There are struggles....just got to get up and go for it!

So, what have we been up to this week?

Tuesday morning, Elder Dooley decided to make chili, for what reason I'm not too sure, that's Elder Dooley for you. I was on my bed reading some talks when I heard a huge crash and the cry of 'FLIP' from Elder Dooley. I instantly feared the worst and I was right to. He had leant on the extractor fan above the stove top and it fell down, flipping the pan over.  It was an explosion of chili!!   The kitchen floor was covered in this stuff. It took a good 30 mins to clean up, ahh Dooley and his love for making things.

We picked Elder Alvarez and Byrd up from the train station that evening around 8pm. The start of a few days of fun had arrived.

Wednesday I woke up and felt pretty terrible. We had service organised that day in Swidnik which I had no desire to go to, but I went and it cheered me up and made me feel a little better. We had good food as usual and had some rap battles at the table. As we were walking to get the bus, I had an apple in my hand and I said 'what are the chances of me throwing into that bin from here?'..the bin was a good 20ft away, and the target I had to aim for was tiny. I went for it and in DudePerfect style threw the apple straight in. I won't lie, I felt pretty good about myself. 

Thursday we didn't  get up to much. I wanted to get better, I  was tired of being ill so we had a chill day so I could recover. After studies we went out for a bit, but from 16:00 to 21:00 I slept - and I can tell you it healed me. The next day I was feeling better than ever, back to 100%. We also went and bought a fridge for the chapel - life changing! 

Friday we had our thanksgiving meal, cooked by us, eaten by us, it was a good time. We had tons of food. We had a session of contacting, I handed this guy a church pass along card, he was with his friend collecting money for his other mate who was playing the guitar. I told him 'I don't have any money but I have this'. He took the card and looked at it and started laughing, showing his mates and all that. I walked a few yards and heard him laughing so I turned and just stood there staring at him, when he saw he soon shut up and sat down. I didn't think I was that intimidating...must be the 4kg weights I do at home. 

Sunday was funny. We had our branch conference and so the district president was there.  We have new translating equipment for Lublin, so I don't have to stand up at the front anymore.   I can just sit and speak through the mic and people wearing the headphones can hear me.  President Dressler was doing the beginning part where as a branch we sustain all the general authorities and leaders in the church and then all the branch callings and things.  I lost track of where we were as he was speaking super fast so with a loss of concentration, we ended up sustaining a new member of the 12, I said the wrong name. Just as I always say though, when it comes to mistakes made because of a language barrier, Heavenly Father understands what we're trying to get at haha!!

I only have 11 months left.  It's gone quickly,   I feel as though I've had a good go of it up to now.  I've done loads of things I never thought I would.  I've met so many people.  I wouldn't say it's been all as straight forwards as I make it out to be.  I mean it is easy for me.  I enjoy it you know, that makes it easy, but still there are struggles.  Just got to get up and go for it.  

That's all I have for this week.

I'm off for lunch at 'Stoł i Wół'. 

Translating

Thanksgiving meal Elder Hansen, Elder Huffman, Elder Ashworth, Elder Dooley we had it on Friday as we were too busy on Thurrsday

Playing UNO

Had fun posing on the wall

'Painting' the bathroom in Świdnik 

We had Elders Byrd and Alvarez in Lublin this week for a few days. 

Thanksgiving

Wszystkich Świętych - Lipowa Cmentarz

Are you all ready for this weeks adventures - 

On Monday after emailing we walked around for a bit before meeting Michael in the Old Town, we booked to go and do an escape room. It was called Jail #3, so we were locked in a big jail cell and we had to get out. It stressed me out big time as we couldn't figure out one of the clues. We made it out in time though. We met a bunch of youth from Philadelphia on the Old Town, we just followed the noise as we figured it couldn't have been coming from Polish people. There was about 60 of them. Turns out they were all Jewish and were here in Poland visiting all the Jewish history and things, reminds me of when I was in Kraków 5 years ago on my history school trip. They encircled us and were asking us all sorts of questions.  I had one guy who was a Chelsea fan asking me to report on what I thought of the united defeat to Chelsea..the cheeky beggar haha.

Tuesday (Wszystkich Świętych) was a good day. Started off with a classic district meeting, followed by a long lesson/bible study we had been invited to by the other elders. The purpose being to help this individual gain an understanding of scriptures in the Bible that she struggled to understand properly, also we helped her understand how the church teaches these parts of doctrine. Then came the night time, we headed over to Lipowa Cmentarz with Michael, of course, and just enjoyed the beauty of the flowers and lights. We were there for a while as this Cemetery is huge, and the lights were endless.  

Wednesday was a hit. We had a meeting with a guy called Bartek. Just an 18-year-old lad who wants to learn English. We read through the Przedmowa of the Book of Mormon with him and then he translated it into English. English class was sweet, it was CLASS if I may say so. We had a poetry night. We went and bought a load of candles after studies from Tesco to use. We turned all the lights off, it was dark outside, only the candle-light lit the room and we just let words flow freely onto paper. I was given the topic and had to write a poem about a tree I fell in love with. It was a masterpiece. 

Zone Training happened on Thursday. It was a good time. Although we got there only by a miracle. We got up and prepared ourselves on time, left the house on time, but traffic got in the way and there was no way we were going to make it. We pulled up at the station at 7:53, with just under a minute to go before the train left. My job again was to sprint as fast as I could from the bus and try and hold up the train. I got to the platform but there was no train. The train hadn't arrived yet, it had been delayed a couple of minutes,  i guess our prayers were answered.

Some of the new Elders in my zone - Dickson, Hansen and Barlow

Warsaw Zone

Infamous MTC group

Friday not much happened, we had a meeting get cancelled and just weekly planned and did a bit of contacting. Marlena had us round at her place again for dinner. We were there most of the night and then she drove us home. The food was soooo good! We had Russian style Pierogi to start with and then boiled fish for main. The fish came out whole - head, skin, bones, everything.  It was interesting to look at, but tasted so good! 

On Saturday instead of English we had a late branch halloween party. There was a load of food there, loads of people, it was a good time. We had a few friends come from English. We also had a few investigators there and friends of the church which was good to see. I was the DJ for a bit, I'm sure my choice of music got the party going. 

Sunday was a long day, as most fast sundays are. We planned a missionary coordination meeting at 9am, so we were there but Michael was an hour late, of course we forgave him haha. Decent testimony meeting. The translation went well for Elders Quorom. Then came the long wait for 5pm..the time we'd arranged as a branch to have a 'break the fast' at the Belo's home. We filled our faces with the leftover food from the previous nights party. Spaghetti and red sauce has never tasted so good! 

So that's me for this week. 

Do some good. 

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

First injury!

I didn't end up going to Kraków so I’m still here in Kielce.

What have I been up to this week.?

It’s been an okay week, it was a very crazy Tuesday, other than that it’s been a good couple of days.  So after last Pday, I think we just went tracting, we found some new flats built around the back of where we were originally tracting. Hopefully this week we will focus on the North Tracting area that prezydent wants us to go to. 

Tuesday was an odd day, we had a meeting with a man who’s been ‘investigating’ for years. He's a cool dude though. He runs his own Friends of America group and he just loves everything American and can't seem to grasp that I’m English and not from America. So yeah we were in a meeting with him and then suddenly Elder Wieler calls to tell us he's on the train on his way to Kielce. He's Elder Garrison's new comp. We weren't expecting him for a few more days. So that day we had to change all our plans, we had to leave the appointment early to get him from the train station, take all his bags back to the flat, then me and Elder Taylor had to pack and move to the new flat. Tuesday was a busy day.

We spent all Wednesday cleaning the old but new flat, getting food and all settled in and had the English class.  We did some English contacting the morning of the Class. We taught a decent English class although we didn’t get a great turnout but we're hoping to make plans to change the way it’s run and improve how we teach to make it better.

Thursday was the Warsaw day. We got up at 6 as the train was at 7:05. We set off with plenty of time, but there were no buses from near our flat to the train station. We decided to run but I had my black to shoes on so had no traction whatsoever and it had snowed a tonne that night. I put my foot in a ditch and ended up spraining my ankle pretty bad, it swelled up a lot too. 

To make things worse I missed the train, so that was a good start to the morning. I just bought a new ticket for a later train. My ankle is good now though.  I did what needed to get done in Warsaw so I’m legal now. Pretty good day too with the office elders.

Sunday, we had 15 at church. Including the Robbins'. They're a young couple from the states, Brother Robbins plays pro basketball here, the guy is 6ft 9! Pretty good day all in all. We had a few meetings with Prez. after church and then the other elders cooked lunch/dinner for us.

We spent 130 zlots on food this morning, it sounds a lot but 30 quid on food and we got so much. I also got a haircut. I look the part now. There's no way people will reject me now. 

We also met a pretty cool guy called Jakub.  We spoke to him for a good 30 mins on the street, I think on Wednesday. We're trying to set up a meeting with him sometime this week. 

It's working well with 2 companionships here now, we can split the work and members so more of it gets done and more members get visited. I try and get the ball out most days, but it's hard with all the snow and slush around. I'm enjoying myself and working hard.