Monday, December 14, 2015

"Nie płacz, Starszeczku!" - Barbara (Week 40)

Hello!

Another great week in Warsaw! The weather is still warm, its about 7 degrees Celsius. It was even warmer earlier this week, so maybe we wont get a white Christmas this year... We will have to see. There are only 2 more weeks of this transfer, but President kinda hinted that Elder Cowley and I might be staying together for another transfer, and by hinted I mean he told us that we were probably going to stay together because next transfer is only 7 weeks anyway.

Elder Everett as King Herod
We had our Branch Christmas party on Saturday, which ate up a lot of our Friday and almost all our Sunday. We helped set everything up and make food, it was funny while we were cooking because Elder Cowley and I were cutting onions, but onions are a lot stronger here than in the States. I was completely weeping, I could barely keep my eyes open they were watering so bad. And Barbara (a member) kept making fun of me, "Nie płacz, Starszeczku!" "Don't cry, Elder (super diminutized form of Elder though, so it was more funny)." So yeah, that was fun, then on Saturday we had the actual party. I got enlisted to play the part of Herod in the Primary program, I am 100% sure that Sister Edgren took pictures of that, so if she didn't send them to you, you can probably find them on Facebook or her Instagram or something.

That was really fun, and Bogdan and Anatol came so it was really good. They got to meet the branch president and a couple other members, as well as all the other missionaries and President Edgren.

Something really funny, well funny for us, happened on Friday. During studies we got a call from Sister Carlson, we had planned a whiteboard with them for later that day so I picked up the phone and she was like "Hey, sorry the whiteboard's off... And... all the sisters have lice, so can you get us some lice shampoo." It was kinda hilarious, we spent all morning going around town finding Lice shampoo and bringing it to the sisters, because the sisters live way far away from us, the first set of them are on Wola which is kinda close, like 30 minutes away, but the other ones are on Bemowo, about an extra 45 minutes away from where the other sisters are, so we spent all morning doing that, then we went to the chapel to start helping the Branch President set up for the Christmas party. Fun!

Speaking of spending all day doing things, yesterday we went to Białystok again. We had a 7:30 train so we had to get up a little bit early, then we went to Białystok, where it is much colder than here, and it was raining all morning. Then after Church we were planning on going to visit Patrycja's Grandma, but she canceled on us, and we had a referral to visit out there, but he told us he wasn't going to be home, so we had planning on being there until 17, but at this point it was 12, and we had nothing to do out there. So we went to the Dworzec to try and find a way to switch our train time, but we couldn't switch it. Luckily Sister Jones is a lifesaver, and she let us buy another train ticket for earlier and we got to go home on a 13:30 train so we spent most of the night in Warsaw, instead of being stuck 3 hours away from home for the whole afternoon. 

We sat with a really cool guy on the way to Białystok on the train. His name was Adam, and he was a Pentecostal. Which is super cool because there are very very few Protestants in Poland. I asked him to share his conversion story with us because I have found the Pentecostals tend to have pretty cool stories to share, he told us about how some little girl cut off part of her hand (I didn't quite understand how that happened) then the whole Pentecostal congregation at this wedding prayed and her hand was miraculously healed. Goes to show that faith really can work miracles. I shared with him the Joseph Smith story, I have found that Pentecostals really like the First Vision story because they are totally into God appearing to people and Angels and things like that. He was really really nice.

I got to go on exchange with Elder Wilcox from Łódź, he came up here and we served in our area. It was really fun, we took dinner down on the Old Town and saw the massive Christmas tree they have set up there. We got to do some good missionary work too, we met with this man named Marcin. We are trying to work with him on getting his life in order, he is currently out of a job, and we are pretty sure he is homeless. He is really cool though, and love learning about the church. And he has been to church like 10 times so that is cool.

Funny story about the beginning of the Exchange. On Monday night we put Elder Cowley on the train, then I was hanging out with Elders Burdick and Jeffs. So we were driving away from the Dworzec and we get a call from Elder Wilcox, who had missed his train. And we realized a couple minutes later that I forgot to get the keys from Elder Cowley. So I got to sleep at the AP apartment for the night, without being able to go to my apartment for toiletries or a change of clothes or anything, it was pretty fun. It was actually really fun staying with the Assistants, they are both hilarious.

It all ended up working out though, because Elder Wilcox came in early the next morning (they woke up at 4:30 to make the train) with the keys, and I got to get in the shower and get everything in order without any problems.

Well, that's going to be it for this week.

-Elder Everett

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