Last week in Warsaw..Kraków here I go

I couldn't have asked for a better last week to finish off the transfer and my time in Warsaw. I'll miss being around the likes of Alvarez, Beem and Bebel but I'm looking forward to spending summer in Kraków. You can't not find history in Poland, but Kraków is pouring with it. I was in Kraków a long time ago, maybe even 6 years ago on a school trip. I remember the teachers gave us a help sheet with phrases and words on it..we all thought it was hilarious that the word for yes is 'tak'. I remember we would walk around saying that non-stop. I never thought I would be here in the future with a knowledge of this language, it's quite incredible to think about really. The word 'tak' came in handy my first few weeks in the country haha.

Tuesday we had our English class down at the university which was boss. Adriano and I were late as we had to get through the Warsaw traffic, something I won't miss at all. We got there and joined in with the joint advanced/intermediate class that the sisters were doing. Sister Beem looked at me and said 'ok Ashworth, you have the question of the day for us', I had to think of something on the spot, 'I ended up asking what your dream sandwich would be', creative I know. Anyway, we had some terrible answers, people just have weird desires when it comes to their favourite sandwich, black bread, fish, and onion on one, peanuts and peanut butter on another..one guy answered and said 'I've never had a dream about a sandwich', he had us all in hysterics, hilarious. After the class we chilled for some time chatting with the students and took pictures, we also arranged to go out for food with them all on saturday.

Wednesay night we went to theatre to see a show about an old rich lady that comes back to a small town and takes over. We were invited by a friend of ours who works there as a costume designer. It was a legit show, so many old people, we turned up in our suits and looked the part. Cool experience. 

Thursday I spent most of the day with Elder Alvarez as Elder Musgrave was being run through things in the office. We went to tesco to buy a new chair for his apartment. Ended up buying an outside garden chair you'd find around a little table, it was cheap and does its job. We had our English class in the evening that we have every Wednesday and Thursday at 18, Saturday at 14, ul Nowy Świat 38/1. We didn't teach though as we hadn't eaten all day and someone brought a long board that we messed about on for a bit. Alvarez and I went for Kebabs in the center before heading back for a sweet meeting with Maczek.

On saturday we had sports in the morning. The night before we had 6 elders at our place. We were making the most of the remaining time we had together before transfers. Sport was lit! I smashed in a few more goals past Einfeldt, a half volley on the left foot and a sweet edge of the box strike in to the top corner. It was the last time I would see some of the brothers too so we stopped behind for a bit afterwards chatting and kicking the ball about. We did some service at a members house. Painting and cleaning and sanding, all the tools came out. There were about 9 missionaries there, so a full house, and even a few members came which was nice to see. From there we quickly got ourselves home to change for the chill night with all our friends. We ate at Toto, there was about 22 of us and we filled the whole back part of the restaurant. We went to the park close by afterwards and took some pictures and said goodbyes to some of them we wouldn't see again after transfers. 

Sunday we just had church, a small turnout because of the long weekend but it was nice. After church we had a linger longer, got to take some pictures with members and chat with them. The food was good too, someone prepared a nice pasta tuna salad which I had a few bowls of. Sunday night Alvarez and I ended up sleeping at the assistants place to make the logistics easier in the morning. We didn't get there till late as I had to pack all my stuff up which took a while, then we had to grab the big transporter and find parking down at their place. I brought all the food I had and started cooking as I hadn't eaten since the tuna pasta thing. I just fried a huge 600g polish sausage and ate it with rice. Another good night chatting and having a laugh with some good mates, time that as you know I value a lot. I didn't leave Warsaw till a bit later on in the day so that I could see the sisters from my MTC group who were finishing their missions and going home.  We went out for some food and it was nice to see them all together for the first time in 18 months.

Elder Hadfield is my new comp.  He's from Orem in Utah.  He's in his 3rd transfer and I'm his 2nd companion.  He's been in Kraków for 4 months.  Our apartment isn't too far away from the train station.  Just a 5 minute tram ride and a bit of a walk.  It's about 4 tram stops from the old town too, we drove past it today on the way to the library.  It has a completely different feeling to Warsaw being here.  Church is held in a big apartment rented by the church somewhere not far from the other Elders place.  

Warsaw gave me a good run, I did a lot, saw a lot, laughed a lot, scored a lot of goals, taught a lot..lets hope Kraków brings the same!

Me and Elder Hadfield

Filip Borowski. This man is a legend. He recorded himself reading the entire Book of Mormon for people to listen to. It has Chopin playing in the background too.

A Good Week in Warsaw

Serving in Warsaw this week has been good, now that it's warming up and we have more and more friends each week,  it makes activities we do and Pdays even better. 

Tuesday we had our University English class which turned out better than the turn out, ahh see what I did there..? We had one lad show up to our advanced class, our mate Paul, but then I got drafted to teach the Beginner class with Alvarez and Musgrave. The students wanted a proper English accent as they had no idea what Alvarez and Musgrave were saying half the time haha. We did the Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich challenge, took me back about a year to when Myself and Alvarez did this for an English class in Poznań. In a nut shell, I pretend to be a robot and do anything the class tells me to do, they have to guide me in making a sandwich, sometimes it gets really wild and the jam goes everywhere, this time it wasn't too bad, I did end up putting my hand in the jam jar though which was pretty gross haha, the reaction of the class was hilarious! It ended with me having to feed the sandwich to Alvarez.

Other things that happened:- I printed some 900 fliers for an open house we had at our chapel on Saturday. It looked like we were advertising for a pool party by the look of the flier, I went for that look on purpose as I thought people might then show up. On the streets we were inviting people to our 'Mormon party', we got all 900 out in about an hour, with the help of all the missionaries who were down for MLC of course. Got to spend some time with Elder Liechty too which is always a pleasure. 

Been at the Legal offices this week two times, twice more than needed, we got everything done though and we got to hang out with Elders Wójcik and Mandla for the day. Mandla is the lad from Australia, so we connect on the basis that we're not American, it would be funny serving with him and our slang would come out more and nobody would be able to understand us haha. 

The open house on Saturday wasn't as successful as we would have hoped, most of it came down to the lack of preparation and planning that we put in, but we just didn't have much support and it wasn't announced in church so nobody really knew about it. We managed to get a few people inside but not enough. 

We're having another one 20th May, so get the word out! Ul. Wolska 142, 20th May, open house! 

Miracles can happen and will happen as long as we have faith and do everything we can to do good.

So this week has really been a hit and miss week, bit of a blur too, the weeks all seem to be connected as if it's just a long line of days that don't end. We've just been really busy recently and not busy with things that we should be busy with..just other things come up. 

We had a new fridge delivered this week, the first delivery day we missed as we were teaching our English class which meant we had to call and arrange a new day and time, the thing was I messed things up with the delivery time between 11-16, luckily it came pretty early on..but a 5 hour estimated delivery time is pretty pants..how are you supposed to plan the day with things like that? 

We've also had a new senior couple in, so we've had to run around and do things to make sure they had a comfortable first week, we had them down at the legal offices for some meetings on Monday and we've spent a lot of time in the office with them running them through how things go down in the office and what to do and things...the goal is to have them trained and independent by the end of the transfer or as soon as..just so we don't have to spend much time or any time at all in the office, hopefully it will be soon so we can get out and spend most of our time working with members and finding people to teach.

We picked up our new car early last week, we were out with Alvarez and Musgrave doing I'm not sure what..but we got a call saying that it was ready and that we could go and collect it. The place was a decent drive away and so we met the Assistants and a member who takes care of this sort of stuff and we drove over. We have a nice brand new Hyundai i20, it's pretty slow and doesn't have a turbo like the Meriva, it's automatic too which is a bummer. But it's brand new which is nice, i've already put almost 400km on it in the first week. on the way home the others left without me and I had no idea where I was and had no GPS or anything so I was going off my instinct, I missed our turn and so we ended up miles away from where we had to be, heading on the road towards Poznan haha. We turned around and eventually made it home, the road was pretty empty too and it was a motorway so I put the car through its first max speed test on the road. 

One night this week we spent with Alvarez and Musgrave again visiting libraries and leaving copies of the Book of Mormon and some fliers for our open house. Just some chill time in the car driving around the city in search of these libraries, it was so fun. I got to see more of the city that I've not seen before and I'm sure I have this city and the roads figured out now so getting around is not a problem. One of the libraries was located slap bang in the middle of old town, I've only walked around old town and the rynek once, which is a bit of a difference compared to Poznan where we were on it every day and night, we practically lived in Old Town. So yeah we had a chill night walking around old town and the Old Town walls and castle and forts and things. The weather was proper nice too. 

On Saturday we had our classic Saturday sports day. It was a special day as I played in my boots that I asked my dad to send me. It was so nice having a firm footing underneath me, not having to worry about falling over or anything. I managed to sprain my ankle though, which is like the 3rd time on my mission I've done that, kind of a pain but I'll get over it, it'll be good in a few days. I woke up Sunday morning and my ankle was spherical because of the swelling. 

We had a meal out one night this week with all the missionaries and a member and a friend of ours from English class. We went to this place in the centre of town that's more quality than quantity. 25zl for this weird burger and 5 potato wedges. This place also sells this raw meat and egg dish that is considered a delicacy, it was legit a piece of uncooked meat the same shape as a small pork pie, weird if you ask me. The night was good fun though, although we did have some troubles with parking and then finding this place thanks to terrible directions given by the others haha. 

I've not finished all the goodies you sent me yet, the Oreo Mint chocolate is so nice though so I'm making it last, all the Americans go crazy when I show them the oreo peanut butter chocolate. 

I called Elder Huffman on Sunday just because I call him almost every day, and he told me that the tiny branch of Szczecin had 36 people in church. Miracles can happen and will happen as long as we have faith and do everything we can to do good. 

Also it's my birthday in 8 days, the big 21st. Weird to think that I turned 20 almost a year ago with Elder Liechty in Poznan! Time really does fly!

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

12 Missionaries in one branch is pretty crazy!

Things that happened this week.

Monday we went to a trampoline park, it was sweet. We had an hour there and went as a district in the transporter driven by Elder Einfeldt. The 4 in the back were all so car sick by the time we got there. We had a good time there, jumping around and attempting back-flips into the foam pit. We also had a few games of knockout basketball, the net was so high but it felt mint getting up there and dunking it. 

Tuesday we had a boring day in the Urząd (legal office), we had a 5-hour wait, so we left after 2 hours of waiting to do some jobs, but timed our trip back perfectly as our number was called as we walked through the door. We picked a number when we got there and got B187, it was on B38, that was a whole lot of people to go before us. I hate that place. 

On Thursday we went to Janek's home for some dinner and to chat and have some time with him. It was a decent 45 min drive out to his house which was nice, we got to see some countryside and more to Warsaw than just the city. 

A few weeks back someone in our English class said that I speak as if I have potatoes in my mouth, maybe I already mentioned that, I guess that's what you get for being from England. 

One night this week I fell asleep in my normal clothes. Elder Einfeldt woke me up as he went to bed and said I probably should get changed, I agreed with him but then instantly fell back asleep. I woke up at 2.30 and changed, and also put my clothes on the drying rack. It was a weird night. 

Elder Alvarez was in town this week on an exchange with Bebel and Musgrave so it was good seeing him. 

MLC was on Wednesday and so we had to make sure that everyone got in fine and that they all had their packages and resources from the office. A bonus of this is that we get free food when we go there, so this time we took a whole pizza. 

Saturday nobody came to play footy in the morning. We got there and started kicking this frozen solid ball about, it hurt so much to kick it. After that we dipped and went to McDonalds. we had vouchers and so I got 4 bacon and egg McMuffin's for pretty cheap. Should probably cut out the McDonalds haha. 

Then came the big day on Sunday. We finally combined and had our first meeting as the Warsaw Branch. So many days spent moving and shifting furniture and supplies and materials from the other chapel to the big chapel on Wolska. It was a good day though. Many new callings, one being President Peterson as the new Branch President. We had a huge turnout, so many new faces to meet and 12 missionaries in one branch is pretty crazy. 

Peace, Elder Ashworth

Manekin again with the District,  I had OREO pancakes they were bomb!

Car ride with the squad.

At Janek's place, he had this huge fireplace and shotgun - made for a good photo.

Sweet Chinese restaurant that we went to #TOTO