul V. Johnson presided at the meeting, and of course, we had President and Sister Turek there with us. The theme of the conference was missionary work. We studied 3 Nephi 11, and a few chapters in Alma, no surprises there. It was a solid conference, followed by a huge Thanksgiving, KFC style lunch. 40 chicken breasts, 80 wings, a whole load of mashed potato, gravy, stuffing, and cakes. After Zone training we headed out as a force of missionaries to the centre of the city where we had a finding activity.

That night we had 6 lads at the APs place. Bebel and Garrison joined us for the evening as we had MLC the next day at 9am. We got up to all sorts of responsible and safe things.

Friday was MLC. Present were all the Leaders in the mission, President and Sister Turek, Elder and Sister Johnson. We were also joined by some representatives from 'Family Search', members of the church, from Germany, who spoke to us and taught us about family history. The reason being is that there's going to be a huge push with family history work being part of the missionary work here. There are also going to be new courses introduced to the mission and changes to the way we do English. It's certainly inspired and is going to change the mission.

Sunday was a good day. I had to conduct the meeting at church, which took me back a few transfers to Poznań when I had Sundays on my mind 100% of the time. That experience shows me how much work and effort and love all the Bishops and Branch Presidents put into their service.

Tracting nights. Human interaction is rare, we speak to a phone most of the time

Zone Conference

Elder White - 6'8"

I'm there at the back somewhere

Mieliśmy wymianę z asystentami - we took the car out for a spin

Amazing view of Warsaw from Ewa's apartment

Tuesday, 25 October 2016

I like this place, a lot!

This week was transfers - I'm staying in Lublin and that makes me happy. I like this place, a lot! My new companion is the slightly crazy and loving Elder Dooley. He's joined me in the reign of ZL of the Warsaw Zone so it'll be a good time.

On Tuesday President Turek joined us in Lublin for our District Meeting and he also spoke with us all individually. The main reason was to let Elder Lange know of his new assignment. Elder Lange along with Elder Cowley will be serving in a new area in a city that sits on the border of Poland and Germany. Elder Lange is happy as this means he gets to speak his native language, which will only be an asset to the work in this mission. We were all so happy for him when he told us on Tuesday.

On Wednesday we went to Świdnik and did some service again at Beata's house. More of the same stuff, heading down the woods and collecting trees. there was a new adventure this time in that we broke their drain pipe dragging these trees and branches past their house, so we had to fix it. We went to the shop round the corner to buy the parts needed, borrowed some ladders from the neighbour and then went to work. Huffman and I took on the job but had no idea what we were doing, we managed to get it fixed though. We were tightening the bolts and screws to hold the pipe in place and the pliers slipped and lost grip and I nearly lost my finger, just 2 small holes in my finger was the result. I kind of yelped like a little dog.

On Thursday we said goodbye to Elder Lange.

Friday we had a day in the wind, rain and cold finding less active members and former investigators. We also spent 1 hour on a bus getting from one side of the city to the other. The traffic here is terrible at the moment. Friday evening we were invited round to our friend Marek's house. He is a priest at a big local church in Lublin. He's one of the nicest guys I've met. He fed us cake and gave us hot water to drink, we chatted and shared some Mormon messages and conference talks with him and we watched some of the videos he showed us. It was a nice evening.

Sunday we had church and Elder Huffman, Myself and Elder Kapela had to give talks, although we didn't find out till 7pm Saturday night. In the morning at 10am President Belo phoned me and asked me if I could speak on something else instead of what I had prepared for. I said yes and had to talk about the restoration, he asked me to 'teach' a restoration for my talk as I would on a daily basis, we don't teach a full restoration much to people here, so it was the first time for a while I ran through a full restoration. It was in Polish, I had no notes, I just went for it and it worked out just fine. I didn't struggle with getting my words out or sharing testimony, the words just came out, they made sense. A real moment I was able to see the Gift of Tongues working.

Yesterday, after studies, we contacted for a while and then I arranged for us to go out for lunch with a friend of ours called Magdalena. She's cool and took us to this fancy restaurant where I bought some over-priced soup. She gave us an invitation to a huge circus show, so we'll be going there this saturday. After that we had another appointment with a girl named Małgorzata, she brought her friend with her and we chilled in KUL (look 'KUL' up on the internet) and had a laugh and chatted about religion. They're interested in coming to our sunday service in exchange for us going with them to theirs. Her friend Michał was a nice guy. So that was the day - then we picked Elder Dooley up.