Greetings from sunny Poland, where it has been above freezing pretty much everyday this week.
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| With Elder Mulder and Jakub at the Sanctuary of Godly Mercy |
It's been a good week, we started out with an exchange with
the Kielce elders. They both came up here (which is how we are supposed to do
exchanges now) and we spent Monday night, Tuesday and part of Wednesday
together. It was really fun, on Monday we had a meeting with a Less Active
because she asked us to show her how to use a computer because she got promoted
at work and needs to use one now. So we showed her how to turn it on and off,
and type. It was pretty funny because neither of us knew any vocab about
computers in Polish so it was interesting.
On Tuesday we did a couple of fun things, we went out to
this area called Mydlniki and looked for some old investigators that the elders
found like a year ago, then for some reason stopped teaching. Unfortunately
almost everyone we talked to said that their husband (who was originally
interested) was not home, or nobody was home at all. But we will go back and
eventually find those people.
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| After rock-climbing activity. Vlad is on my right. |
We also went out to Nowa Huta, which I talked about last
time I was here in Kraków. Its basically a super cool little city about 30
minutes east of Kraków by bus. We went out to do some tracting and we actually
found some solid people. We talked to this guy who was Brazilian, but for some
reason spoke Polish really well, and left him with a Joseph Smith brochure
(which is my favorite brochure the church uses).
On Wednesday we had a Hot Chocolate finding activity below
the Dalton's apartment. We gave out free hot chocolate and talked to people
about our church. The whole time I had this internal struggle raging about
wanting to go over to a bus stop across the street and give a sermon to the
people waiting, standing on the bench, unfortunately I chickened out, but I am
going to prepare so that next time I will overcome my fear and just do it. For
some reason some things in Missionary work are really scary. I don't know why,
but standing up on a bench and preaching to a group of people is terrifying for
me. but hopefully I will be able to overcome my fears and spread the gospel
everywhere I can.
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| The drive to Nowy Sącz. |
After that we dropped off the Kielce Elders (Elders Garrison
and Weiler) at the train station and went to go print off some tracting
letters. Which are basically little letters that describe who we are, what we
are doing, and when we are going to return. We go around and hand those to
people with a copy of The Family: A Proclamation to the World. It works pretty
well, people tend to actually listen to us when we come back the second time,
regardless of whether they read the letter or not. It was funny when we printed
it off this time though because I have this workout video on my thumbdrive that
President put on our mission's Google Drive, and it's really funny the
stretches and stuff they do look ridiculous. When Vlad (the guy who works at
the copy shop) was printing off our letter he looked at the video and said
"what is this" then went and clicked on it, so we watched like the
first couple of minutes. We were laughing pretty hard, and Vlad thought it was
hilarious, and the other guy who was in the copy shop thought it was pretty
funny as well. Good times, luckily we know Vlad pretty well (he's kinda an
investigator) and so it wasn't super awkward.
We had English class later, our English class here in Kraków
is interesting. We have 3 levels- Beginners, Intermediate, and Advanced. We
teach Beginners, but most of the students speak English pretty well. This last
week was really funny because we spent most of the time telling jokes in
English, and them telling us jokes in Polish.
Elder Mulder had a pretty good Polish joke: basically there
are 3 turtles who are planning on going on a trip across a big desert. They are
about to get started when they realize they don't have any supplies, so they go
buy a big head of cabbage. When they are about to get started again they
rethink things and decide they need to go buy more food, so 2 of them say to
the third "You stay here with the cabbage while we go buy more food. But
DON'T eat any cabbage, not even one little leaf. Do you promise?" Then the
3rd turtle promises he won't even eat one leaf of the cabbage. So the Turtle
waits while his friends go to get more food... he waits for an hour... then 2
hours... then all afternoon... then the whole night... and the next week... and
he ends up waiting for 2 years for his friends. After 2 years he is starving
pretty bad, till this point he has will powered through and didn't eat the
cabbage, but finally he gives in and takes a bite. Then the other 2 turtles pop
out of a nearby bush and yell "AHA!"
I hope you thought that was funny because I don't understand
why it's funny at all... Polish humor...
The title of my email means something like "May God
give you happiness". Its what you are supposed to say to Nuns and Priests
instead of Dzień Dobry which means Good day. I included it because we contacted
someone, and he wasn't interested, but at the end of the conversation he told
us "Szczęść Boże" which I don't think anyone has done to me before.
It made me feel good because basically he recognized us at Ecclesiastical
Authorities. Pretty cool.
So on Thursday we went out to Nowy Sącz to visit some
members who live there and try to get in contact with some Less Actives. The
Daltons drove us out, we visited one of the members out there and him and his
wife (who isn't a member) fed us lunch and we gave a spiritual thought. The
food was delicious, they made these things called Gołąbki which translates to pigeon. They are little dumpling things filled with rice, super good. Then we
went and split up into two groups, Elder Mulder went on a split with one of our
other members out there, Alex and went contacting in the city center, while I
went with the Daltons to try and find less active members. We found one, kinda.
We were looking for a Father and a Son and an older lady opened the door and
told us the Father is in Germany and she has no contact with him, but the son
might live there. She told us he did live there initially, then changed her
story and said she didn't know where he was. So hopefully we can find him in
the future because he is 17 years old and would be a great addition to the
branch.
Later that night Elder Mulder and I went tracting and we
talked to an interesting man, he came out to his fence to talk to us and while
I was explaining what our message is, he cut me off and asked me if I would
stop speaking with an accent. I told him I didn't know how and continued. Then
later he cut me off again and asked where we are from, we told him from the
states and he broke into English for a split second and said
"Really!?" then he told us since we are in Poland we will speak
Polish (thank you). It was funny because at the end of the conversation he
switched into an American accent while he was speaking Polish, which I have
never heard anyone do before. It blew my mind, I had not realized how different
we sound from the way poles sound. We plan on going back to his house and
asking if he will help tutor us on our accent while we practice giving our
missionary lessons (sneaky right?).
Well that's about it for this week. Thanks for everything!
-Elder Everett
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