Sorry everyone but this week is gonna be kinda short due to the fact that the library is randomly closed today and we have to be here in this terrible internet cafe, and the keyboard I have is one of those terrible ones that is split in the middle and all tilted funny, so I can't type well... Also super limited on time today...again...
This week has been a week full of rain! It has not rained a whole ton up until now... but now it is raining cats and dogs! I have never seen raindrops this big...I will post a link to a video I took soon. Hopefully I will also be able to get those bajillion pictures I have posted soon too.
Wednesday we had a meeting with Basia Rakuś who was baptized last year. We were meeting with her to help explain how to give a talk in Sacrament meeting and how to prepare it. This was going to be her first talk in Church! I was super excited for her, it is a wonderful opportunity to learn while preparing to teach. Thursday we had a meeting with Basia Kopeć way out there, and then afterwards tried to meet with Marlena but could not contact her so we eventually headed home. Friday...hmmm what did we do on friday...oh ya, it rained....forever....literally all day, just came pooring down, the street behind our building was a river. In fact, my companion made a small tinfoil boat and sailed it down the stream :) I got a picture, it was funny, can't believe he went out in it. Then we also organized the ridiculous amounts of materials we had for investigators sitting around in our apartment. Took a while but we eventually got it all sorted out and ready to transport to the Chapel. Saturday we had a meeting with a man name Witek, who we found in the Area Book. Apparently he has been investigating the church for 10 years! Holy Smokes... After our meeting we headed to the Gładuns house for our Branch Grill :D It was great, and Witek was abel to come with us and talk with the Gładuns who apparently already know him from forever ago. The grill was great :) was lots of fun because Elder Thain, who use to be Branch President here, was back with his parents visiting, so it was fun to chat with them a bit.
Sunday we had a meeting before church with a missionary couple from Germany who are the Audit trainers for Eastern Europe, so they travel to each country training people how to be ready for audits and how financial work is suppose to be done. They stayed for Church, and the Thain family also came, and so did Witek! We had the greatest church attendence I have ever seen in Lublin! It was amazing lol, and half the people only spoke English, I had to translate for the Taiwanese members again, while Elder Thain (now only Brother Thain lol) translated for the others. It was a great meeting then afterwards we had the most interactive Sunday School lesson the branch has ever seen, mostly because of the english speakers in the back answering all the questions as they would in their normal wards back home. It was funny but all the members here loved it.
Monday of course was more financial work, and this time we had to stay extra long in the library to watch the tutorials the church has for bishops and the ward clerks (thats me) so that was all kinds of fun. Tonight we will be returning to talk with the English Class again, it is a wonderful experience for them to learn about the Gospel! And it is nice to be able to speak in English and help them out :)
Well thats it for this week, hopefully next week will be a bit brighter and less rainy!
-Starszy Taylor
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Week 16
Holy smokes....this past week was full of tons of travel, again, but even more than usual...
On Wednesday we headed to Warsaw for District meeting, which we have permission to travel to once a month. Had a great meeting, always tons of fun and uplifting. I had the show and tell this week, so naturally I decided to show everyone the coin that I carry around with me all the time, and why. It is a really cool double sided coin that my Dad also carries with him all the time, it helps us to remember each other and to always do our best to be like the 2000 Sons of Helaman. They all thought it was pretty cool, which it is :D Then at the end Elder Thomson had been assigned the game, so he took the game "Tower of Flour" and warped it...into something else... He kinda combined it with Simon Says... He had a plate full of flower, and had buried a gummy bear somewhere in it. Who ever lost at Simon Says had to get the gummy bear without hands. It was fun, we all had a lot of flower on our faces after that! Then we had some scurrying about to get food, then we headed home. As we were approaching the door my companion started reaching for his keys...then the next pocket.......another pocket.............only to come to the terrible realization that he didn't have them... We thought maybe they fell out of his pocket on the Bus, so we hurried to catch a bus to the station and find that bus. On the way there we called everyone we rode with, and found that the keys were in the Assisstant Presidents car... in Warsaw... We were looking at about 5 hours of travel to go there and get the keys again... not a good plan. So I suggested we call the land lord and maybe he could let us in. It worked! We got in and spent the night, got up the next morning at 4:30 to catch a super early train to Kielce where we had set up with the land lord there to finish my legal work. But as soon as we locked the door, and slipped the key into the mailbox, my comp realized he had forgotten the phone on the table... so now we are without a phone and going to be traveling all over south Poland today. Got to Kielce, had a great grill with the Elders there for lunch before our meeting with the land lord. We got all we could done with my legal work, but apparently we will have to return, yet again, in order to pick up my card. Ugh. Then it was off to Warsaw from there to pick up the lost keys. After our 3 hour train ride there we headed for the Chapel because we figured that would be the best place to find someone. We found everyone lol, they were all there for institute. But no one could give us a ride to the Office to pick up the keys until way later. Eventually that happened, I was able to play some badminton with the members and investigators for a while though, tons of fun. After we finally had the keys we headed for the Dworzec to check train and bus times. After we got there we soon came to the heart wrenching discovery that the last train was at 9:20 and the last bus at 10:00 it was 10:10.... UGH. And of course we have no phone... so we go to the Holiday inn right next to us and ask to use their phone to call the ZL's. We spent the night with them.
Friday Morning we got home and crashed. We were so exhausted from all that travel and stress... Later that day we had a meeting with Beata Gładun, great meeting where we talked about inactive members and who is safe to try and reactivate. The Gładuns are also having some trouble with one of there boys, who seems to have no goals or ambitions in life. We tried to give them advise but lets face it... we aren't parents... so we told them to pray about it :) like good missionaries!
Saturday morning we had finally set up a meeting with investigator Mariusz, who we haven't been able to meet with for about a month. We got to the chapel around 12:00, when we told him we would be there. He hadn't set up a solid time with us yet, but said he would text or call, which he always does. We waited there for about 4 hours... he never called, and wouldn't respond to our calls or texts, we think his phone is broken again, we were really hoping to meet with him then. After that we headed out to meet with a member who can't come to church due to back problems. Gave her the Sacrament and I practiced a short version of my talk for her. It was on Sabbath Day Observance and the Armor of God. I thought it was pretty good :D
Sunday I had to give the whole talk in Sacrament meeting! I was so nervous, it was my first full length talk in all Polish. I quoted True to the Faith a couple times and 3 scriptures. I got lots of compliments on my Polish afterwards and everyone seemed to like the talk so thats good :) Afterwards, my companion gave a great Sunday School lesson on the Christlike attributes found in "Preach my Gospel" the members all really liked it.
Monday we had finances as usual... Then for Family Home Evening we decided to try and teach our members how to sing. It was a very interesting experience... One of the two people that came showed up an hour late... We tried to teach them how to sing High on a Mountain Top. We sang it a couple times, then Basia, the one who was late, started asking all these questions about the music... We tried to teach her, but she is a really simple person and didn't quite get it. Then she wanted to know how to conduct, so we tried to teach her that too, but it was difficult again. She ended up being able to kind of conduct 2/2 time but not really. It was funny because she would always pause on the longer notes, she didn't understand that the conducter always keeps going and that the music follows the conducter, not the other way around. It was a funny night and really tested my companions patience with her. I thought it was really funny, she is always so curious about everything.
Then today (i'm writing this a lot later than usual) we were able to go with the rest of the Warsaw Zone to Kazimierz Dolny, a small town about an hour away from Lublin. Elder Thain is here with his family right now and so they were with us as well. The city is absolutely gorgeous! I have lots of pictures that I hope to get uploaded soon. (I can't do it right now because the computer doesn't have the program I need and I can't instal anything...) It was really cool and the weather was so beautiful! We were all sweating in the humidity and sunshine! It was great! I am so happy that the weather is nice here now :)
Well, that is pretty much it for the week. We are in a super big hurry right now to get to the English class! We are definitely going to be late, but hopefully we don't miss the whole thing!
-Starszy Taylor
On Wednesday we headed to Warsaw for District meeting, which we have permission to travel to once a month. Had a great meeting, always tons of fun and uplifting. I had the show and tell this week, so naturally I decided to show everyone the coin that I carry around with me all the time, and why. It is a really cool double sided coin that my Dad also carries with him all the time, it helps us to remember each other and to always do our best to be like the 2000 Sons of Helaman. They all thought it was pretty cool, which it is :D Then at the end Elder Thomson had been assigned the game, so he took the game "Tower of Flour" and warped it...into something else... He kinda combined it with Simon Says... He had a plate full of flower, and had buried a gummy bear somewhere in it. Who ever lost at Simon Says had to get the gummy bear without hands. It was fun, we all had a lot of flower on our faces after that! Then we had some scurrying about to get food, then we headed home. As we were approaching the door my companion started reaching for his keys...then the next pocket.......another pocket.............only to come to the terrible realization that he didn't have them... We thought maybe they fell out of his pocket on the Bus, so we hurried to catch a bus to the station and find that bus. On the way there we called everyone we rode with, and found that the keys were in the Assisstant Presidents car... in Warsaw... We were looking at about 5 hours of travel to go there and get the keys again... not a good plan. So I suggested we call the land lord and maybe he could let us in. It worked! We got in and spent the night, got up the next morning at 4:30 to catch a super early train to Kielce where we had set up with the land lord there to finish my legal work. But as soon as we locked the door, and slipped the key into the mailbox, my comp realized he had forgotten the phone on the table... so now we are without a phone and going to be traveling all over south Poland today. Got to Kielce, had a great grill with the Elders there for lunch before our meeting with the land lord. We got all we could done with my legal work, but apparently we will have to return, yet again, in order to pick up my card. Ugh. Then it was off to Warsaw from there to pick up the lost keys. After our 3 hour train ride there we headed for the Chapel because we figured that would be the best place to find someone. We found everyone lol, they were all there for institute. But no one could give us a ride to the Office to pick up the keys until way later. Eventually that happened, I was able to play some badminton with the members and investigators for a while though, tons of fun. After we finally had the keys we headed for the Dworzec to check train and bus times. After we got there we soon came to the heart wrenching discovery that the last train was at 9:20 and the last bus at 10:00 it was 10:10.... UGH. And of course we have no phone... so we go to the Holiday inn right next to us and ask to use their phone to call the ZL's. We spent the night with them.
Friday Morning we got home and crashed. We were so exhausted from all that travel and stress... Later that day we had a meeting with Beata Gładun, great meeting where we talked about inactive members and who is safe to try and reactivate. The Gładuns are also having some trouble with one of there boys, who seems to have no goals or ambitions in life. We tried to give them advise but lets face it... we aren't parents... so we told them to pray about it :) like good missionaries!
Saturday morning we had finally set up a meeting with investigator Mariusz, who we haven't been able to meet with for about a month. We got to the chapel around 12:00, when we told him we would be there. He hadn't set up a solid time with us yet, but said he would text or call, which he always does. We waited there for about 4 hours... he never called, and wouldn't respond to our calls or texts, we think his phone is broken again, we were really hoping to meet with him then. After that we headed out to meet with a member who can't come to church due to back problems. Gave her the Sacrament and I practiced a short version of my talk for her. It was on Sabbath Day Observance and the Armor of God. I thought it was pretty good :D
Sunday I had to give the whole talk in Sacrament meeting! I was so nervous, it was my first full length talk in all Polish. I quoted True to the Faith a couple times and 3 scriptures. I got lots of compliments on my Polish afterwards and everyone seemed to like the talk so thats good :) Afterwards, my companion gave a great Sunday School lesson on the Christlike attributes found in "Preach my Gospel" the members all really liked it.
Monday we had finances as usual... Then for Family Home Evening we decided to try and teach our members how to sing. It was a very interesting experience... One of the two people that came showed up an hour late... We tried to teach them how to sing High on a Mountain Top. We sang it a couple times, then Basia, the one who was late, started asking all these questions about the music... We tried to teach her, but she is a really simple person and didn't quite get it. Then she wanted to know how to conduct, so we tried to teach her that too, but it was difficult again. She ended up being able to kind of conduct 2/2 time but not really. It was funny because she would always pause on the longer notes, she didn't understand that the conducter always keeps going and that the music follows the conducter, not the other way around. It was a funny night and really tested my companions patience with her. I thought it was really funny, she is always so curious about everything.
Then today (i'm writing this a lot later than usual) we were able to go with the rest of the Warsaw Zone to Kazimierz Dolny, a small town about an hour away from Lublin. Elder Thain is here with his family right now and so they were with us as well. The city is absolutely gorgeous! I have lots of pictures that I hope to get uploaded soon. (I can't do it right now because the computer doesn't have the program I need and I can't instal anything...) It was really cool and the weather was so beautiful! We were all sweating in the humidity and sunshine! It was great! I am so happy that the weather is nice here now :)
Well, that is pretty much it for the week. We are in a super big hurry right now to get to the English class! We are definitely going to be late, but hopefully we don't miss the whole thing!
-Starszy Taylor
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Week 15
Well, this week just flew by! Probably has something to do with all the traveling we did this week, which always seems to become more and more frequents as my mission continues...
So last Tuesday we met with that English class again. This time they were in their computer lab looking up stuff about Lublin to tell us about. And we had the opportunity to show them some pictures of Temples. Of course they wanted to see the Salt Lake Temple, which they thought was very beautiful. Then we showed them some other temples using the churches temple viewer. And then I googled the San Diego Temple :D when I brought the picture up there was an audible gasp when they saw it, and then, someone in the back who was standing on a chair was leaning so far forward to see it better that he fell of the chair!!! The teacher then commented that we could probably convert some people just by showing them pictures of the Temples... lol It was really funny, and a good teaching opportunity to explain how important families are to us and why our church is so big on Geneology.
http://www.skycamsandiego.com/gallery/photos/lrg_mormon_temple.jpg
http://www.christjcd.com/lds/books/san_diego_lds_mormon_temple1.jpg
(Those are the pictures I showed)
On Thursday we took a trip to Puławy to visit our blind member there. She is always so nice to us and so faithful, she does everything she can do in her circumstances. She has a watch that when you press a button it will tell you what time it is in Polish! But the battery died recently so she has not been able to tell the time for a while now. She asked us to fix it, so we set out looking for a Watch store, which are usually pretty abundant in Poland. We found one, but he was on break for the next 45 mins.... so we continued looking. Eventually we found one in the Mall there and they were able to replace the battery for us. We returned the watch to her and she was ecstatic! She was so grateful for that simple thing we did for her. It was a great example to me that we should be grateful in life for everything that we have, not just big things that happen. Shortly therafter we returned to Lublin to meet with one of our members. Then after that meeting we had one more with a member who has been inactive for some time, but has been coming back to church. She lives really close to this other member too so it worked out quite conveniently. She has a really modern apartment, I was super surprised! I played with her son who is 12, he loves soccer and other sports, we get along great. Then we had a short lesson with him, about why we need examples in our life and how Jesus Christ is the perfect example. It was time for us to go after that, but apparently the buses did go out that far, so Marlena (the mom) offered us a ride. The ride was one of the most exciting things of my life. She was flying down the road! They don't have police patrolling here to catch speeders, they just have cameras at fixed locations to photograph and ticket speeders. She knows where all the cameras are :) So she was flying at like 120 km/h down this small little windy road!!!! It was so much fun, my companion was freaking out though lol, he didn't not like it, I loved it.
Friday we traveled yet again, but this time it was to Kielce! The plan was to finish my legal work and get my little card that says I legal. I thought I just had to be present to pick up this little card. However...upon arriving I was informed that I would need my passport...from my companion, who neglected to tell me a whole plethura of things that still had to be done. It was kinda funny because of all the people in the world, he should have been the last one to forget how these things work (he was in the office for 6 months, thats all they do...lol not really) anyways... we couldn't do any of my legal work but we got to work with Elder Nielson (from my MTC group) and Elder Tribe. It was a lot of fun and we worked hard, but we will have to go back again this week.
From Kielce we took a train up to Warsaw early Saturday morning because my companion had a meeting he had to be in for the Branch Presidents in the Warsaw District. Luckily for me, the missionaries in Warsaw that day had planned a Sports Saturday! And I was able to go with them to that :) I had shorts to change into and Elder Garrett brought me a shirt, and I had found some extra shoes in Kielce, so I was ready to go. We played soccer, in the rain, it was tons of fun, I don't think I have ever really played sports much out in the rain, especially for about 2 hours... It was tons of fun and so nice to be able to do something physical. It made me really sore. We also played some ultimate frisbee which was also pretty fun. There were some members and some investigators there too :) which is really the whole purpose. Apparently i'm not absolutely terrible at soccer, I still can't control the ball well, but it is fun to kick it in funny ways when it is bouncing or in the air. The Sisters were there too playing with us, they were actually playing too, not just standing around, which really surprised me :) they toughed it out through the rain too :) The train ride home after that was all kinds of fun, all wet and everything, I couldn't even change back into my other clothes because I was all wet.
Sunday was good, I always notice how much my polish has grown on Sundays. This sunday I was alone watching conference with some members, while my companion taught our english speakers in English. I was able to converse, and answer questions in Polish! It is so nice to be able to start understanding Polish people when they speak instead of just missionaries! I look forward to mastering this language :D
Well, thats pretty much it, we were able to watch conference yesterday on some DVD's we got from the office in Warsaw, they have it in 8 different languages on there so it was really nice to hear it in English :)
Well, thats it for this week, sorry again for any spelling errors, I see red lines all over the place... and can't exactly spell check on this Polish computer... forgive me.
Kocham was. Dziękuje bardzo za twoj czas czytając moj blog. :D
-Starszy Taylor
So last Tuesday we met with that English class again. This time they were in their computer lab looking up stuff about Lublin to tell us about. And we had the opportunity to show them some pictures of Temples. Of course they wanted to see the Salt Lake Temple, which they thought was very beautiful. Then we showed them some other temples using the churches temple viewer. And then I googled the San Diego Temple :D when I brought the picture up there was an audible gasp when they saw it, and then, someone in the back who was standing on a chair was leaning so far forward to see it better that he fell of the chair!!! The teacher then commented that we could probably convert some people just by showing them pictures of the Temples... lol It was really funny, and a good teaching opportunity to explain how important families are to us and why our church is so big on Geneology.
http://www.skycamsandiego.com/gallery/photos/lrg_mormon_temple.jpg
http://www.christjcd.com/lds/books/san_diego_lds_mormon_temple1.jpg
(Those are the pictures I showed)
On Thursday we took a trip to Puławy to visit our blind member there. She is always so nice to us and so faithful, she does everything she can do in her circumstances. She has a watch that when you press a button it will tell you what time it is in Polish! But the battery died recently so she has not been able to tell the time for a while now. She asked us to fix it, so we set out looking for a Watch store, which are usually pretty abundant in Poland. We found one, but he was on break for the next 45 mins.... so we continued looking. Eventually we found one in the Mall there and they were able to replace the battery for us. We returned the watch to her and she was ecstatic! She was so grateful for that simple thing we did for her. It was a great example to me that we should be grateful in life for everything that we have, not just big things that happen. Shortly therafter we returned to Lublin to meet with one of our members. Then after that meeting we had one more with a member who has been inactive for some time, but has been coming back to church. She lives really close to this other member too so it worked out quite conveniently. She has a really modern apartment, I was super surprised! I played with her son who is 12, he loves soccer and other sports, we get along great. Then we had a short lesson with him, about why we need examples in our life and how Jesus Christ is the perfect example. It was time for us to go after that, but apparently the buses did go out that far, so Marlena (the mom) offered us a ride. The ride was one of the most exciting things of my life. She was flying down the road! They don't have police patrolling here to catch speeders, they just have cameras at fixed locations to photograph and ticket speeders. She knows where all the cameras are :) So she was flying at like 120 km/h down this small little windy road!!!! It was so much fun, my companion was freaking out though lol, he didn't not like it, I loved it.
Friday we traveled yet again, but this time it was to Kielce! The plan was to finish my legal work and get my little card that says I legal. I thought I just had to be present to pick up this little card. However...upon arriving I was informed that I would need my passport...from my companion, who neglected to tell me a whole plethura of things that still had to be done. It was kinda funny because of all the people in the world, he should have been the last one to forget how these things work (he was in the office for 6 months, thats all they do...lol not really) anyways... we couldn't do any of my legal work but we got to work with Elder Nielson (from my MTC group) and Elder Tribe. It was a lot of fun and we worked hard, but we will have to go back again this week.
From Kielce we took a train up to Warsaw early Saturday morning because my companion had a meeting he had to be in for the Branch Presidents in the Warsaw District. Luckily for me, the missionaries in Warsaw that day had planned a Sports Saturday! And I was able to go with them to that :) I had shorts to change into and Elder Garrett brought me a shirt, and I had found some extra shoes in Kielce, so I was ready to go. We played soccer, in the rain, it was tons of fun, I don't think I have ever really played sports much out in the rain, especially for about 2 hours... It was tons of fun and so nice to be able to do something physical. It made me really sore. We also played some ultimate frisbee which was also pretty fun. There were some members and some investigators there too :) which is really the whole purpose. Apparently i'm not absolutely terrible at soccer, I still can't control the ball well, but it is fun to kick it in funny ways when it is bouncing or in the air. The Sisters were there too playing with us, they were actually playing too, not just standing around, which really surprised me :) they toughed it out through the rain too :) The train ride home after that was all kinds of fun, all wet and everything, I couldn't even change back into my other clothes because I was all wet.
Sunday was good, I always notice how much my polish has grown on Sundays. This sunday I was alone watching conference with some members, while my companion taught our english speakers in English. I was able to converse, and answer questions in Polish! It is so nice to be able to start understanding Polish people when they speak instead of just missionaries! I look forward to mastering this language :D
Well, thats pretty much it, we were able to watch conference yesterday on some DVD's we got from the office in Warsaw, they have it in 8 different languages on there so it was really nice to hear it in English :)
Well, thats it for this week, sorry again for any spelling errors, I see red lines all over the place... and can't exactly spell check on this Polish computer... forgive me.
Kocham was. Dziękuje bardzo za twoj czas czytając moj blog. :D
-Starszy Taylor
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Week 14
Well, I don't have a lot of time this week because my companion set up something really early, and then took forever getting out of the house this morning...
Last Tuesday we had another meeting with Paul's English class :) It went well again :) I think it is such an amazing finding tool and he totally loves us being there. We explained the Plan of Salvation to them in English, hopefully they understood lol. Apparently Catholics have somekind of "Plan of Salvation" as well... but it only consists of Life on Earth, and then pretty much the spirit world, which they kinda changed into Heaven and Hell.
And then after that I got to explain how to play American Baseball :) Good thing my parents were dilligent in always getting me to my practices and games as a kid, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do it lol.
Wednesday we had an awesome meeting with someone we found in our Area Book named Artur. He investigated the church a while ago, and had a positive experience, he said he just needed some time, so now we are back and he is meeting with us again :D He is really cool and hopefully will keep meeting with us and progressing. It is so amazing how prayers are answered, I have been praying day and night for us to be able to find new people to teach, and as time passes, we keep finding more and more people! It is wonderful. We set up with him to meet tomorrow :D so we will see how that goes, hopefully he read the Book of Mormon like he said he would :) (only like a chapter or 2 of course)
On Thursday we headed to Warsaw for the night, so that we would be able to make it to Zone Conference the next day on time. It was fun staying with the office elders again :)
Zone Conference on Friday was great! Got lots of great notes, and we are doing some cool things in the mission right now :) We are also starting a mission wide study on the Atonement, which I recommend to anyone who wants to do it with us. We also had a recent convert Agnieszka come and talk to us a bit. She is on fire! Doing fantastic, going to be one of the main building blocks for the church in Poland. She is always so excited about meetings and learning something new! It was great to hear her conversion story and how she tries to share the Gospel with everyone she knows. She even got her dad to want to be baptized after seeing how it had effected her life! She thanked us profusely for all the work we do trying to find people and not giving up on them. It was really encouraging to hear from her.
Saturday, after returning home late the night before, we ventured out to the lake to scout out a spot for Mariusz's baptism (which we keep having to move back because of different things like, his brother getting married, and my companion kinda scaring him away :( ) But hopefully it will all work out. We spent the whole day getting to the lake, walking around it, and finding a good spot (the only spot) and then finally getting our buses home. We waited literally about 90 mins for a bus from the lake home.... and it never came.... so we walked to a nearby bus stop that actually had times posted and then waited 20 mins for that one... I did get to watch the sunset though :) that was pretty cool
We had a really good meeting on Sunday :) The Gładuns came, but their boys didn't. But Marlina came with her son Sebastian! She has been inactive for a while but I think the Gładun's really helped her come back and we are meeting with her on Wednesday. Her son Sebastian is 11 :) I played with him, it was fun because it reminded me of playing with my sister. I think he likes me :) which is great because he needs to know the church isn't always boring lol. Like all kids think it is. I think he had a good experience. Marlina was the first member to join the church in Lublin, she helped the Gładuns come back when they went inactive and now it has come full circle as they have helped her, it is wonderful.
I also noticed how much my polish has increased on sunday! I did both prayers on the Sacrament (we couldn't remember if you have to have 2 people or if 1 is okay, and since It was pretty much me being the only one who didn't have something else they had to be doing I did both. (Dad, maybe you can clarify for me :) Then after that I had to go translate for our Taiwanese members :) But this time was different. I was actually able to translate my companions entire talk!!!!!! I was so happy! That is a huge improvement from only being able to catch a few words here and there. It is always an interesting experience trying to translate, listening and then changing languages in your head it rough sometimes lol.
Well, that is pretty much all I have time for today! Sorry it is a bit shorter this week!
-Starszy Taylor
Last Tuesday we had another meeting with Paul's English class :) It went well again :) I think it is such an amazing finding tool and he totally loves us being there. We explained the Plan of Salvation to them in English, hopefully they understood lol. Apparently Catholics have somekind of "Plan of Salvation" as well... but it only consists of Life on Earth, and then pretty much the spirit world, which they kinda changed into Heaven and Hell.
And then after that I got to explain how to play American Baseball :) Good thing my parents were dilligent in always getting me to my practices and games as a kid, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do it lol.
Wednesday we had an awesome meeting with someone we found in our Area Book named Artur. He investigated the church a while ago, and had a positive experience, he said he just needed some time, so now we are back and he is meeting with us again :D He is really cool and hopefully will keep meeting with us and progressing. It is so amazing how prayers are answered, I have been praying day and night for us to be able to find new people to teach, and as time passes, we keep finding more and more people! It is wonderful. We set up with him to meet tomorrow :D so we will see how that goes, hopefully he read the Book of Mormon like he said he would :) (only like a chapter or 2 of course)
On Thursday we headed to Warsaw for the night, so that we would be able to make it to Zone Conference the next day on time. It was fun staying with the office elders again :)
Zone Conference on Friday was great! Got lots of great notes, and we are doing some cool things in the mission right now :) We are also starting a mission wide study on the Atonement, which I recommend to anyone who wants to do it with us. We also had a recent convert Agnieszka come and talk to us a bit. She is on fire! Doing fantastic, going to be one of the main building blocks for the church in Poland. She is always so excited about meetings and learning something new! It was great to hear her conversion story and how she tries to share the Gospel with everyone she knows. She even got her dad to want to be baptized after seeing how it had effected her life! She thanked us profusely for all the work we do trying to find people and not giving up on them. It was really encouraging to hear from her.
Saturday, after returning home late the night before, we ventured out to the lake to scout out a spot for Mariusz's baptism (which we keep having to move back because of different things like, his brother getting married, and my companion kinda scaring him away :( ) But hopefully it will all work out. We spent the whole day getting to the lake, walking around it, and finding a good spot (the only spot) and then finally getting our buses home. We waited literally about 90 mins for a bus from the lake home.... and it never came.... so we walked to a nearby bus stop that actually had times posted and then waited 20 mins for that one... I did get to watch the sunset though :) that was pretty cool
We had a really good meeting on Sunday :) The Gładuns came, but their boys didn't. But Marlina came with her son Sebastian! She has been inactive for a while but I think the Gładun's really helped her come back and we are meeting with her on Wednesday. Her son Sebastian is 11 :) I played with him, it was fun because it reminded me of playing with my sister. I think he likes me :) which is great because he needs to know the church isn't always boring lol. Like all kids think it is. I think he had a good experience. Marlina was the first member to join the church in Lublin, she helped the Gładuns come back when they went inactive and now it has come full circle as they have helped her, it is wonderful.
I also noticed how much my polish has increased on sunday! I did both prayers on the Sacrament (we couldn't remember if you have to have 2 people or if 1 is okay, and since It was pretty much me being the only one who didn't have something else they had to be doing I did both. (Dad, maybe you can clarify for me :) Then after that I had to go translate for our Taiwanese members :) But this time was different. I was actually able to translate my companions entire talk!!!!!! I was so happy! That is a huge improvement from only being able to catch a few words here and there. It is always an interesting experience trying to translate, listening and then changing languages in your head it rough sometimes lol.
Well, that is pretty much all I have time for today! Sorry it is a bit shorter this week!
-Starszy Taylor
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Week 13
This was a kinda weird week...
Mostly because of the state of mourning the whole country was in after the plane accident. But we did have some amazing stuff happen this week too.
Tuesday we went to Majdanek, the concentration camp here in Lublin. By "here in Lublin" I mean like in the city, there are houses and buildings just outside the border fences...really weird. Anyways, at the entrance there is this HUGE rock. It looks like it says something, but at the same time, you can't make out any letters...drove me nuts trying to figure out what it says. If anyone knows, please tell me. We walked around a took a lot of pictures, it is completely open and free so we got to see all the stuff, the concentration camp visits are always a somber experience. I can't even comprehend what happened there, especially standing in the room where thousands of people were shot against a wall before being burned. ;__; It is mind boggling. After that, we noticed a huge cemetary right next to the camp. So we went to visit. I have never seen so many gaves...It was absolutely massive. And all the graves were all decorated with flowers, not sure why, but they usually seem to be. (Mostly fake flowers though) Took a ton of pictures there too, nothing like that in the United States, at least not that I have ever seen.
After finally finding our way out of the cemetary, we had scheduled to meet with a man named Paul, who is an English teacher here in Lublin. I was excited because I was going to be able to speak in English :D We got there, and he told us that we could talk to his entire class if we wanted, he had already told them we were coming. We practically jumped out of our seats! What an opportunity. We taught a lot about the restoration and Joseph Smith. We also answered questions, like why we are here, and whether or not we are getting paid for what we do. Paul was fantastic, he has had missionary interaction before and was a great help and supporter of our church and what we teach. We also talked to them about the Word of Wisdom, and necessity of prophets. I was amazed at how carefully they listened to us! It was such a wonderful experience to have people actually eager to listen! We will be going back today :) I am super excited! They were assigned to go to the website we gave them and come up with some questions for us! It was wonderful, I wish everyone would listen to us like they did...
We witnessed a few miracles on Friday! We set out to go visit some people who were interested in the church a long time ago, we didn't have any of their phone numbers though, so we were just going to stop by to see if they were still there and maybe interested in meeting with us again. The first place that we visited no one was home, so we will have to go back later and check again. The second place we went was actually right by where we tracted that building last week. We found the apartment and we decided to just tract the stairwell, we started at the top...no one would let us in the building... Finally we reached the number of the place we came for. We rang and she picked up and we asked for the person we were looking for, but the lady told us they don't live there anymore. We were about to walk away but Elder Thomson asked if she would like to fill out a survey on happiness that we were doing. (That is usually how we can get people to let us into the building) She let us in! Turns out that she and her husband had moved there about a year ago. And she had just had a baby 3 weeks ago! How crazy is that. We had a great meeting with her, and she was super nice, and had pretty good questions and was willing to read all the pamphlets we left with here lol. Hopefully we can set up again with her sometime soon! Then later, while we were at another building where we had an address, we decided to tract the whole stairwell again, maybe with more luck this time. Started at the top at number 10. Got to 7 and the man let us in for the survey. He was nice and filled out our survey but in the end wasn't interested. Then we got down to door number 4. A lady answered the door and invited us in, low and behold she is a math tutor and was just at the end of a tutoring lesson. We talked to her for a while too, she had some fantastic questions for us! Hopefully we can set up with her again soon too! Then accross the hall from her, was the apartment we came for, number 3. We knocked and a young girl answered, of course the people we were looking for had moved... Actually never lived there... But the girl that answered was super friendly and seemed kinda interested :) really busy though, about to graduate college. We got her info and gave her ours, so hopefully that goes somewhere too! So much could come from this one day! I wish everyday were like this, it was nice to find some kind, nice people in Poland...
Saturday we had scheduled to have Branch activity. So we had to come up with some games to play for the actual activity. I introduced Elder Thomson to "The Tower of Flour" as I have thus named it. We got some chips and cookies, and gummy bears to use for my game instead of coins. We only had 4 total people show up... but it was still fun. Our Taiwanese members were loads of fun :D especially since they are both studying here to be doctors. I had to play a game where steadiness of hand is all that matters, against 3 people who want to be doctors....I only lost 2 times though :) It was a lot of fun. After we went to a nearby park and had relay races using a spoon and eggs :) I also brought the nerf football my parents sent and got to throw it around a bit, no one here knows how to throw it though lol.
Sunday was interesting because it was scheduled to be the funeral for the President. So we were told to only have Sacrament meeting this week. We had 3 people in church, 2 of which didn't speak Polish, and the other was Ukrainian who does speak Polish, Mira. It was an interesting experience... After church, since we couldn't really do much because everyone was waiting for the funeral. We decided to go to Old Town and take some pics since the weather was so nice. During our adventure we headed towards Lublin Castle and low and behold, they have huge T.V.'s set up and massive speaker system to broadcast the funeral. So we sat down on the stairs to watch it. It was 2.5 hours lol... I was baking in the sun...but happy I left my coat at the chapel. I actually got sunburned!!! on my face... It was really catholic, which was a bit odd, and it was in all Polish, so i didn't understand most of it. But the music they had for it was really pretty.
Monday, we spent most of the day doing financial work... It kills 1 day a week for us, which is terrible! We should be out looking for people, not paying bills and writing reports... oh well, it has to be done... Hopefully we can find a more efficient way to get it all done faster so we have some time to do other stuff too.
Well, last week was odd, but many blessings were involved as well! I am super excited to contact the people we found last week and hopefully set up more meetings with them.
Thanks for reading!!! I will be back next week, yet again. We have a Zone Conference on Friday this week. Should be great!
-Starszy Taylor
Mostly because of the state of mourning the whole country was in after the plane accident. But we did have some amazing stuff happen this week too.
Tuesday we went to Majdanek, the concentration camp here in Lublin. By "here in Lublin" I mean like in the city, there are houses and buildings just outside the border fences...really weird. Anyways, at the entrance there is this HUGE rock. It looks like it says something, but at the same time, you can't make out any letters...drove me nuts trying to figure out what it says. If anyone knows, please tell me. We walked around a took a lot of pictures, it is completely open and free so we got to see all the stuff, the concentration camp visits are always a somber experience. I can't even comprehend what happened there, especially standing in the room where thousands of people were shot against a wall before being burned. ;__; It is mind boggling. After that, we noticed a huge cemetary right next to the camp. So we went to visit. I have never seen so many gaves...It was absolutely massive. And all the graves were all decorated with flowers, not sure why, but they usually seem to be. (Mostly fake flowers though) Took a ton of pictures there too, nothing like that in the United States, at least not that I have ever seen.
After finally finding our way out of the cemetary, we had scheduled to meet with a man named Paul, who is an English teacher here in Lublin. I was excited because I was going to be able to speak in English :D We got there, and he told us that we could talk to his entire class if we wanted, he had already told them we were coming. We practically jumped out of our seats! What an opportunity. We taught a lot about the restoration and Joseph Smith. We also answered questions, like why we are here, and whether or not we are getting paid for what we do. Paul was fantastic, he has had missionary interaction before and was a great help and supporter of our church and what we teach. We also talked to them about the Word of Wisdom, and necessity of prophets. I was amazed at how carefully they listened to us! It was such a wonderful experience to have people actually eager to listen! We will be going back today :) I am super excited! They were assigned to go to the website we gave them and come up with some questions for us! It was wonderful, I wish everyone would listen to us like they did...
We witnessed a few miracles on Friday! We set out to go visit some people who were interested in the church a long time ago, we didn't have any of their phone numbers though, so we were just going to stop by to see if they were still there and maybe interested in meeting with us again. The first place that we visited no one was home, so we will have to go back later and check again. The second place we went was actually right by where we tracted that building last week. We found the apartment and we decided to just tract the stairwell, we started at the top...no one would let us in the building... Finally we reached the number of the place we came for. We rang and she picked up and we asked for the person we were looking for, but the lady told us they don't live there anymore. We were about to walk away but Elder Thomson asked if she would like to fill out a survey on happiness that we were doing. (That is usually how we can get people to let us into the building) She let us in! Turns out that she and her husband had moved there about a year ago. And she had just had a baby 3 weeks ago! How crazy is that. We had a great meeting with her, and she was super nice, and had pretty good questions and was willing to read all the pamphlets we left with here lol. Hopefully we can set up again with her sometime soon! Then later, while we were at another building where we had an address, we decided to tract the whole stairwell again, maybe with more luck this time. Started at the top at number 10. Got to 7 and the man let us in for the survey. He was nice and filled out our survey but in the end wasn't interested. Then we got down to door number 4. A lady answered the door and invited us in, low and behold she is a math tutor and was just at the end of a tutoring lesson. We talked to her for a while too, she had some fantastic questions for us! Hopefully we can set up with her again soon too! Then accross the hall from her, was the apartment we came for, number 3. We knocked and a young girl answered, of course the people we were looking for had moved... Actually never lived there... But the girl that answered was super friendly and seemed kinda interested :) really busy though, about to graduate college. We got her info and gave her ours, so hopefully that goes somewhere too! So much could come from this one day! I wish everyday were like this, it was nice to find some kind, nice people in Poland...
Saturday we had scheduled to have Branch activity. So we had to come up with some games to play for the actual activity. I introduced Elder Thomson to "The Tower of Flour" as I have thus named it. We got some chips and cookies, and gummy bears to use for my game instead of coins. We only had 4 total people show up... but it was still fun. Our Taiwanese members were loads of fun :D especially since they are both studying here to be doctors. I had to play a game where steadiness of hand is all that matters, against 3 people who want to be doctors....I only lost 2 times though :) It was a lot of fun. After we went to a nearby park and had relay races using a spoon and eggs :) I also brought the nerf football my parents sent and got to throw it around a bit, no one here knows how to throw it though lol.
Sunday was interesting because it was scheduled to be the funeral for the President. So we were told to only have Sacrament meeting this week. We had 3 people in church, 2 of which didn't speak Polish, and the other was Ukrainian who does speak Polish, Mira. It was an interesting experience... After church, since we couldn't really do much because everyone was waiting for the funeral. We decided to go to Old Town and take some pics since the weather was so nice. During our adventure we headed towards Lublin Castle and low and behold, they have huge T.V.'s set up and massive speaker system to broadcast the funeral. So we sat down on the stairs to watch it. It was 2.5 hours lol... I was baking in the sun...but happy I left my coat at the chapel. I actually got sunburned!!! on my face... It was really catholic, which was a bit odd, and it was in all Polish, so i didn't understand most of it. But the music they had for it was really pretty.
Monday, we spent most of the day doing financial work... It kills 1 day a week for us, which is terrible! We should be out looking for people, not paying bills and writing reports... oh well, it has to be done... Hopefully we can find a more efficient way to get it all done faster so we have some time to do other stuff too.
Well, last week was odd, but many blessings were involved as well! I am super excited to contact the people we found last week and hopefully set up more meetings with them.
Thanks for reading!!! I will be back next week, yet again. We have a Zone Conference on Friday this week. Should be great!
-Starszy Taylor
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
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
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
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Week 11
Okay here we go again.
So this week with my new companion, we cleaned everything!!! We went through all the stuff lying around our apartment and the chapel. It took up most of our free time this week, but we feel a lot better about everything now :) and we know where everything is too. There was a lot of junk lying around our apartment from missionaries that had just left stuff they didn't want anymore. tons of trash.
I also ordered my first pizza last week, the whole phone call was in Polish too! And I actually managed to order exactly what we wanted, and they were able to get it to the right place! I was quite proud of myself lol. Talking on the phone is nerve racking in Polish. It is so hard to figure out what they are saying...
On Friday, we had quite the adventure to Warsaw, yes I find myself continually going to Warsaw... We got there and headed for food at Złoty Terasy and went to Burger King :) Ended up meeting up with all the other missionaries who were there for this Branch President meeting. It just so happens that all of the new branch presidents have someone from my MTC group as their companion! So it was quite an amazing re-union :) Elder Garrett and his new comp Elder Anderton were also there! So it made for a very special time for me :D The 4 branch presidents grouped up and went to the meeting together leaving us to fend for ourselves :) We ended up going with Elders Garrett and Anderton to do a Whiteboard with them. We met up with the Sister missionaries in Warsaw, Sister Pritchet, and a new missionary Sister Smith. There were a total of 8 missionaries around this white board :) It was a lot of fun. For those who don't know, when missionaries do a whiteboard, we bring a portable white board with us to somewhere with a lot of people. We write a question on it, this time it was "Who is your Hero" and we try to use that as a way to get people to talk to us. They come up and write their answer on the board. It was a lot of fun :) right up until this crazy lady came.... She started freaking out on us...Erased our whiteboard completely...and wrote in Big leters JP II and then some scibbles in illegible Polish underneath it... At which point we discovered that it was the 5 year anniversary of John Paul II's death. The Polish people love him...because he was polish. She started taking our Book of Mormons and opening them up and taking our inserts out, then throwing them on the Ground... :( Then she pushed our whiteboard over, we put it back up and she tried again. She was a very disturbed woman... Elder Anderton was doing his best to keep her calm and the situation under control. Eventually some guy that was apparently with her, dragged her off. We kinda regrouped after that and assessed the situation. We picked a different question in case she came back. The new question was "Where does peace find itself" Weird in english, but that is the question in Polish. We had a lot of good contacts after that, and talked to a lot of great people :D It was a wonderful experience. Near the end of our time there this guy came over with a guitar, well, one of the Elders brought him over from nearby. He was really cool, but I think a little bit crazy. He was playing us a song on the guitart all about Jesus, it was very entertaining. He was staring at Sister Smith the whole time, who is just out of the MTC and Polish is still crazy. She is pretty, which is why I think he was stuck on her....Poor girl. After he was done singing and running away from the guy whose guitar he had borrowed, he walked up to Sister Smith and tried to kiss her!!!! She was quick though, and jerked her head back at which time Elder Anderton wrapped his arm around the guys neck and all us elders walked off with him. Poor Sister Smith... it was really funny though.
Saturday was yet another adventure. We were going to the Gładuns house to help them with some yard work, so we were dressed in P-Day clothes, but were bringing our suits with us to change at the Chapel later. We didn't know if the busses were on the weird Easter schedule yet, so we took the Bus at 10:05 because we needed to be at the Gładuns by 11:00. There was just one problem that we noticed after being on the bus for a while.... Elder Thomson had forgotten his Suit at the Bus stop!!!! It was on a hanger, hanging at the bus stop!!!! We hoped off at the next bus stop and started figuring out the best way to get back to our house. We quickly discovered that the busses were on their normal schedules :D Thank heaven. Somehow we made it back to our bus stop, to find that 4 Babcia's (Grandmas) had been guarding the suit, awaiting our return!!! How hillarious is that! We hopped on the next bus to the Głuadun's house, he kept the suit on his lap so he wouldn't forget again lol. Service was good at their house, it was wet, so it was hard to rake all the stuff into piles. They have this nasty weed that grows here, that is almost as bad as the nemesis weed we have in our backyard back home. They also fed us while we were there :D These awesome sandwhiches with really good cheese :) After that we headed for the chapel to change and get ready to watch a conference session from last year that we have on DVD with anyone that would show up. The only problem was...half way to the bus stop...I realized Elder Thomson didn't have his suit!!!! LOL so we headed back, yet again to the Gładun's to pick it up. The curse of the forgotten suit strikes again!!! We finally made it to the Chapel and got changed, just in time for Basia to show up 2 hours early..... We had just started our surface cleaning of vacuuming and straightening the chairs. She found out we were cleaning, and she set to work...deep cleaning everything is site... We think she might have OCD, which would explain a lot. She is super nice though, I really like her a lot. After the cleaning we finally got her to stop and watch 3 talks with us and talk about them a bit. It was a good experience.
Easter was interesting... First off, there is something that must be explained about Holidays in Poland. The entire country shuts down....for the day, and a couple days surrounding it.... Like EVERYTHING closes... And people, they don't go outside, they stay inside for these days and just sleep.... it is very weird. So, we went to the Gładuns Easter morning where they had tons of food waiting for us. Most of it was really weird food too.... I had to eat, this giant mushroom thing that I thought was a meatball right up until I tried cutting it....almost threw up eating that thing... And I also had to eat....Meat.........in jello.....absolutely disgusting...because yes, it was cold, and yes, it was actually covered in Jello....disgusting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They had really good hot chocolate though :D. They were watching a House marathon...all day... and they wouldn't let us leave...we couldn't come up with an excuse either because we literally had nothing we could go do, and they knew it. So we ended up watching 3 episodes of House before we finally got them to watch the Restoration video. Which we discovered they have seen hundreds of times....because they helped translate it lol...who knew. Then we tried to get them to watch Conference on the computer, only to discover that it was Audio only, and only live... So that didn't work either. Liar Liar came on in Polish and after a while of that we finally came up with an excuse to go, using a bus time as our reason lol. When we got home, we sat...and I slept....I was so tired for some reason, I passed out at 7:00 for the rest of the night too....it was really weird. And that was pretty much my whole Easter.
Monday, everything was still closed, so I still couldn't get the package that had arrived from my parents on Friday... and later in the day, after all our organizing and going through old records and shredding them with scissors..... We also discovered that my favorite Pizza place, that we order from every Monday Night before P-Day was also closed....I was not happy about that. All I had eaten all day was some spaghetti I had made myself for lunch, no breakfast...because I was also out of cereal. It was quite sad, I was so looking forward to that wonderful Pizza, hopefully we will get one tonight :D it is so cheap and soooooooo good. Only costs 24 zł which is like 8$ for a large pizza and dipping sauces!!!! and delivery!!!!!! Best deal ever.
Well I think that pretty much sums it up. We did go pick up my package from home this morning :D I am wearing the new jacket that my parents sent me too :D I like it a lot. Pictures will hopefully be up soon, but might not be up until next week :( sorry.
Thanks for reading!!! And remember to always stay HAPPY!!!!!!
Starszy Taylor
So this week with my new companion, we cleaned everything!!! We went through all the stuff lying around our apartment and the chapel. It took up most of our free time this week, but we feel a lot better about everything now :) and we know where everything is too. There was a lot of junk lying around our apartment from missionaries that had just left stuff they didn't want anymore. tons of trash.
I also ordered my first pizza last week, the whole phone call was in Polish too! And I actually managed to order exactly what we wanted, and they were able to get it to the right place! I was quite proud of myself lol. Talking on the phone is nerve racking in Polish. It is so hard to figure out what they are saying...
On Friday, we had quite the adventure to Warsaw, yes I find myself continually going to Warsaw... We got there and headed for food at Złoty Terasy and went to Burger King :) Ended up meeting up with all the other missionaries who were there for this Branch President meeting. It just so happens that all of the new branch presidents have someone from my MTC group as their companion! So it was quite an amazing re-union :) Elder Garrett and his new comp Elder Anderton were also there! So it made for a very special time for me :D The 4 branch presidents grouped up and went to the meeting together leaving us to fend for ourselves :) We ended up going with Elders Garrett and Anderton to do a Whiteboard with them. We met up with the Sister missionaries in Warsaw, Sister Pritchet, and a new missionary Sister Smith. There were a total of 8 missionaries around this white board :) It was a lot of fun. For those who don't know, when missionaries do a whiteboard, we bring a portable white board with us to somewhere with a lot of people. We write a question on it, this time it was "Who is your Hero" and we try to use that as a way to get people to talk to us. They come up and write their answer on the board. It was a lot of fun :) right up until this crazy lady came.... She started freaking out on us...Erased our whiteboard completely...and wrote in Big leters JP II and then some scibbles in illegible Polish underneath it... At which point we discovered that it was the 5 year anniversary of John Paul II's death. The Polish people love him...because he was polish. She started taking our Book of Mormons and opening them up and taking our inserts out, then throwing them on the Ground... :( Then she pushed our whiteboard over, we put it back up and she tried again. She was a very disturbed woman... Elder Anderton was doing his best to keep her calm and the situation under control. Eventually some guy that was apparently with her, dragged her off. We kinda regrouped after that and assessed the situation. We picked a different question in case she came back. The new question was "Where does peace find itself" Weird in english, but that is the question in Polish. We had a lot of good contacts after that, and talked to a lot of great people :D It was a wonderful experience. Near the end of our time there this guy came over with a guitar, well, one of the Elders brought him over from nearby. He was really cool, but I think a little bit crazy. He was playing us a song on the guitart all about Jesus, it was very entertaining. He was staring at Sister Smith the whole time, who is just out of the MTC and Polish is still crazy. She is pretty, which is why I think he was stuck on her....Poor girl. After he was done singing and running away from the guy whose guitar he had borrowed, he walked up to Sister Smith and tried to kiss her!!!! She was quick though, and jerked her head back at which time Elder Anderton wrapped his arm around the guys neck and all us elders walked off with him. Poor Sister Smith... it was really funny though.
Saturday was yet another adventure. We were going to the Gładuns house to help them with some yard work, so we were dressed in P-Day clothes, but were bringing our suits with us to change at the Chapel later. We didn't know if the busses were on the weird Easter schedule yet, so we took the Bus at 10:05 because we needed to be at the Gładuns by 11:00. There was just one problem that we noticed after being on the bus for a while.... Elder Thomson had forgotten his Suit at the Bus stop!!!! It was on a hanger, hanging at the bus stop!!!! We hoped off at the next bus stop and started figuring out the best way to get back to our house. We quickly discovered that the busses were on their normal schedules :D Thank heaven. Somehow we made it back to our bus stop, to find that 4 Babcia's (Grandmas) had been guarding the suit, awaiting our return!!! How hillarious is that! We hopped on the next bus to the Głuadun's house, he kept the suit on his lap so he wouldn't forget again lol. Service was good at their house, it was wet, so it was hard to rake all the stuff into piles. They have this nasty weed that grows here, that is almost as bad as the nemesis weed we have in our backyard back home. They also fed us while we were there :D These awesome sandwhiches with really good cheese :) After that we headed for the chapel to change and get ready to watch a conference session from last year that we have on DVD with anyone that would show up. The only problem was...half way to the bus stop...I realized Elder Thomson didn't have his suit!!!! LOL so we headed back, yet again to the Gładun's to pick it up. The curse of the forgotten suit strikes again!!! We finally made it to the Chapel and got changed, just in time for Basia to show up 2 hours early..... We had just started our surface cleaning of vacuuming and straightening the chairs. She found out we were cleaning, and she set to work...deep cleaning everything is site... We think she might have OCD, which would explain a lot. She is super nice though, I really like her a lot. After the cleaning we finally got her to stop and watch 3 talks with us and talk about them a bit. It was a good experience.
Easter was interesting... First off, there is something that must be explained about Holidays in Poland. The entire country shuts down....for the day, and a couple days surrounding it.... Like EVERYTHING closes... And people, they don't go outside, they stay inside for these days and just sleep.... it is very weird. So, we went to the Gładuns Easter morning where they had tons of food waiting for us. Most of it was really weird food too.... I had to eat, this giant mushroom thing that I thought was a meatball right up until I tried cutting it....almost threw up eating that thing... And I also had to eat....Meat.........in jello.....absolutely disgusting...because yes, it was cold, and yes, it was actually covered in Jello....disgusting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They had really good hot chocolate though :D. They were watching a House marathon...all day... and they wouldn't let us leave...we couldn't come up with an excuse either because we literally had nothing we could go do, and they knew it. So we ended up watching 3 episodes of House before we finally got them to watch the Restoration video. Which we discovered they have seen hundreds of times....because they helped translate it lol...who knew. Then we tried to get them to watch Conference on the computer, only to discover that it was Audio only, and only live... So that didn't work either. Liar Liar came on in Polish and after a while of that we finally came up with an excuse to go, using a bus time as our reason lol. When we got home, we sat...and I slept....I was so tired for some reason, I passed out at 7:00 for the rest of the night too....it was really weird. And that was pretty much my whole Easter.
Monday, everything was still closed, so I still couldn't get the package that had arrived from my parents on Friday... and later in the day, after all our organizing and going through old records and shredding them with scissors..... We also discovered that my favorite Pizza place, that we order from every Monday Night before P-Day was also closed....I was not happy about that. All I had eaten all day was some spaghetti I had made myself for lunch, no breakfast...because I was also out of cereal. It was quite sad, I was so looking forward to that wonderful Pizza, hopefully we will get one tonight :D it is so cheap and soooooooo good. Only costs 24 zł which is like 8$ for a large pizza and dipping sauces!!!! and delivery!!!!!! Best deal ever.
Well I think that pretty much sums it up. We did go pick up my package from home this morning :D I am wearing the new jacket that my parents sent me too :D I like it a lot. Pictures will hopefully be up soon, but might not be up until next week :( sorry.
Thanks for reading!!! And remember to always stay HAPPY!!!!!!
Starszy Taylor
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