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. 

Things that happened in Poznań this week.

Hello one and all, welcome to the first instalment of 'things that happened in Poznań this week'.

I call it 'things that happened' because sometimes as missionaries we look back on the day and write down all the 'miracles' that happened through the day. It just ended up us writing things that weren't really miracles, so I changed the miracles section in my planner to the 'things that happened' section. Creative, I know.

It's finally getting warmer here which means tracting without coats.
We look like proper missionaries now.

I don't even know.....

After Emailing on Monday we went to Park Cytadela and played frisbee or disk or ultimate, whatever you want to call it. Then topped the night off with a bit of tracting in an area I've never been to. We didn't have any success but we spoke to an old-ish man for a while. We chatted about all sorts, after talking for a while he realised we're not Polish and brings it up by saying 'you speak kind of crappy, you're not from here are you?' I just said assumed he was complimenting our Polish and didn't realise till afterwards he just straight up said we were bad haha. They’re to the point are the Polish.

This is the Grand Old Library.

Took this this morning of 'most teatrainy'. The busy tram stop where we do a lot of English contacting.

more of the city

Through the week we re-watched all the sessions of conference in English. So Tuesday for district meeting we put one on and had a relaxing morning before hitting the city and doing some contacting. On the chalk talk we drew another puzzle on the floor to get people's attention. It involved numbers and a pyramid but no maths was involved. It was fun, hard to link to the gospel, but we had a laugh with it. Elder Liechty and I managed to place 2 books and get 2 numbers, which is a good use of time on my eyes. We should be setting up with at least one of them this week, the other guy was interesting as he had no belief in any God, by the end of it we managed to get him to agree that there is a God and he took a book. The night ended slowly with a poor turnout for FHE, and then some English contacting. Tuesday was our best day numbers wise.

We got to the chapel early on Wednesday to watch another session of conference. I think we watched the priesthood session. After that we went for a classic KraszKebab lunch, 15ZŁ for what missionaries say is the best kebab place in Poland. We had another decent contacting session after lunch with the other two elders. We had a lesson with one of our investigators before English. English was ridiculous. We did an overview of the 9 tenses we've done with them over the past couple weeks. It was stressful but we managed to get through it. We also had 5 new people in the beginner class who had no idea what was going on haha. Then you get the regulars who just argue with each other, it's a good mix. 

Thursday we got up and did all the normal business, eating, washing, eating, studying, eating and probs some more eating. The weather has been kind of crappy so we watched another session of conference and combined it with lunch. After that, you guessed it, we went contacting. We didn't have our usual Bożena meal again, so we went to the chapel to go over our lesson plan for a man named David, who referred himself. He seemed pretty set for the meeting but then didn't show as he had work. Spoiler alert...we eventually met with him on Saturday and he came to church on Sunday!! We met one of the sickest guys whilst out contacting around tea time. A man called Maciej, he was so open to talk and was asking us all sorts of questions. He couldn't remember his number so we had to give him ours but we had no pen...So I went and asked a lady in my best Polish if I could borrow a pen, she ended up letting me keep the pen which was nice of her. Maciej thought i was 'brave' and slightly weird that I’d just go up to a random person and ask them for a pen. I’ll tell you something, it's a lot easier asking for a pen than it is to go up to someone and talk about The Restoration haha.

mmmm pizza

Friday we had out weekly pizza planning session. This time we just settled for 2 pizzas. The highlight of the day was going to Iza's house and teaching her a lesson on the church and Joseph Smith. She's a member but sometimes forgets things. Also we had to walk her 93 year old mum around the front room. I didn't know she could move. We were in another room and I heard moving, next minute she's standing with her walking frame, it freaked me out big time. Friday night tracting turned into a miss when we got on the wrong tram, we decided to hit some blocks close we could see which is where we took the cool sunset pictures.

This view is from the top of a tower block that we tracted.  We had a beautiful sunset
and had a good view of the Lech Poznan Stadium.

The stadium is huge.

Saturday is just your standard advanced English class day. We did tongue twisters with them and it was flipping hilarious, we also asked for some Polish tongue twisters so they could have a laugh at us too. We managed to meet with the referral David after arranging a new time. We taught him a good first and invited him to church. He's excited about all the new doctrine and teachings we're showing him which is nice to see. He's incredibly difficult to understand though which makes teaching him real fun!

David came to church!! He stayed for all 3 hours too which was mint! It worked out well to as Elder Liechty and I ended up having to teach Sunday school. With only 2 mins of prep we taught the plan of salvation which happens to be the second lesson and David was there to listen. We tried contacting after church but everywhere around the city there were these post Easter Catholic festival things going on. People singing about Christ and dancing. I wish I had my camera on me, it was definitely interesting. It made talking to people about our church tough though as everywhere was highly populated with Catholics. We finished the evening with the last session of conference. We watched the Saturday Afternoon session. Elder Bednar’s talk was quality.

Till the next instalment of 'things that happened', seeya!  

So we're going to be on the radio....

Bonjour, oh wait wrong language, dzień dobry was! I'm still incredibly funny if you were wondering. This week has been a week full of sunshine, mouldy apartments and park contacting!

Tuesday 29th (My Birthday) - So I already sent a picture home but for those who didn't know I turned 20! I appreciate all the birthday emails I received and it doesn't mean I don't like you if I didn't reply. It was a decent birthday; the fact it was Pday made it a little better. It rained really hard all day which ruined our plans of hiring bikes and cycling around the city so we decided to do an escape room, the 4 missionaries, Marta and her friend. This one was so cool, we started blindfolded and locked in 2 two separate prison cells. The story and theme of the room was your standard zombie apocalypse and you're the last alive and a scientist had come up with a cure but died and so you had to figure out all the clues, find the antidote and then escape. I don't know why this sort of thing hasn't hit the UK yet, they're so fun. After that we got ice cream, I had a huge thing of oreo and snickers ice cream. The only thing I bought myself that day were two pads of squared paper, ooooh interesting I know. I prefer the way my writing looks on squared paper, don't really know why I’m telling you this ha-ha. Also that day during email time I forgot to email president, things happened and I ran out of time. He let me off nicely though, so president if you're reading this, cheers, again. We had FHE and then finished the night with some English contacting.

Wednesday - In the build up to konferencji generalne our focus whilst doing finding activities was the prophet and why we have prophets. After lunch we did a chalk talk, which involves chalk and drawing something on the ground that we can use to get people to stop and talk, hence the name 'chalk talk'. usually we write scriptures, but this time we drew two stick figures, a yellow stick man and a blue stick man and they both were saying 'Jestem prorokiem'. We had the question above 'kim jest prorok?' and we asked people who they thought was the true prophet. After their guess we went on to explain that the Blue stick man may have been a prophet, but unlike the yellow stick man he didn't have the proper authority of God. It was a fun little activity. Through the chalk talk I was kind of distracted as there were so many nice cars driving around, you know me and my cars. Saw the nicest Ferarri F12 and I was buzzing and nobody understood why. There was also a really loud RS5 cruising around. Enough of that though. Before English class we taught one of our investigators the tree of life and what everything represents. We got creative and drew it out using our artistic skills. Then came the English class. We taught the Future Perfective tense (whatever that means) to our beginner class. I've learnt through teaching English class that my English grammar is terrible ha-ha. The religious class went well though, we showed those who stayed a talk from conference by Thomas. S. Monson. They seemed to enjoy it. Finished the evening with English contacting and ended up sharing Ether 12:4 with a homeless man.

Thursday - it was a nice day so we decided to go contacting in the park behind our house. The park used to be an old fortress during war times, and there are still remains that you can see, the park is huge! Just before dinner, Tea time for all those who refer to dinner as lunch, we went to Iza's house. Iza is a member in the ward and she invites us over once a week so we can sing to her 93 year old mum who she looks after. I've been round a few times but it was Elder Liechty's first time and boy was he in for a treat! It's one of the more bizarre experiences I have. Her mum is deaf so when you speak you have to grab her hand, she's in a bed so you have to kind of lean over and then scream down her ear ha-ha. In the night we went tracting by the Lech Poznań stadium, made me miss football a lot as I’ve not had the chance to play it this transfer.

Friday - Crazy start to the day, I found out that I was being mid transfer transferred to serve as Zone Leader in Warsaw..........April Fools.

MY BIRTHDAY PACKAGE FINALLY ARRIVED, after many phone calls with the shipping company and all sorts of bad words (joking mum). After going mental that my package had arrived We went contacting in the park again and had one of the best contacting experiences of my mission. We were walking around and having no luck for a while and then I spotted a guy sat alone on a bench looking over the park, so I kind of snuck up on him and started a conversation about the weather of all things. Not long until we were talking about the gospel and missionary work with him. We spent 40 minutes with this man, nowhere does time go quicker than when you're in a good contact with someone. We finished with bearing testimony, before handing him a book, he thanked us and then we left. The spirit was present, nothing has come of it yet, but it was an experience I hope to never forget. Later on in the day Elder Jeffs and I had a pre radio show interview with someone from Poznań International Radio. So yeah we're going to be on the radio, it's all in English as the radio station interview English speaking people from across the world that live in Poznań. The segment will be about us as Members of the Church and certain views and beliefs we have. I'm not sure when, probably in the next two weeks, you'll be able to find a recording of it online. Should be fun :)

Saturday - We had another beautiful day in Poznań! Contacting in the morning down at Fredry (the Uni/busy tram stop area) and did another chalk talk. Maybe this happened on Friday, I can't remember but we put a puzzle on the floor. 9 squares in a 3 by 3 lay out and they had to pass through all 9 squares with just 4 lines. I probably didn't describe it that well. It worked really well and had all sorts of people trying it out and stopping and talking. We had another English class but without advanced lot this time, we had 3 show up which was good as we could make it more personal. We played the 'desert island' or shipwreck scenario game where you're on a ship that is sinking and you had to select 5 things out of 18 that would help you survive. It worked well and we had a laugh with them. At 6pm we watched the Saturday morning session of conference.

Sunday - We spent all day at the chapel because of conference weekend and we watched 3 sessions throughout the day. At 11 we had the Priesthood session shown, and had a short food break before waiting for more members to arrive before showing the Saturday afternoon session. We had a 2 hour break for lunch/dinner and talking before showing the Sunday Morning session at 6pm. It was a good day, all the sessions are shown with Polish dubbing over the top. I might not have understood everything but I could get the general jist of what was being said. We're showing the sessions in English through the week on different days so I’m looking forward to that.

Today being Monday, we got haircuts this morning. I look pretty good, Liechty's is alright I guess ha-ha. We're planning on going round the mall for a bit before heading to the park to play some Ultimate or some frisbee or whatever you want to call it.

I hope you all enjoy this week’s info, I spent nearly 90 minutes typing it all up. Till we meet again, do widzenia

In Park Cytadela I thought I could sit in the hole under the tree but it's actually an old staircase that goes underground.  It's blocked off but is still pretty deep.

We bought 3 pizzas and had a weekly planning party.

Being Thrown In At the Deep End!

Hello one and all, welcome to this week’s edition of Elder Ashworth's Blog run by his mum. 

Let's start with Tuesday.

Tuesday - We would usually have had district meeting but not this week as we had Zone conference the following day. So after studies we went and did some contacting down at the spot known as 'Fredra'. It was another good experience contacting and I managed to get a few numbers and give someone a Księga Mormona. Later on that evening we had FHE, we played Pictionary, a standard FHE game which is needed in this branch as for some reason understanding how to play games is something they struggle with ha-ha. After FHE we went English contacting and I got hugged by a random Irish girl that heard me speaking. The favourite bit of the day happened as Elder Jeffs and I were planning for Wednesday, the phone started ringing, it was the AP's calling from outside at the gate asking which number we lived at, about 2 mins later they turn up at our flat and decide they're staying for the night. The perks of being AP I guess. We had a top night with them though. 

Wednesday - The day of Zone Conference, we continued the theme of miracles from Zone Training. President showed a video about butterflies and the change that occurs with the caterpillar. He likened it to missionary work and the change that happens in both us as missionaries and in the people we teach. The caterpillar has the potential to become a butterfly, we have the potential to become like Jesus Christ. We had a pretty bomb testimony meeting too, in which we all had the chance to bear a short testimony. Missionary Testimony meetings I think are how every Bishop wants his ward’s fast and testimony meeting to go. Also as part of the Conference, all 18 of the missionaries present did a huge 1 hour long English blitz, in which we handed out and spoke to an incredible amount of people about our free English class. 

Poznan Zone Training - photo courtesy of Sister Edgren

photo courtesy of Siostra DeMordaunt

Photo courtesy of Siostra DeMordaunt 

Thursday - Good standard day all around. The other Elders had a baptismal date accepted by one of their investigators. We did more contacting out in the sun. The weather was really nice. The weather changes contacting so much, people actually stop to you and talk. 

Friday - The weather kind of dropped off a bit which was pants but the day was still good and interesting. We had a meeting in the morning but the guy didn’t show, it’s becoming the norm. So we took a trip to Tesco and bought 12 huge sticks of chalk as we had an idea of how to advertise for the open day on Saturday. That evening we went tracting down in Świerczewo, we were having no luck and then floods of people started leaving their homes for mass, so we decided to follow them and attend an Easter Mass at the local Catholic Church. I was on edge as I didn’t want to get locked in. There were hundreds of people there and then it all kicked off and people started doing things and priests came so we quickly left ha-ha. That's the interesting part to the day. 

Saturday - What a beautiful day! It's always a good start to the day when the sun is shining through the window! After studies, we put the huge chalk that we bought to use and decorated the city of poznań advertising for the 'Dzień Otwarty'. We drew arrows from tram stops and busy roads leading them to the chapel, it was a fun hour or so and it turned out to be really effective. The Open day went well...we did it straight after English class so we would have more people there. People showed up through the day and enjoyed it. We had a free table where people could take pamphlets and Books, we had Meet The Mormons showing in one of the rooms and had a question and answer session in the chapel. 

Sunday - We had a really nice Sunday service at church. We had 13 people there which was surprising as it's Easter and nobody does anything during Easter weekend, the streets were so quiet, I’ve never seen a big city be so empty. So at Easter, they just spend time with family and eat food and drink. A lot of flowers are sold. People carry baskets of food round through the day as they get the food blessed by the priest so they can eat it for breakfast the next day. It's tradition to eat this kind of plant too, it's a fluffy looking seed, we had them at Bożena's.  The water fight thing is something they do, but I didn't see any of it going on.  It was a beautiful day and after church one of the younger members of the branch, Marta, made a little Easter treat hunt for us down by one of the little parks which was incredibly sweet and kind of her. Bożena then had us round for her special Easter Sunday meal. I've never had a food coma hit so hard than the one I had after that meal. I think I fell asleep on her couch afterwards. 

Last pictures with the man himself - Elder Jeffs

So some news for you, I'm no longer serving with Elder Jeffs. We got a surprise call from president on Sunday in which we were told that he's mixing things up in Poznań. In my call with him he told me he's throwing me in the deep end. I'm now serving with Elder Liechty and we are now the youngest companionship in the mission I believe! (Elder Liechty came out just one transfer before me). We were saying this morning how it's going to be fun with making calls as we both don't speak that well.  Bring on the next 4 weeks! 

My new comp. Elder Liechty - probably not the best view of him.

'I'm a Missionary!'

Squad pic after English class

Dzień dobry was! We've had a pretty solid week in Poznań..więc zacznijmy od Wtorku.

Wtorek - As you know Pday was on Tuesday last week. The Escape room we did with Sławek was tough but we managed to get out within the hour. It was different to the last one we did, in that we didn't start blindfolded and chained to a wall haha. This one was more about solving puzzles and working things out as opposed to just trying to open locks and things. We had FHE that night which went really well. We had 4 members there which is better than usual. We had a short spiritual thought and taught them about all the prophets from this dispensation, from Joseph Smith all the way through to Thomas S Monson. It was fun because it's not common knowledge here in Poland. The members had never even heard of Gordon B Hinckley. Then we played bean bag toss. we played 4 vs 4, and had these targets made out of a board of wood with a whole in it. I was on form, I think I hit 8 in a row at one point. After that we taught Joanna the plan of salvation. Probably the most in-depth plan of salvation lesson Elder Jeffs and I will ever teach. 

Środa - We had another good District meeting. This time we went through the most important part of any contact, which is bearing testimony and inviting the spirit. We practiced a few times and spoke about key points which need to be included when in 'step 3'. After we put it to work on the street and had a couple hours contacting. The weather was really nice, I had the classical missionary look with just a white shirt and tie...No coat was needed!! We managed to get a few numbers but not set up with them yet. We contact on a corner known as 'Fredra', a busy tram stop, it's close to town and the uni is close so it's a quality contacting area. We taught the Advanced English class this time.  It seems to work well with the advanced class. Afterwards we invited everyone back in to the chapel and the four of us sang a song that Elder Jeffs and I wrote to Sławek as it was his last English class. It was so funny. We ended the night with some classic English contacting. 

Czwartek -  The day with Elder Garrison. His comp had to go into Warsaw for legal work and so joined us in Poznań for the day and night. They're serving in Szczecin which is miles away from Warsaw. We contacted in the morning before having lunch at Bożena's. We then picked Elder Garrison up from the station and went out for more food before going out contacting again. The weather was even better than the previous day. Also I contacted on my own for the very first time, I seemed to understand a little better than I usually would do, maybe I was blessed for acting. I was myself and had fun with it and it worked out alright. Also we managed to hook ourselves up with a list of 3 good service opportunities around Poznań. Elder Vance managed to get in contact with the council and this guy sorted us out big time. The night ended with us English contacting, the highlight being an awkward 5 minutes with drunk people.  

Piątek -  We spent the morning inside with studies and weekly planning before taking Elder Garrison to the train station. We went to a pretty nice Milk bar for lunch, can't complain with a 14Zł lunch. Not much happened through the day, we had someone not show up for a meeting which always ruins plans, so we decided to go and tract in the area a member lives as he had invited us over and he lives way out. No look with the tracting but you speak to an array of people which is always fun. The lesson with Maciej (member) was good, we taught him about teaching in the church and shared our experiences with teaching. 

Sobota - We met with a referral early morning but it turned out he only wanted a book and then he left, so we were like...huh...what shall we do, we did nothing exciting we just went over our plans for the day haha. We had KraszKebab for lunch, this place has changed my opinion on kebabs, and the missionaries are friends with the workers there. We had 4 new English students come to English class, we taught beginner class and sang a song with them which is always a good time. Nobody stayed for religious class so we took dinner at the chapel before heading out to tract Świerczewo for the evening. Again we split and Elder Liechty came with me. 

Niedziela - The day of District Conference in Bydgoszcs..us missionaries got a ride there with Marcus. Which led to the first miracle of the day. We had 9 members from Poznań get there on the bus. We were well represented at conference, even President Edgren commented on it. The day went really well, we had Elder Limer (Area 70) there at the conference. We had a priesthood session in the morning before having the general session at 12. There was around 60-70 people and it was nice to see that Poland has a solid base of members here. Sister Kamp and Dekker were there too which was nice. Marcus got us invited to the Tufts (senior couple) after conference for a fun evening of games and food. There were 10 of us there including a family from Gdańsk and an investigator from Bydgoszcs. As we were sat around the table playing 'Wackey 6' I had a moment where I realised 'flip I’m a Missionary'. I remembered the times we would have the elders round for tea, their white shirts and Spirit they would bring, then I looked down and saw I had a white shirt and name tag on, I felt calm and smiled and continued on with the game but it was a nice moment. The journey home was crazy as we left a bit late and had a two-hour drive. Marcus and his driving, it's something else, but with him being Austrian I put total trust in him. We made it home on time though haha!

One of the best, funniest yet most exhausting English contacting sessions yet!

This is Sławek. He's coming to Manchester on the 17th to live and work. He comes to the English class but has never investigated the church, but wants to be in contact with the church and the missionaries in England. I've given him info about where to go and things, hopefully he goes to Oldham, I told him to anyway.

Monday 7th - After Pday ended we had a meeting with a young college lad.   We met him at his place, He's been investigating for a while but hadn't had a meeting with the missionaries for about a month. We just spoke with him about the importance of reading and praying daily, also church attendance and why we go to church, Moroni 6 explains that pretty well. We committed him to continue to read and pray and invited him to church but he didn't show up to church. 

Tuesday 8th - We had a really good district meeting in the morning after studies, led by our DL Elder Vance. We've been focusing on contacting and how we can make every contact a good one. Last week we focused on the initial first impressions. This time we focused on getting them interested whether it be through a question or being funny. After that I gave a Christ like attribute section, I prepared something about diligence and the importance of being physically and more importantly spiritually diligent in our missionary efforts. Later on that day we had a meeting with a lad called Marcin. He's the brother of Carolina, a girl that was baptised in Canada. We taught him in the mall in the food court, and it went as well as you could imagine haha. Tuesday evening is Branch FHE. Iza, our investigator Marcin and Carolina showed up. We don't get the best turn out but we're working on improving it. We gave a short spiritual thought on the sacrament, and then had a paper plane contest for the activity, although the 'contest' part didn't happen and it turned into kind of dodgeball but with paper planes. 

Wednesday 9th - We had a bomb contacting session, Elder Liechty and I teamed up. We had 3 good contacts, using the points that we'd learnt from District Meeting the previous day to get people hooked. English class was fun as always. We sang with them, there were some mixed reactions when they found out we were singing haha. Most of them got involved though and asked if they could do it next time. Maybe we will. 

Thursday 10th - Thursdays are the Wednesdays in the week for missionaries I think. Bożena had us round for lunch as usual, we went contacting for an hour before leaving for institute. We had a pretty stressful evening as we had to organise how we were going to get the branch to district conference in Bydgoszcz. We spent the night calling members and trying to buy bus tickets and then we managed to get it all sorted. Get in! We saw that we had tracting planned but it was late and we couldn't be bothered trekking to our area, so we decided to English contact between the two busiest tram stops in Poznań. It turned out to be one of the best, funniest yet most exhausting English contacting sessions yet, but a great way to relieve stress. 

Friday 11th - Planned for the week. All the usual stuff. Went tracting in the evening again and swapped comps, so Elder Liechty came with me. We had a mint night. Some strange situations though. We had an old woman come out of her house having just woken up, she was so confused as to what was going on. She went back in and then came out again, this must have happened 2 or 3 times. Her neighbour then came out and she started waffling on to him saying how she's called the police and that. I was thinking 'what is happening', it was a funny yet weird 15 mins. Then from half 7 till the bus home at 8:15 we spoke with an old guy out walking his dog. One of the nicest people I’ve ever met.

Saturday 12th - English class. We taught them fruit and vegetables and just went through every single item you could imagine. With the fruits it was funny because they would be like 'oh raspberry, we have whiskey that flavour', I swear they said that with every fruit haha. 

Sunday 13th - The day of my talk. It went okay apart from me saying 'Dobry Wieczór' (good evening) instead of 'Dzień Dobry'. We had Marcin in church, it's always good to have an investigator in church. After church Bozena had the Elders and Karol (Elder Jeffs 1st councillor) round for one of her famous Bożena feasts.

Some of my favourites of the past week:-

Favourite word of the week -  Czołem, it's an older word that can be used to mean cheers, or thanks. We heard an old man say it that we contacted and Elder Jeffs got excited so we use it now.

Favourite scripture of the week -  John 14:15. Simple scripture, you show God you love him by doing what he says and keeping his commandments. 

Favourite journey of the week -  We took a trip up to a college campus just north of the city. We contacted up there for a couple hours. It was freezing but we want to teach young people. 

Favourite shop of the week -  Żabka...just a little newsagent’s kind of shop. They're everywhere and this past week mars bars were on sale.

Favourite moment of the week -  singing Hallelujah with the English class.

Best testimony builder of the week - my testimony of obedience has increased this week as my sacrament talk was about the commandments. Agency and the choice to be obedient plays a vital role in whether or not we receive the promised blessings of heaven. In every situation in the Book of Mormon, those that are obedient and keep the commandments are blessed. Those that are not are usually punished, or destroyed as it was back then. It's hard to be exactly obedient, but I know that we will see so much added to our lives if we do everything we can and 'strive' to be obedient and keep the commandments.

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Tracting, tracting and more tracting in Strzeszyn and Świerczewo.

No photos this week but this is Poznan Old Market courtesy of  the Art & Art Magazine.

Well my week has been pretty good. 

After P day last Monday we went tracting. We've done a lot of tracting this week and it's really fun, probably the funniest story of the week is from tracting but we'll get there later. The two places we're tracting are Strzeszyn and Świerczewo, both nice little areas. There are some huge houses in Strzeszyn. We haven't been let in yet inside but we both feel good about the areas and so are just being patient till we find that one person or family. We've had a lot of people tell us they don’t have time and for us to return another day. I think that’s them trying to say no nicely thinking we won't return, but we're missionaries so of course we're going to return. 

Every person in Poland owns a dog, or at least 90%of people do. It makes it fun because I love dogs, but when they won’t shut up barking it makes it hard to hear, I found myself many times last week shouting at the top of my voice from the gate of people’s houses haha. I've never seen as many German Shepherds either, and they are flipping Huge things, they look like bears!  You get the odd little dog with little man syndrome who thinks it's tough, reminds me of Oscar haha. Elder Jeffs says his mission is making him a cat person.

So onto the funny story...It was around 8pm one night and we were tracting in Strzeszyn. Now this place is kind of new, so a lot of it is big new modern houses but there aren't any roads.  We spot a new street that we hadn't tracted and head on over. Now because there are no roads it's not lit at all. So it's pitch black, in the middle of nowhere it looks, and there's a lone house with a huge cage like fence around it, but because it's pitch black the fence was invisible and Elder Jeffs tries to step onto the driveway and is stopped by this 'invisible force', he's like 'what the flip is happening?' and tries again and then notices there's a fence around the house.  The end. If you don't find it funny I understand, maybe it's a 'you had to be there' moment. 

We mixed it up this week whilst tracting and had a mini split within the district. All 4 of us were tracting our areas but Elder Liechty came with me and Elder Jeffs went with Elder Vance. It was a good night, Elder Liechty is in the group above me, so we had a 2nd and 3rd transfer companionship taking the streets of Poznań. It was a good laugh, Elder Liechty is a nice lad. 

On Wednesday we had the chance to teach one of our progressing investigators, Joanna. We extended an invitation for baptism, my first one. She said no, but she is so close. She says she doesn't doubt that it's true, she knows it's true so we just have to be patient and continue to help her. 

We had another week set up full of appointments but a lot of them cancelled. It's tough when you plan lessons and turn up to the chapel and wait, for them to not show up. So we filled the time with contacting and altered between English and Gospel. We had a goal this week for me to make all of the initial first contacts, Elder Jeffs could do nothing until I had stopped them and got them engaged. The hardest part is the initial contact, but then once you get talking you realise it's nothing you should worry about. We gained a few numbers from people so hopefully we'll set up with them. We met a guy called 'Said' from Pakistan, probably one of the nicest guys I’ve contacted with. He works and runs his own restaurant here in Poznań, so for dinner that day Elder Jeffs and I had Indian food, yes he reminded us of how good Indian food is!  We got 10Zł knocked off our bill too!

Saturday was a long day with English class, chapel cleaning, religious class after English, meetings and then more tracting in the evening. There's a guy called Sławek that comes to English class and he's a bro. He's probs in his 30's but his life ambition is to move to Australia. He's moving to Manchester of all places to work and save up money to go so he asks me all sorts of questions. I'll get a picture with him and then if you happen to run into him you'll know.  

English class was mint. We split the advanced group up into two smaller groups and Elder Jeffs and I led a conversation in our groups for the full hour. The students loved it. 

Pretty much most of my week...from what I remember, I don’t have my planner with me.