What are you grateful for?

Hello Mum and Dad..and everyone else reading this. We've had a week worth sharing with everyone, and we're looking forward to an even better week with our upcoming conference with Elder Sabin. Also it will be held in Wroclaw, another city that can be added to the list of places I've been.

Monday I said my farewells to Elder Alvarez. We spent the day in Orgodzieniec, visiting the castle and hanging out in the surrounding village. One of the best pdays I've had, the weather was nice and it was so relaxing. As nice as Krakow is, the air is terrible, so sometimes it's nice to get out of the city and walk around the Polish countryside. The bus ride home was fun..10 missionaries plus Alex and our friend Ola, singing to whatever came on the radio. 

On Wednesday we took some inspiration from my good friend Elder Barlow and the Bydgoszcz district for our finding activity in town. We had a strength competition with the stick pulling game from back in the day. The picture will explain a little better for those who don't know what it looks like. Elder McMaster was down for it, but his pants ripped early on in the day so he was out. That just left me to be our strong man as i beat Elders Groseclose and Litster. It took a while for people to come over and accept the challenge, but the domino effect soon came into play and people were flooding in. People even wanted to take on their friends which was funny to see, we had some solid rivalries going. Over the course of the 2 hours I was unbeaten, everyone who challenged had fallen by the strength of Ashworth in his shirt and tie. 💪 

That night on the way home, we caught a bus just one stop up the road because we're lazy and don't want to walk, just so happened that on our bus..completely lost and going the wrong way was a couple from Sweden who rushed up to us and said hello, introducing themselves and telling us they're members of the church. We couldn't believe how random it was. Anyway they offered to take us out for lunch the next day. We met them at the mall at 12 and we had some food with them. The mental thing about meeting this couple was finding out where the Brother and their son served missions. One served in Manchester, England..the other in Arizona! what are the chances of that! 

On Friday the Browns took us out for food. We ate at this cool restaurant in the Kazimerza district (old Jewish quarter). We had fish and chips, not proper stuff though, but it was decent, also our friend and investigator came with us and he had a solid time with us! Also that day we visited a mental hospital and made friends with a lady on the tram with a guinee pig. I won't give the specific details, if you want to hear the stories, email me 😁.

Sunday we had a rather quiet day at church, I gave a talk on Testimonies, why we share them and the power contained within. Then we had a 'brobiad' at the other elder's place after church before heading out on to the streets for a night of asking people 'what are you grateful for?'. We had it written on a whiteboard and then invited people to come up and write on it. We had all sorts of answers, from your basic ones like family and health, to unicorns under my bed, someone drew a whale. Then we met a fella who is a prophet for his church 'The church of the flying spaghetti monster'. This is a legit thing, I'm not joking!

We have a day of ice cream and bike riding planned so I'll leave you all. 

Have a solid week

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.

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?

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.