It's Easy to Spread Happiness!

I didn't have much time last week to write an update about everything I got up to. I'll write about this week and then go back a week and talk about our visit from Elder Anderson.

This week has been a bit of a pain! The heat has been intense and it wears you down, but we soldiered on and got things done! We had a few meetings fall through as well which is always fun, an hour that you didn't have to spend outside on the streets just got opened up. It really tests your determination and drive and even testimony..always come out feeling positive when you know you've worked hard!

So back to last week and the events of the few days in Warsaw! As soon as we found out that Elder Anderson would be visiting us we were all hyped! I remember calling all the Missionaries I'm close with and talking about how we were going to be able to see each other, that was probably the initial thought of every missionary when they found out it was a mission-wide conference. We were asked to prepare for the meeting, not given any specific topic to study or anything..just told to prepare spiritually. I guess we were given that council for the reason that whatever message was shared by Elder Anderson, whatever he taught us, Whatever council he gave us was as is in every case to be understood and taken in through the Holy Ghost. Our train was late, we had planned to go get food with some of the missionaries that were waiting at the train station but that didn't end up happening. It was a good job I'd bought some snacks from the shop before getting on the train. We arrived at the Church to see every missionary pouring out from the front doors to come and greet us. We were the last bunch to come in. It was so good to see everyone. I ran around like a crazy man hugging everything and anyone. we got a whole squad photo outside before taking our seats in the chapel. Looking around gave me such a huge feeling of unity and strength. When you're one of 4 elders in a city, a whole city, especially one the size of Kraków, it's easy to feel a sense of inadequacy and weakness, but looking around helped me to see that I'm part of a 60 or so man army sharing the gospel in Poland.

After waiting for Elder Anderson and President Turek to arrive we had a solid musical performance from some of the Missionaries, it invited the Spirit 100%. Elder Anderson was accompanied by His wife Sister Anderson and also Elder Sabin of the 70 and his wife. He walked amongst us, teaching us about the importance of Faith in this work. He talked highly of President Turek, which again affirmed to me of his inspired calling, President Turek is a great man, humble and teachable, looks to us for help just as much as we look to him. We were reminded by Elder Sabin of the amount of help we have, from both sides of the Veil, we don't just have our companions, in fact we have Angels on our right and on our left, the families of those people we are teaching, members of our own families, we have the faith of the missionaries and members of Poland pushing us along. Elder Anderson asked us and encouraged everyone to celebrate the success of every baptism across the mission as though it was you who helped teach and baptise. We were taught that we can answer our own prayers..our prayers are always answered, but if we want to receive the answer we have to show God that we want it, we have to get out and work and pray more and do everything we can to answer our won prayer. 

Having Elder Anderson there was a miracle of its own, his visit wasn't planned, it was by promptings of the Spirit and by confirmation of prayer that they scheduled the visit into their busy lives. It wasn't by chance that it happened which made it ever more special. He said that this day would be a historic day, that good things will come, it all depends on our faith though. The presence of Elder Sabin was appreciated as what he had to say and his addition to the teachings of Elder Anderson were just as inspired. He told a story of the first man to break the 4-minute mile, people thought it was impossible, he tried and tried and tried until he eventually did it, now that it was possible, people saw that it was possible they believed that they too could break it. In the next few months, over 100 people broke the 4-minute mile, something that until that point in time was seemingly impossible, a lot about the work of God and faith can be learnt from this story. Elder Anderson then asked us all, if it were possible, to stay for the meeting he was doing for the members and friends of the church. His reasonings being that today is going to be a historic day. That would mean that 60 missionaries would have to be split between 5 apartments and the Mission Home. It all worked out though, even if it did mean I was out till almost midnight driving missionaries around in the transporter to where they were staying for the night, it's certainly a day I won't forgot. So many more things I could write about this day, but I'll end there.

The next day we had to get ourselves back to Krakow, no money as it was the end of the month, no way of buying tickets as the mission cards weren't working, a bit of a nightmare really.  I was up all night too as you could imagine what it was like having 10 elders in one apartment. We managed to get back though, Elder Groseclose came in and saved the day. When we got off the train and was walking home with Elder Hadfield it honestly felt like a dream, everything we got up to all dragged into one day, there's no way it was a whole 24 hours earlier that we were walking down the same road on our way to Warsaw. 

The funniest thing that happened this week has to be the mirrors we found in the mall. We stood in front of them for a good 10 minutes laughing and taking pictures. I was in stitches, people were laughing because I was laughing haha. I love that about laughter, it reminded me of a video I saw on that thing they call the internet nowadays. It was a video of a lady on either the tube in London, or just some form of Public transport, it was set up, but she started laughing and then within a few minutes everyone around her on the tram or bus or whatever was laughing, some crying with laughter, it's such a good video, shows how easy it is to spread happiness, shows the importance of serving with a smile.

Beautiful Poland

This area of Poland is beautiful.  Just the views and freshness is all amazing! 

Ogrodzieniec Castle

Krakow Elders

Poland Warsaw Mission - May 2017 with Elder Anderson

Poland Warsaw Mission - May 2017 with Elder Anderson

Don't stand still, Walk!

Hello people of the World, to all within the sound of my voice. We've had a solid week in the Krak. Kraków is the kind of place where it's easy to get distracted, so many times I just want to stop what I'm doing to go and see something, get some good food, go for ice cream, sometimes I catch myself just staring at things, there's just so much going on. I set a goal to write in my 'journal' every day, I did it 4 days out of the 7 this week which is an improvement.

I'll start with explaining why I chose to title the email this week 'Don't stand still, Walk!' It's come from a few lessons I've learned as we've been out and about on the streets. Finding activities are a daily thing here, and it tends to be the case unless you have a scheduled meeting with someone. The last few finding activities we've done here, we just tend to stand around and let the people walk by and try and stop them, it's good if you want to try and speak to as many as you can but not always the most effective. Each morning when we leave the house we pray that we may be led to those who have been prepared and those willing to listen to us. The question came to mind..how are we supposed to be led if we're just standing around? we won't be unless you have that much faith that people will come to you, but it doesn't work like that unless you're Elder Huffman of course, who has the most faith of anyone I've ever met. We decided this week to walk around as opposed to standing, and lo and behold we've met some quality people, people who are searching or just so open to talking. A man who wants to believe but doesn't know quite how..he is open to inviting us round to his house to visit him and his wife. A Student who claims to be Atheist but then was so open that the message we shared with him softened his heart just enough that he is willing to meet and talk with us further. It's not much, but I've learned a valuable lesson from this that you can apply even to life itself. Standing still and waiting for things to happen, or for people to come will only get you so far. Moving, pressing forward, searching, showing faith in this life on earth is what will bring you the blessings of God. alright, enough of that let's get on to the real stuff that happened this week.

I SPRAINED MY ANKLE AGAIN! I'm so mad. We were running for the tram on our way to play sports in the park on Saturday, I put my foot in a ditch and it felt as though my foot fell off haha. It hurt so bad and I was jumping around shouting all sorts, people in their cars and on the street were probably finding it quite entertaining. So now I have a fat ankle, I should probably be careful and do stuff to make it heal, do the whole RICE thing, but I'm stupid and went and played footy anyway. so that happened. 

We helped out at the hospice place again, picking up more rocks, they got mad at us because we walked all over the ground where new grass was trying to grow and it was wet too so we kind of made a mess, I feel as though we just make life harder for them when we go there but it's good fun. I've had a lot of funny phone calls with Alvarez this week, most of them end up us just talking about Poznań and Warsaw, can't wait to see him on Wednesday when we have the conference. Had a lady shout 'Ja perfect English' after we invited her to our English class, the typical response here in Poland. 

My farmer tan/missionary tan is doing well. I'll send some pictures to show you how ridiculous I look, especially when I put on a normal t-shirt. Also this week we met a proper cool guy from Austria who we chatted with on a park bench for a good 40 minutes. It felt as though I knew him, the conversation was so easy and spoke about all sorts of things and shared our opinions and beliefs. He's a photographer and we talked a lot about pictures and journals and the importance of keeping a record, so I asked him if he would take some pictures of us so he would have a record and a memory of our meeting. He accepted and so for about 20 minutes we walked around old town in Kraków whilst he looked for spots that would capture a good image, one of the more memorable street contacts I've had. With each person you meet you have to find a common ground, something you can connect on, with the photographer we didn't connect on a spiritual level, our views on God and religion were different, but we connected on the basis that we were both human, people, children of God. Even though he doesn't believe that, at the end of the day, what connects us all together is that we're children of a loving Heavenly Father.

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