Kraków keeps getting better and better

I say that the Krak keeps getting better and better, mainly because it's hot and the sun is out. It's so easy to have fun here. We've been up to a load of random stuff this week. Here we go.

Monday evening after Pday was over it was our turn to put on an activity for Family Home Evening. I decided that it would be good for those that come to memorise a scripture. The scripture I chose was just your classic 1Nephi 3:7..Wtedy Ja Nefi, Powiedziałem memu Ojcu: Pójdę i Uczynię co Pan nakazał, bo wiem że gdy Pan daje ludziom przykazania, umożliwia im wykonanie tego co nakazuje. I don't know it in English but I have it in Polish. It's a good scripture to have on your mind, knowing that God will always provide for us a way to do something, if we have faith that he will of course. 

Tuesday we had a good district meeting. We had random bursts of laughter throughout, not too sure why, but it happens you know. We were asked to prepare a 5 min part each talking about how we can each become a better and more powerful missionary. I was studying in Nephi about the vision of Lehi about the Tree of Life. In that chapter, we learn a lot about the plan of God and our path to happiness. It's written that Lehi wandered in a dark wilderness for hours until he decided to pray, when he prayed things slowly started to become known unto him and he started to see and understand the mysteries of God. This principle can be applied in our lives too and is what I shared with the Elders during district meeting. If we ever feel as though we're in darkness, we can pray and lightness will fill our lives, that which is good for us is full of light. Prayer is a gift from God that is an invaluabe source of direction and council. We had our English class in the evening. To Elder Hadfield's disgust, I taught them some good 'British' English. They love it but they don't understand a word I'm saying. At one point in the lesson, I said 'neither this nor that', the look on their faces....they asked me to pronounce it properly..which I was..it wasn't until I said it in Polish that they understood.

Wednesday in the morning we did some service. Kind of similar to what we did in Poznan. We went to this old people's home and helped out in the garden. We had to make the land flat and get rid of all the huge stones. We got handed our shovels and rakes and other tools and went to work. The lads that had been hired to do the work on the garden asked me to help them out, they thought I was the only one who understood Polish. There was a fella down a hole who filled up my wheelbarrow with sand and mud and whatever else he dug up, then I just dumped it in random spots all over the garden..just spent a few hours doing that which was hard work, I thought I was fitter than I am!

Thursday we had another English class, the class was so hyped! So we played this game involving questions, and there was a bunch of rules that I won't explain..pretty much everyone wrote 3 questions, 3 random questions which were thrown into a basket and then each person, in turn, would pick a question and depending on what number card you picked from a deck determined what you did with that question. I started out, it so happened that I picked a card that allowed me to make up my own question and ask whoever I wanted..so me being me I asked Elder Hadfield what happened to his field. The last question asked was by a new lad that came to the class, he gets up and says 'ok seen as you started with a pun it's my turn, he singled me out and looked straight at me saying..how much is your ash worth?' the class went wild and I'll give it to him, I've not heard that one 1000 times. I laughed though and shook his hand haha.

On Saturday Maciek, my mate from Warsaw came to Kraków for the weekend and asked if we could meet up. We spent a few hours together which was quality. He's a good lad. 

Sunday I taught the Priesthood lesson at church. It was a good lesson about being converted to the Lord, and the characteristics of these people. I like teaching here, for some reason it feels different than it has in the other cities that I've served in. Hadfield skyped home for Mother's Day so I got to meet his family. It's nice meeting the families of the people you serve around.

That's pretty much what we did this week. I wish you all a solid week, I hope you enjoyed reading this weeks post because it took me ages to type.😉

Do kiedyś

Week 70 something.

It's been a long time since last Monday, a whole 10 days or something like that. Here's what we've been up to.

After emailing and all that last Monday we went out for some Kebab which didn't really live up to the hype, it just didn't taste that good, so we went round to the local Biedronka for some chocolate. We stood at the side of the road for about 20 mins deciding what to do. We had the squad together, Me, Adriano, Alvarez, Musgrave, Beem and Stahl. We decided to go and find a place for bowling, we thought there'd be a bowling place at Galeria Mokotów but when we got there it turned out there wasn't, classic! So we just chilled at the mall. Hit up the usual shops like Zara and H&M, had a look at all the new gadgets and tech at Saturn, then we came across a Hollister which was pretty funny so of course we went inside. You could actually see where you were going for once, which was pretty unusual. I remember as a young teen trying to pick out a new shirt for the next Huddersfield Stake youth dance, but not being able to tell if the shirt was black or white because it was so dark. We decided to bounce from the mall and go and bounce on some outdoor trampolines by our place. There's a really posh shopping mall and then a park and some trampolines. Sister Beem was jumping away, making a video blog, Adriano took off his shoes for some reason and then Sister Stahl ran straight onto her trampoline which was covered in water, it was like jumping into a pond haha, her feet got soaked. 

Tuesday was a pretty boring day. We had our district meeting a bit later on in the day as we had to drive our cars over to be serviced again and valued at the Hyundai garage which was about an hours drive from our apartment. On the way home from the garage we went the long way home which took us through Praga. we stopped at a red light and out of the corner of my eye I could see this huge brown bear just chilling there, I didn't realise we were right by the zoo. For district meeting I decided it would be good for us to learn from President Eyring and Elder Holland, so we watched that new Face to Face thing they did at the Church history site in Palmyra. It was nice to listen to two Apostles just talk in an environment other than General Conference, much more laid back and they were able just to talk and answer questions. A lot was based on what we can learn from the First Vision, When God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith in the grove, what we can learn about scripture study and prayer. 

On Thursday we taught the Intermediate class which was cool, we talked about heroes and what a hero is, we asked the question 'what word comes to mind when you hear the word hero?', we got a lot of solid answers until Adriano throws out 'SPANDEX', there's always one. 

On Saturday we had a huge Sports Saturday, about 20 people showed up so we had to split into 3 teams. The last game we just had everyone playing which turned into a free for all. The turf was pretty slippy too, it was kind of like playing on ice, I fell over so many times and got burns and bruises all over my hands and legs, it was all worth it though. We went home and chilled and studied before heading over to Nowy Świat to teach the advanced class which again was mint! We had a quality game of telephone that got pretty weird in some points, the sentences got so messed up which always made it funny for the last person. 

Saturday night at 17 we had a big Warsaw District dinner as this weekend it was our District Conference weekend. It was good to see some of the members from Lublin again. The talks during the evening session were really good too. President gave a really good and simple talk, again on repentance and prayer. Sunday we had a huge turnout, pretty much all the members from Lublin were there, plus all the missionaries from the other branches too, it was a quality environment and I was able to chat and catch up with old friends. I had a mint opportunity and blessing of ordaining two members of the Lublin branch to the Office of Elder in the Melchizedek Priesthood, with authority from President Turek.  Something I'll remember for a long time, in those situations you can't but help feel that Heavenly Father is helping you through the Spirit, as you speak words you didn't even think you could and give council and guidance through that Priesthood blessing. 

Sunday night as it got really late after a dinner at our place with Alvarez and Musgrave, we decided to have a sleepover. Nights like that are quality, I just enjoy good company and laughs, nothing beats it really, we made some solid food too. 

Yesterday night we had the long anticipated English Class at a university. A friend of the sisters hooked us up with classrooms and about 100 interested students to teach. So much good is going to happen because of this. We walked in and we even had time to stand and talk to them all in this huge auditorium before splitting off into different classes. We met so many young students. There was a cool guy from Zimbabwe that came which was sweet. It's going to be a weekly thing now and loads of people are interested in both English and who we are as missionaries.  We met so many solid people and they're all our age too. I can't wait for next Tuesday! 

I'm happy and well. Still trying to do my bit of good each day. Our Branch Missionary Leader has a 'ponderizer', something for us to think about through the week. This time round it's D&C 82:10, which is funny as it happens to be my Dad's favourite scripture. If you've ever listened to him give a talk, you've 100% heard him share it.

We went to the Chopin museum on Friday night with a friend of the Elders.  It was a pretty sweet place.

Looking way back to the days when i was 14. Hollister eventually made it to Poland.

We went on the trampolines by our apartment. Beem said 'high school musical it on 3'. Nailed it! 

Had a lads night on Sunday at our place in preparation for zone training 

Some Pimped out Clubmans

With my favourite Asian person in the world, MICHAEL! He was in town for District Conference 

So Sister Beem decided to draw me. She thought she got it pretty accurate. 'feed me carrots' is all you have to say in order to make her laugh. 

Realised that i've not sent a picture home of two of us yet. Here's Elder Adriano

Life is GOOD!

So I guess the big news from the week is that we have an investigator with a baptismal date for the 7th January 😊😊

He's an 18-year-old lad called Bartek.  He used to meet the missionaries about 6 months ago when Elder Dooley was being trained here.  He contacted us and asked us if we could meet again.  He wants to meet so he can work on his English but he has an interest in the church and its teachings.  He wants to find God and 'meet him' as he says.  We've taught him some things and then last lesson we just asked him straight up if he wants to be baptised.  We promised him that he may not understand now why it's important but that we'll teach him and help him understand.  So yeah that's Bartek. We're meeting him again tomorrow.

I had to give another talk at church yesterday and do the translation too.  I was told on Friday that I was speaking but Saturday was busy so I prepared during studies before church.  It was just about personal prayer.  I talked about 3 principles of prayer, making them meaningful, praying for others and I can't remember the last one.  I'm far from fully conversant but I can speak and understand good now - but not in any topic.  We had dinner at the Gladuns house on Friday night, it was good and we spoke about the economy of England and about Trump and all that, I could understand it all you know but it's hard to keep up in words with the conversation.

We went shopping this morning at 6a.m.  There's a huge Tesco not too far from here.  We have exchanges In Warsaw with the AP's tomorrow evening to Thursday.  I've already organised an early morning game of footy on wednesday.  There's going to be 10 of us elders there.  On Thursday we have a big zone conference with Elder Johnson of the area presidency coming to visit.  Then on Friday we have the leadership meeting so I'm not even going to be in Lublin barely this week.

I'm going to get a haircut and maybe buy some new things today.  We're also going to go out for lunch.  Love you all.  I'm doing well.  I'm healthy and I'm enjoying myself.  I'm confident with my Polish now which takes so much pressure off.  Life is GOOD!

Have a good week.

The Cultural Centre in Lublin with the Polish flag.

-2 degrees!

We woke up to snow on Wednesday this week.

Polish Independence Day 11.11.16