So this week has been a cold one, so so cold!

So this week has been a cold one, so so cold! No matter how well I dressed myself to face the cold, my fingers and toes after a few minutes were freezing.

It's been a busy week in terms of doing random office jobs and chasing around after everyone making sure everyone is happy. 

On the Wednesday after MLC, which I only had to go to this time to drop off packages, we had a huge family history finding activity in the centre of Warsaw with a bunch of missionaries. We had banners and whiteboards and a tent..it's a shame that it was so cold and windy, we tried our best to make the most of it. English was on Wednesday also. It was a warm welcome from both the students and from the heat of the chapel. The students apparently were excited for my arrival, guess being the only English missionary in the mission has some perks. 

Thursday started early with us driving over to the test centre for Elder Einfeldt to take a theory driving test, which he failed by 1 point. It was so funny as he called it and said he would be ticked if he got 67, he came out with the face of a man who just got 67 haha. After that we headed over to Centrum where we met all the missionaries coming in for legal work. We went and got some food and then headed over to the Urząd to help get them legal. It was another incredibly cold day, the wind was sometimes unbearable, it honestly felt as though someone was nibbling on the end of my fingers and toes. I learnt how to say that 'we smashed someone', in like a game of football or something..'Rozwaliliśmy ich'. 

Saturday morning was my favourite morning of my mission so far. Even though it was -17 degrees, we went and played football with some members and other missionaries, it was epic! We played on a turf pitch behind the chapel which was turned into an ice rink of sorts due to the snow, a few inches of solid ice and snow on top of the turf which made the game even more interesting. I went in shorts, because why not right..? I took pants with me but didn't change into them until I decided my legs were red and cold enough. I played in goal too as I couldn't be bothered running around. I took a 45 min shower when I got home, just so I was sufficiently warm enough. 

From exchanges with Quakenbush and Mulder last transfer, I picked up a new meal idea which is just fried Kielbasa and potatoes, but it's so good and does the job. 

Fast Sunday came quickly and seemed to last forever.  My main goal for the day was to not think about food. It was a decent testimony meeting, kind of nice there being no pressure for the missionaries to fill the time. We went out after church to a finding activity, again in the cold, it was so bad!  We bailed early and went home to break our fast, which wasn't as good as it sounds as I didn't have much food in. 

The traffic in Warsaw is the worst I've experienced. It's so dumb.

We have Zone training tomorrow. so should be good seeing Alvarez and Huffman again. 

Have a good week. Take it easy.

Warsaw Old Town

Pizza from De Grasso's after a long cold day 

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

Cześć wam.

Cześć wam. Hope all is well. Everything is good here..we've had an eventful week here in the small city of Lublin. 

We'll start with Tuesday.  We had a solid district meeting, full of the spirit and scripture reading. We read stories from the Book of Mormon and discussed what we can learn about obedience from the verses we read. Obviously, we read about the strippling warriors and how they carried out every order with exact obedience, they didn't fear as they knew they would be spared through their faith and obedience. That's how we've got to be!   We had a short finding activity afterwards in which we didn't see any success, we tried though which is what matters. That day Elder Kapela and I had a train to Warsaw as we had an exchange that week with the Assistants, Elders Quakenbush and Cowley. Solid comfy train ride. We got a text to tell us that they couldn't get us from the train station so we had some directions to follow.  We didn't have much time to get there to be in for 9 but that wasn't a problem. We stopped for cheeseburgers which is a must.  Then we saw Elders McMaster, Connelley, Byrd and Blackwell in the dworzec grabbing a snack. Elders Byrd and Blackwell are new in the country.  Elder Blackwell says.."you sound like an Ozzy. where you from?"..not for the first time has someone asked me if I'm Australian..must just be my Americanised English! We managed to get to the apartment though off Elder Cowley's directions - kind of a miracle really. Chatted for a bit and chilled out.  I love being around other missionaries, especially when you're good friends with them. 

We woke up the next morning and worked out to the sounds of a Warsaw member reading the Księga Mormona. In a way it was motivating. I always eat a 100g packet of rice before working out, Cowley and Quakenbush thought it's a bit strange.  I just tell people 'you don't look as good as me without eating rice at 6am'. We had pancakes made by Elder Quakenbush and then we hit the studies. Elder Cowley and I had a lesson straight after with some cool guys from Ukraine,talked about prayer and the sabbath day. We went home for lunch and had some chicken curry and then had a finding activity at what is known to missionaries as the fish bowl. This place is by a park in centrum, and is an entrance to 3 different underground metro lines.  So many people pass through there so it's a good place to hand things out and talk.  It's kind of round shapes which is why it goes by 'fish bowl'. Both Warsaw districts and us were there so there was a decent number of us.I spent most of the finding activity with Elder White, he's a new trainee.  I got to know him and we had a good chat about things, he's a funny guy. The evening was cool, we went for Kebabs in centrum with a less active Member.  It was a beautiful evening, perfect weather, good vibes. 

Thursday we travelled home, we got home safely with no train problems this time. We didn't have long before we started the next exchange with the Elders here in Lublin. We went home, we had lunch.  I worked out and cleaned, and then we packed new clothes and headed over to the other Elders place. I was so buzzing to be having another exchange. That evening we had a finding activity and just chilled and chatted, spoke about the exchange and what we wanted to achieve. I worked with Elder Huffmann on Friday and we had a blast. We got on a bus and went out pretty far to visit a former investigator.  He lived on a nice plot of land in the countryside in the fields. Polish countryside is so beautiful, just rows of fields and farms, cherry trees and cornfields, they grow just about everything here. We had to sprint back to the bus stop which was a while away as the buses weren't too often and we had other plans. We just about made it though. We went to visit a less active member who lives in a bit of a sketchy part of town. Of course, we had a fun experience which involved a really drunk lady. We got off the bus to see here a lady saying 'proszę pana, proszę pana'..I turned around and saw a lady hanging on to the bus stop with all her strength, now I thought she was blind as she was kind of moving her head around and her eyes were all over the place, turns out she was just hammered but,  too late I'd already gone to see what was up. She grabbed on to me and could barely stand so we walked her a few feet, she wanted us to walk her home but we had no idea where she lived. We told her to sit on the grass but she wouldn't, so we kind of let go of her and helped her slowly fall to the ground. We called her husband and he came for her.  We just looked at each other afterwards in unbelief. Strange experience. The less active person wasn't home so we went back to the chapel for a bit. the best bit of the day happened at the end of the day.  We were walking down the street, it had been a long day, heads down and then all of a sudden, I just heard a bang, Elder Huffman had planted his face into a street sign haha!  It was hilarious and cracked me up so much - we were in stitches. He bruised his nose too. I'll remember that story, hopefully forever. 

On Sunday we didn't have church, there were no church services across Poland as the Temple in Germany was being re-dedicated.  Every current missionary and those returned missionaries will know how long Sunday was without a church service. Just think of having to find an extra 4 hours of activities to fill the day. 

We tracted all night and had no success, just people shouting at us from their windows, we had a guy come down from whatever floor he lived on in this block just to tell us we're not welcome and attempt to throw us off the door step.  Just a taste of what Alma and Amulek and the Sons of Mosiah experienced.  We have a long way to go.

Take care, do some good and I'll speak to you all next week! 

Warsaw

22nd August 2016

Hello,  so a week has been and gone already out here in Lublin! It's crazy how fast the time goes by.  We've been up to some good stuff here. I think I've settled in pretty well and am just about getting my bearings with the place. That's the thing I least look forward to with moving cities, having to figure out how to get around. Being Zone Leader means that I'll have the opportunity to have exchanges with each of the district leaders and his comp in the zone..so that's Łódź, Warszawa 1, Warszawa 2 and Lublin. Looking forward to having them come here and work with some different Elders. I'm lucky to have a Polish companion. We try to speak Polish at least half the time. He has me doing all the calling too which is good practice. 

Tuesday night we had a finding activity on the deptak here in town. It has a different feel to the deptak in Poznań, although there are more students and young people out.  I had a good experience  with a lad from Belarus. He spoke really good Polish, I almost didn't believe him when he told me he was from Belarus. We had a chat for a while, I got his number and told him we'd be in contact. 

Every day at the start of comp study we have a call session, just so we can confirm meetings and also try and set other meeting up. It's early so most of the phone calls are interesting, sometimes the words just don't come out. Wednesday we had English class, like probably most of the cities here, we don't have a huge turnout but that's something I want to change here. We're going to hit English contacting hard, that's how you meet people and make friends. I also had my own stamp made, with my name and number, it's a pretty cool thing to carry around with you.

Thursday I had an early trip to Warsaw. My train left Lublin at 6:50.  I got up at 5am which gave me plenty of time.  The train was terrible, just so hot and there were 6 people in the carriage I was in. I finally got to Warsaw and was met by Elders Cowley and Quackenbush, we got KFC for breakfast. Also there's a shop in the mall there that sells foreign foods..THEY HAD IRN BRU! 5zł well spent, I also had Elder Quackenbush buy a can, that first sip was heaven. MLC was good, all the leaders from the mission in a room discussing what the mission needs. It was cool as through discussion we determined ourselves what we would be teaching at zone training. President and Sister Turek are wonderful teachers and examples.  They were there with their children too which shows they're just a normal family who live and love the gospel. We realised after MLC that we were all late for our trains as the clock in the room was an hour behind.  I had a while for my train but those going back to Szczecin and to Katowice had 20 mins. Sister Barney and Gheen admitted defeat and so had to get new tickets.  Elders Garrison and Fetzer were determined not to miss their train so we hopped in presidents car and he drove us to the dworzec where we had a final sprint to the platform before it set off - classic missionary style. I had to go with them as I had nobody to stay with at the chapel. So when they got on the train I had an hour by myself at the station before my train left. It felt weird not to have someone by me but I didn't mind it.  It's so strange for any normal person to think..'how can it be strange being alone', honestly for a missionary you feel lost haha!  Eventually, Sister Barney and Gheen arrived at the station so i just chilled with them for a bit until my train left. I had a good laugh with Barney as usual.

Nothing much went down on Friday.  We had a few lessons and went to the mother of a members house, she's a sweet little old lady that loves the missionaries. We had a chat with her and she showed us all her photo albums from years ago and family trips and things. 

Saturday we had a pretty slow day.  Most of it was spent in the chapel as Elder Kapela had to do his branch stuff. I studied and played the piano whilst he did that. It's nice just to have some time outside of studies to sit and read the scriptures, even better in Polish. We had a lesson planned with someone who turned up late, which was unfortunate as that meant we couldn't teach, we had English which he stayed for and then had sports afterwards. For English we had some story making fun, we each had to add 4 words on to keep the story going, some strange things came out. I have a picture of the story that I'll send. Sports was alright.  It went from 6.30 to the end of the night. There were a few young lads playing football there and we had those from English come with us. We don't have a real football here which is a nightmare.  I'll have to buy one soon. We threw the American football around for a bit which is actually pretty fun.  I got the hang of it too, maybe I'll change sports. 

Sunday was solid, we had a good turnout. I had the chance to introduce myself and share testimony. I also was in charge of the music which was a flop. The piano has hymns loaded into it but it's a pain trying to get them to play. Also, I had to conduct to which I don't know how to do, so i just did 4/4 and made it fit the hymn haha. The branch here is bigger which is nice, we have members to work with and members to do things on sunday which always helps. 

Today we're going to Majdanek, a concentration camp from the war.  It's one of the biggest in Poland and is mostly still in tact. Should be a good cultural day.  I'm looking forward to it as we did nothing but the mall and chill in Poznań.

Introducing Elder Huffman

Everybody say hello to Starszy Kapela

Huge pomnik at the entrance to Majdanek concentration camp

Long straight barbed wire fences at Majdanek