Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Week 34

It is truly amazing how fast time goes by... Even as it seems to take a long time during the day... This week was back to my good old Lublin travel schedule lol.

We took a trip to Puławy on Wednesday to have a meeting with Irina Żak, the Blind Member out there. She has decided to move to a more convenient location and was mostly packed up when we arrived. She is moving to Łódź to live with her son for a while until she can find her own apartment there. We had a nice meeting with her, and I was happy to know what was going on this time lol, since my polish has improved significantly since the last time I was here in Lublin. In Łódź she will be closer to the church, more members and have her son around to help her out. It Puławy she is all alone and it is really hard on her, especially since she is blind. She is so nice though, cooked us some great Polish food, it was awesome :)

On Thursday we had another trip planned, but this time to Zamość to see Maria Pusiek. She is so great to us aswell, always cooks us TONS of food...Like more food that I can fit in my stomach...we always leave there feeling bloated lol. At least it is good food, really good food. We had a nice meeting with her as well. She loves to talk, and it was a lot better this time too, because I can understand and contribute to a conversation... as opposed to sitting there and nodding my head...lol. She remembered me and was happy to see me back. She was amazed when I told her where I had been for the past 3 months. On "vacation" to Poznań and Wrocław, two of the prettiest cities in Poland :D. It is too bad that she lives so far away and can't come to church, but she is still a solid member, loves the church, reads her scriptures and prays. She is great.

Saturday we had a meeting at Noon with the Taiwanese members :) Which now consists of 3 people! It was so amazing to see Grace again, she has a new confidence and feeling about her, it is great. She always seemed so shelled up and quiet before and now she smiles more and just seems so much happier, I guess that is really what the Gospel does for people who let it. We set up a time to have an advanced English class with them to help them out with their schooling which is all in English. And we should be starting up Institute again here soon :) which will be great. They are so fantastic, the Branch here is very blessed to have them here as a part of it.

Sunday, we had our good old Lublin church. Had a decent amount of people come, about 8 member I believe. Marlena was there again, which makes 3 weeks in a row, which is great because Elder Thomson and I spent quite some time reactivating and working with her. Good to see something has come from it :D And of course I am back to doing most of the church service lol...I blessed both again this week, and also had the One talk... I gave my one on Diligence that I wrote in Poznań but I spent a lot of time the day before editing it... amazing how much you can learn in 3 months... Then we had a Sunday School Lesson from Beata :) She is a great teacher. Then church was over, about 70 minutes after it started... lol. We have been instructed to only have 1 Talk in Sacrament meeting in the small branches... So... we do what we can.

Well, that pretty much sums up most of this week. We are going to try and meet with Beata (investigator) this week, because she had to reschedule from last week because she had an Aunt die, pray for her. We have Zone Conference Tomorrow and that should be exciting.

Until Next Week,

-Starszy Taylor

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Week 33

And another week passed just like that. I had the opportunity to go on an exchange this past week to Warsaw. It was a little odd because it was scheduled for a Sunday, so I was going to be able to go to church in Warsaw for the first time. On the train there and the train home I took lots of really cool pictures of the Sunset and posted them online in my Mission picture album located here:

Mission Pictures

Enjoy, I uploaded hundreds of pictures recently so, I hope you all like them.

Church on Sunday was great, it was amazing to me to see how many people were there! I am use to church being about 10 people, and in Wrocław it was huge to me at about 20-25. Warsaw had like 70-80 people show up! We all barely fit in the Sacrament Room! Pretty much all the chairs were filled. It was also odd to not be playing a major part in every meeting. The members there actually ran church, it was fantastic to see a place where if the missionaries were not able to be there anymore the church would still function. Afterwards we had a great Break the Fast and tons of peole (as in practically the whole branch) stayed for that. It was great to see some of the members there in Warsaw that I have seen a lot because of how often I have gone there. Then afterwards the Young Single Adults were having a fireside at Presidents house but President had a problem hooking his computer up to the TV... so of course they came to me to see if I could come and fix it. Sure enough I ended up going over with Elder Lewis, who is an office Elder (I was technically an office Edler for a Day I guess) and I fixed it after a bit of tinkering. President was really grateful, and I was just happy to be able to still fix computer problems lol. After that I headed back home on the Train and took not quite as many (battery was almost dead) but very beautiful Sunset pictures.

Elder Loosli and I have lots of meetings this week including visits to the members who live in the neighboring cities of Puławy and Zamość. We are also going to Paul's English class later today just like I did 3 months ago :) It should be great. Well, I think that pretty much does it for this week. As usually we are always looking for people to teach, pray for us, we need it. People here are soooooo set on their culture that they don't really listen to anything you say. They have become so numbed to religion over the centuries that they don't really view it as an important part of their lives anymore. We are here to change that but need a lot of help, so pray for the Polish people, they have had a very hard History.

Until Next week!

-Starszy Taylor

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Week 32

Well, as it has so been decided, I am officially back in Lublin :D My companion is Elder Loosli, and as it turns out, he was the one who took me out contacting my first day in the country. He speaks exceptional polish and I am SUPER excited to learn as much as I can from him. He is a Marine in the US Armed Forces. He loves Cars and Photography, wants to own a race track as his dream job. We have a lot of fun talking about lots of random stuff. He is also 25 I believe, I think I have just had the 2 oldest missionaries in the mission back to back as companions lol. He is great though, we get along fantastic already.

So Ihad a really cool experience that I didn't have time to write about last week, but I still wanted to share it so here it is. Experience that Elder Allred and I had last Sunday (About 9 days ago). Earlier in the week we had a whiteboard and had gotten a contact and set up a meeting with a nice gentleman and Elder Allred wrote down all of his information into his planner so we could find his house later. On Saturday we had gone out to an activity at a members house about 2 hours away. And it just so happens that Elder Allred forgot his suit coat there, which had his planner in it! So when Sunday came around and it was getting close to the scheduled time we had set up to meet with Rysiek, we did not have his exact address or phone number, simply the street that he lived on. So we decided to go out a little bit early and start tracting the buildings hoping that maybe the Lord would lead us to his home. After walking the street many times and tracting 4 buildings we decided we were not going to find him this way. So we stopped on the side of the road and I said a short prayer asking humbly for the Lords help finding Rysiek. Right after the prayer Elder Allred had the impression that we should walk the street 4 more times, I felt that was a good number as well, so we started down the street. First time, nothing, second time, nothing again, and the third time, nothing, as we were finishing the fourth round we were about to cross the street in defeat and head home. Right at that moment Rysiek rounded the corner on his bike!!! Elder Allred and I just turned to each other in unbelief. We proceeded to have long meeting with him, during which he mostly just talked to us about his immense knowledge of the Bible, he didn't seem very willing to just sit and listen to us and learn something new. We both felt afterwards that that prayer had been answered more for us that for Rysiek. It was a great testimony builder about the power of prayer, and that god is always listening to us.

Church this past Sunday was great too, we had about 10 people come, but the real cool part was that Marlina came (Elder Thomson and I had just barely reactivated her before I left) and so did Paweł and his wife! I had never met his wife before, they live in Zamość so can't come very often and they have been pretty inactive for a while, but thanks to the diligent work of the Gładuns here in Lublin they were there on Sunday :D It was cool to see everyone again. The Gładuns are happy to have me back, and I am happy to be back, they are soo cool.

Well, I think that is about it for this week. I think the Thawainese members are back from their stay in Taiwan so we should be seeing them soon and working with Grace as a new member :D I am really excited for it.

Thanks for reading

-Starszy Taylor

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

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

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Week 30

I can't believe I have been in the country for 7 months already!!! (Well tomorrow it is 7 months actually...) Time flies by super fast when you are busy all the time!

Well, due to the fact that we are trying to go out and see a Castle today in a city about 2 hours away, I don't have a lot of time today for the Blog, but here is one good thing that happened this week

We finally had some success with some Street Contacting (Different than whiteboard) Elder Allred and I had been doing pretty lame on our contacting so we set some goals to start at 1 each and then add 1 per day after that. (We have been spending a lot of time helping Sister Kimball out in the Family History Center and soon we should be completely redesigning how the finances get done here... it is a mess and Elder Allred and I are going to fix it, with Presidents permission :D) So we went out on Saturday and had not had time the days before to contact because of other stuff so we had to do 20 on Saturday. Elder Allred does not exactly like contacting. So I had to take the initiative to get us out there and going, I contacted 6 before he got his first lol. Eventually around 10 contacts each we finally got someone to stop! He asked if we were Jehovas Witness... and then told us that he was looking for where their address was because he said he would go to church with them on Sunday... We told him we were Mormon but that we knew where an internet cafe was (He needed to check his e-mail for something) so we walked with him accross the Rynek to the internet cafe and there we showed him the church website, and I gave him a Book of Mormon! And we got his number. He actually seems like he has time and isn't rushing life, so I believe he will meet with us :D

We also were able to help with some service the Mission is doing for the Flood victims here in Poland. We were informed that Sister Nielson (Mission Presidents Wife)would be coming down to buy food for people that were in need on the border of Germany. So we got to go out and help load up cart after cart after cart of supplies for them to take out there! I have pictures and one of the members from Warsaw, Dorota, said she would e-mail me more :) It was a lot of fun.

Well, that is it for this week, sorry that the entries keep getting shorter and shorter each week, I will try and have a long one next week, like they use to be lol.

Love you all!

-Starszy Taylor

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Week 29

Hello Again everyone, I hope you all had a wonderful week :)

Well I guess I will just start with the sad news... Remember that really cool contact I had last week, with Patryk, who said he wanted a Book of Mormon so he could read it? Well, he never showed up to our meeting :( And when we tried to call him he told us that when he had time he would call us... Sad day huh (Now that I think about it, I may have said that last week...)

As for slightly better news... Last week we were headed out to see if we could meet with an inactive member named Robert. On our way out to where he lives, a decent amount of time away, actually ran into him! We didn't even really know what he looked like, but as we were waiting for a bus to take us a bit further he walked up and said, "Are you going to my house?" We were like "what!?...are you Robert?" He said he was and we got that all sorted out. He told us that he didn't have time to meet right then, but that we could meet on Thursday. We were bummed but had hope for Thursday. Thursday rolled around and at the scheduled time he wasn't there... So we waited...and about 30 mins later he actually showed up!!! I was super excited. We had a nice meeting with him and I think it was good for him to just have someone listen for a while. We are now scheduled to have lunch together each Thursday :D

We also had another pretty good experience this week when we were headed back to our house one night. We were walking by one of the buildings and there was a group of about 4 people standing outside one talking and smoking. One shouted out to us, which is usually a bad sign, but it sounded like he was actually curious and nice. So we went over and they asked us some questions about the church and why we are here. They were pretty nice to us and willing to listen. They also really loved the fact that Elder Allred is from Alaska :) We gave them some information and ended up talking with them for about 45 mins :) It was a nice treat at the end of a day. And an answer to a lot of prayers. They said they would definitely call us so we can talk more, and even if they don't, we walk by them almost every day ;)

I am still playing the piano in Sacrament meeting...ugh...but at least I am learning a new skill :D Talk about magnifying talents sheesh

Well, that is pretty much it for the week. This week we are going to the Calls house about 2 hours away, (The kids you see in my pictures are the Calls) on Saturday, should be a blast :D

Thanks for reading :D

-Starszy Taylor

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Week 28

Whew... with that fiasco last week trying to get the blog posted I feel like I just did this and don't have very much to talk about.

One pretty cool thing did happen this week though. We were doing a whiteboard. It was raining a little bit and so we weren’t really that excited to be outside. Our first question was pretty much a flop, so we decided to change our question to an English invitation. Shortly therafter I had like 3 different people come up to me and ask how long it was free, lol I told them it is always free, they were shocked. Later a guy stopped nearby so I went up and talked to him. He asked a few questions and I told him who we were and why we’re here. I told him a little about the Book of Mormon and he seemed slightly interested. Just before he walked away I handed him a pass along card and invited him to our English class. He left after what was a reather awkward contact. We continued our whiteboard for about another hour with little to no success. Then right before we were leaving the same guy walked by again, I said Hi to him and he shyly came over to me and asked how he could get the book that was on the pass along card. I practically jumped out of my skin... If you have ever seen "The Best Two Years" I was like the older Elder when the guy accepted a committment. I told him we could meet with him and give him one and he replied that that would be great. He told me that he needed the Book so that he could read it! I was super excited and took down his information so I could call later and set up with him.

That was the miracle part.

The sad part is that he didn't show up for the meeting we had set up and when we called him he said that he didn't have time and that "he would call us...". And that right there is the story of my mission thus far, as sad as it is. All you can do is just keep chugging along I guess and hope that someone actually finds 30 minutes in there life to stop and talk to us. Because lets face it, no one is actually THAT busy...

We also went to TGI Fridays this past week :) Yes, we did find one :) I used some of my birthday money to buy a nice meal. Which was the most expensive meal I have bought in Poland. It was like the most expensive thing on the menu actually... like 46 zł!!! That is a lot for a missionary, but when I think about it in dollars it is like 15$!!!!!! Would be like 30+ in the states I think. It was really good...

I also got to see the Gładun's this past week :) They came through Wrocław on their way back to Lublin from their first visit to the Temple :D How great is that :) They are sooooo cool. I love them

We also climbed a tower with about 2.34 billion stairs in it. (jk, it wasn't really that many...but it was A LOT) Got pictures of Wrocław from a great perspective, will upload them soon, perhaps even now, for my poor mother.

Well, I think that is pretty much it for this week. The weather still can't decide if it wants to be cold or hot or humid or rainy...yesterday was hot, today is rainy...weird stuff

Love you all :D

-Starszy Taylor