Week 12

Well, as usual, a lot has happened this past week. I have a lot I want to type up so sorry if details are lacking.

On Wednesday we finally made it to District Meeting! We are in a Warsaw District...which is 2.5 hours away, so we can usually only go to district meeting 1 time a month, instead of every week. It was a good meeting and our entire district was there :) I think we are the biggest district in the mission right now. Talked about a lot of normal district stuff, but then we played a pretty fun game that one of the Sisters came up with :) Everyone has 3 pieces of paper, on the first they have to write what their name would be if they could change it. On the second is what fruit would you be, and on the third you had to pick something you wish you could be the best at. Then we put them all into a basket and went around drawing them out one at a time. When one was drawn it would be read aloud and everyone would go around the circle and guess who wrote that. It was a lot of fun and quite interesting.

We did a ton of traveling this week...probably the most out of any week on my mission thus far. On thursday we traveled to Puławy to meet with Irena Żak, our blind member. She is such a wonderful person and dedicated member of the church. She was telling us how much she loves the church and how much prayer has helped her in her life, she started tearing up, it was a very touching and humbling experience.
We had also planned on visiting another member that lives in Puławy that just had open heart surgery. But she cancelled on the bus ride there. Not all was lost though, not 2 seconds after she cancelled on us, our investigator Mariusz called us and set up in the exact same time slot! It was quite a little mini miracle for us. We had to really hoof it back to Lublin from Puławy though, make a 2 hour trip in 1.5 hours! Somehow we made it and had a great meeting with Mariusz, who will be getting baptized on the 24!!!!
That same night we also went to a members house in Lublin, she has back problems right now and can't make it to church right now. We had an awesome lesson in English with her son, who is a non member. He speaks wonderful English though, he had met with missionaries before, but I kinda think we may have sparked something in our conversation with him. His poor mom was sitting there the whole time, doesn't speak any English, but she was so happy that we were talking to him :D

On Friday, I was traveling yet again...to Warsaw to go on exchanges with the Assisstant Presidents. I spent the day with Elder Rushton, who is an amazing Polish speaker and an absolutely fantastic missionary. One of the first things we did after I got there was go tracting for my first time!!!! I finally got my picture of my first door knocked in Poland :D It was a great experience and I wasn't even that nervous ^_^ Later, for lunch we went to this place called...The Spotted Beaver!!! How weird is that?! They did have one of the best soups I have ever had in my life though. A cheese soup...mmmm...my mouth is watering thinking about it :D The rest of the meal wasn't anything great, I don't like pork much so... After that though we had another couple meetings that all went quite well. There was one in particular with an investigator name Marek, who is having some difficulty with little things, instead of focusing on the big picture and the fact that the Book of Mormon is true. Elder Rushton lead a very spiritual lesson with him, and I really think he felt touched. He was not yet ready to set up a baptismal date though, just needs more time. Following the meeting I had to hurry off to the Dworzec to catch my train home to Lublin.

Saturday, we had the goal to get a bunch of errands for the Branch done, the only problem was that half of the stores we needed to go to happened to be closed, which was a real bummer after walking there... We also heard about the plane crash...in whispers and rumors first, we thought we were misunderstanding what they were saying in Polish. But it turns out that it did indeed happen and the President of Poland and many other high up officials died in a Plane crash that day. It is diffucult as missionaries because we don't really have a news outlet, so we don't have much information, other that what we can gather from people we talk to. We have discovered that the Plane did crash in Russia, and that it was headed for a memorial for the Katyń massacre that the USSR committed near the end of WWII. Over 20,000 leaders and military personnel were taken and eventually killed and burried in mass graves somewhere in Russia. It was denied by Russia that this event ever even happened, right up until the mass graves were discovered a few years ago. As I said, the plane was headed for a memorial service (as far as I know) and crashed rather near the sight where Katyń was. So it does seem rather fishy. The plane crashed due to a pilot error, from what I have heard. It is a terrible thing that has happened, but the country is really coming together. I have never seen this many polish flags out since I have been here. They all have a small black ribbon attatched to them, which I am sure has some significance. Hopefully we will be able to help people find peace again after such a tragedy.

Church on Sunday was good, at the beginning of Sunday School, we had a 2 minute nationwide moment of silence for those lost in the plane crash. After church I was able to have a decent length conversation with Mariusz, in Polish!!! He said that my Polish was a lot better than the first time we met :D He is such a cool guy, and only about a month and a half older than me too! Later on in the Evening we went out tracting for my first time in my city :D We tracted the whole building and got let in only one time, by an Athiest too. lol. He was a super nice guy and had one of the nicest apartments I have seen in Poland.

Monday we of course had more financial work to do...and this time it took 2 hours on the computers to get everything sorted out. It is such a bummer having to do that as missionaries, but it is our responsibility since my companion is also the Branch President.

Well, thats pretty much it :D We aren't going to be traveling much this week, which is really nice because we really need to work on finding new people to teach. It is just so hard, because you get rejected (odrzucany) over and over again... But it is all worth it when you find the ones who will listen, i'm just still looking for one lol. Your prayers are greatly appreciated I know that the only way the work will get done is if we do it in Heavenly Father's appointed manner.

I love you all! Thanks for reading :D

Starszy Taylor

PS sorry if there are ever spelling errors...these computers are in polish, so they don't have an english spell check, and nearly every word I type is underlined in red....lol