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

'TRUST PROPHETS'

The week!!

So Monday night was made good as at 'most teatralny' we saw an SLS Mercedes, it was loud and then he set off and bombed it and I love cars so....

I got a message from Marcin saying that he's back in town which is good news. He's the recently baptised member from a few months back. Good to have him back. We did some English contacting on Monday night as our English class has been low these past few weeks..maybe because it's summer break. We checked out the park but there weren't very many people there, it was a perfect day to be in the park too. There was a lad on the deptak playing his cello with a loop machine and he sounded mint - not every day you see someone with a cello on the street. Poznań has a bunch of good street performers.

We helped out Kasia on Wednesday morning at her new place. I love going round to hers to serve and also because she has 'Krowa' her huge dog that we're bros with. We had classic Polish milk bar food for lunch before doing some contacting. We had a sweet English class that we had to teach alone as Elders Bebel and Somerfeldt were in Warsaw. We had both the advanced and beginner classes together and just had some fun by playing games and making fools of ourselves haha, something I enjoy doing when it comes to English, being funny and loud and energetic helps them be more comfortable in class. We taught the plan of salvation in a lesson that day too which was good. When people tell us it makes sense, of course it makes sense, it's Heavenly Father's Plan of happiness. We had an intense religious class after English and we were so tired and were being asked all sorts of questions.  Our Polish was tested but we both got through it. It helped that we had a member there with us in the discussion. That day was so tiring so as soon as I got in, planned, I hit the sack. 

Thursday was your usual service day, we headed over to the hospice nice and early.   We cut some apples for the patients there which they were grateful for, we do the most random stuff there and then we headed to the supermarket to do some shopping for the patients and buy things they put on their shopping list, which is surprisingly harder when it's in Polish. We then had a few hours before we met Marcin at the chapel and had a chat with him for a while, had a catch up and saw how he was doing. We hit the streets afterwards and he joined which was good. 

Friday we had a good service opportunity given to us by the hospice. We went to a house where there lives a lady who within the last year has become very ill, so we hung out with her for a bit before carrying her downstairs in her wheelchair and took her on a walk to the park. Her carer was there with her daughter and the dog came too. We had ice cream and spent an hour chatting and sitting in the sun.  She was thankful for us being there and spending time with her. Hopefully,  it won't be the last time we get to do that. Also that night we had a sports night at the park where we played football and basketball. I popped the football whilst kicking it at a fence but then the miracle of the day for me was that I found a euro football in the bushes that had been left there.  GET IN...it's now sitting in the chapel waiting to be kicked around. 

Saturday we had another sports activity at park Cytadela this time. There was a huge cultural event of the park where we played sport. Spanish, American and Canadians were all there and it was a pretty cool looking event. We started playing frisbee at first but then I whipped the football out, next minute about 9 Spanish lads came over and asked if they could play, of course we said yes and we had a big game of footy on the park.  Of course, they beat us - I had 2 Americans and a Canadian on my team.  I showed them how to play the English way though and scored a few goals. They were good lads I just wish the people here were that enthusiastic about playing football and as open. We spent the evening out with Maciej, he's a member here who's not too much older than us.  We went out to dinner and had sushi which was super good. 

Me and my Spanish footy pals.

This is Krowa, the Airedale Terrier

Then came church, just your standard Sabbath day here. We had 13 at church though which was good to see. It makes the day better when the members come. I gave a talk which went ok and then Elder Bebel gave a good talk too about patience.

I got a really cool message from Malgosia this morning, our investigator.  We had a meeting with her last night and talked about prophets and then extended her a baptismal date which she wanted to talk further about on Wednesday but we asked her to pray about prophets and baptism and she said this morning she was riding her bike and saw a sign that said 'TRUST PROPHETS' and so she took that as her answer - ha ha!

We had a good week here and a lot of good has happened - it's tiring of course, but as I say - you've just gotta do it.

Pozdrawiam,

Elder Ashworth 

Elder Liechty and I joined the marathon for a few seconds.......

So another week is down. We're into the last week of this transfer and I really can wait for Saturday, transfer call day last transfer killed me. 

So it'll have to be a quick one this week as we're off to Toruń today. It's going to be a good trip, plus the weather is beautiful today!

Monday - Just the usual Pday stuff last week. There was a fantasy/gaming event going on at the world trade centre in Poznań, bunch of people around all dressed up in costumes. I noticed a group of people dressed as wizards from harry potter so i did what anybody else would do, I ran up to them and started shouting spells and doing wand actions at them. They were so confused as to what was going on. That's how I amuse myself these days. Also had some fish and chips that didn't look or taste anything like fish and chips. 

Tuesday - Had the usual district meeting. Tuesday was a slow day, didn't really get up to much exciting. Just contacting and things. It's been a tough week for contacting, there just hasn't seemed to be anyone around to talk to or that wants to talk. We managed to get a few numbers through the week though which is good. FHE after dinner with just the four elders and Iza. We played an intense game of Uno. All rules go out the window when playing with Iza haha.

Wednesday - We had a pretty good lesson with our investigator Dawid. We taught him about baptism and how it's essential and the first step to the goal of eternal life. We read through 2 Nephi 31 with him and talked about it. He's slowly progressing. To finish off the night we had a boss English class with the beginners and then had an even better religious class. We had them translate from Polish to English a few short stories, we split them up into teams to make it more of a competition as to who could translate and write better English. We spoke about the God head for religious class. Who they each are and their roles etc...

Thursday - We spent most of this day cleaning the mess that was our apartment. We had the best news all week in that we could move into the new one a day early. We had so much to do and it took us a good 5 hours to get everything ready and strip the place. We took a break in-between and went to Bożena's for Lunch, probs the best Bożena lunch I've had yet. Just chicken and Potatoes but it was gone in about 30 seconds. 

Friday - Time to move house. We went to the new apartment to collect the keys around midday. We also had the first of our sport Fridays which we're starting to get up and running. We had a few people turn up which was good. We played frisbee in the park and then I brought a footy as well. I just enjoyed smacking it up in the air as hard and as high as I could. Great stress reliever and it just felt good as I've not been able to that for a good 6 months. After sport with help from Markus (member) we moved all of our belongings to the new flat. It took a lot of effort and a few trips but we made it. The new place is incredible. 

Saturday - Not a lot happened. We had a poor turnout to English class. Probably because we had nice weather. Not a lot happened this day but we had a few funny moments. We took a random 2 hours tracting and bumped into an old guy who shouted at us for a good 30 mins as we tried to tell him why we have prophets. We spoke to a guy who just poked his head out of the window, literally just his face, nothing else, for a good 10 mins as we tried to convince him to listen to us. We got locked in an old ladies front garden haha and then got invited into a party, which was tempting, but we decided not to in the end. 

Sunday - Probably the best day of the week. We left the house for church. We had a meeting at 10.15. We noticed as we stepped out of the building that there was a marathon going on. We had no idea this was happening and all the roads were blocked. We were cut off from the side of the city that we needed to get to. We stood and watched for a bit and tried to figure out how we were going to get to the chapel without trams or buses. We had to walk, which was pants as it was raining and it was a good few miles away. So to get into the bit of the city we needed to be in, Elder Liechty and I joined the marathon for a few seconds haha, it was flipping hilarious. We arrived at church and your standard Sunday as a missionary happened. 

That is my week. Sorry it's short but that's all I have time for.