Week 31

I still can not believe how fast time seems to fly by. Well, a TON has happened this past week, it seems like it has been a month. And I was good and wrote a lot of it down so I have stuff to write about today :D

Last Tuesday, we went to a castle :D in a city about an hour and a half away, the inside was way boring...huge...but mostly empty... But the outside was simply amazing. I have posted the pics of the castle here:

Castle At Wałbrzych Pictures

It was way awesome, a super fun p-day. We even went in the elevator and tried going to the lowest floor, which we didn't think it would because it was labeled -2... It did do it though... the doors opened and we were in somekind of tunnel system under the castle!!! It was quite obvious we were not exactly suppose to the be there... but it was way cool anyways. There were also a bunch of kitties running around the grounds :D I got a cool picture with one :)

On our way to zone conference this past week, we were on our 6 hour train... x_x and about 4 hours into our ride, we hit a tractor!!! it was crazy! We thought our train was getting derailed or something. I will post some pics I took of the train a bit later. We were stopped in the middle of no where for like an hour and then finally another train came to get us... changed our 6 hour ride into a 7.5 hour ride... ugh

Also when we were in Warsaw for Zone Conference I stayed the night with the Zone Leaders and once again went searching for my polish notebook that I lost there 5 months ago and look for everytime I am there. Lo and behold I actually found it this time! I was so happy, I felt like a part of me had been found again... yes I know I'm crazy.

At Zone Conference we found out that the church is changing missionary work a little bit more, to focus even more on teaching by the spirit and less by memorized outlines. I am excited because I always felt like I wasn't doing it right when I was always trying to talk about the Restoration, when the investigator clearly had questions about the Plan of Salvation. Hopefully this will work even better than the last system :D We also had the opportunity to hear the dying testimonies of the missionaries going home soon. They were all great but the one that got me the most was Elder Thomson's, my companion from Lublin. He told a story about how he was doing a Temple interview for Jasmine, one of the Taiwanese members in Lublin and that he found out that she had only been baptized a year ago! I was shocked, I thought she had been a member for life. Then he found out that the missionary that baptized her was Elder Thomson's best friend from home who is serving in Taiwan. They both broke down in tears. What a wonderful blessing from the lord to find out about things like that. And then Elder Thomson told us how a girl named Grace, whom Elder Beaty and I taught a few times in Lublin, was going to be baptized soon in Taiwan, with most of her family! At this point I am a wreck, tears of joy streaming down my face, finally someone that I taught, even only a few times, had come to a realization of the truth of the Gospel! It was overwhelming the joy I felt for her and her family, and the gratitude I felt to the Lord for helping everything work out in the end. I gave Elder Thomson a great big hug later after the meeting, he really is a wonderful person, and I am greatful for the time we had together, even if I got frustrated sometimes.

Well, I get the feeling that I have to go soon, but I hope that was a little bit longer than the past couple. I have a lot more stories but no time to tell them right now. We had another miracle on Sunday that maybe I will write about next week if I don't have anything else to write about then :D

Thanks for reading ^_^

-Starszy Taylor