One year older ... and wiser too! (Week 63)

HELLO!

It's been a good week this week, we got to meet with some good investigators and had some good experiences.

We had District Meeting on Tuesday, which was pretty much the first real district meeting we have had all transfer. We talked about finding, specifically about attitude because a lot of the time if you don't have a very good attitude towards finding you can make it harder on yourself to find than is necessary. It was really good, we had the Kielce Elders as guests because they are all alone in Kielce so president told them they can come to our District Meeting if they want. After that we had a couple of meetings, we had 3 back to back with Joey, then Maya, then Jake. Our meeting with Joey went really well, he is from the Ukraine but speaks really really good Polish. It is almost impossible to tell that he is not Polish. He is super cool, the lesson went well. We taught him the Restoration and he accepted to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it.

After that we had a lesson with Mayaa, it didn't go to well because she and the member we had on the lesson started fighting about the fall of adam and eve, and it just didn't go well. We totally lost control of the lesson. We were afraid that Maya was not going to want to keep meeting with us, but we are still meeting so it's all good.

Then after that we had an awesome lesson with Jake, he is really progressing well. We talked about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and really focused on Baptism and the Gift of the Holy Ghost. We tried to commit him to a baptismal date, but he wants to think some more about it, and he will pray about it. Keep him in your prayers!

Then later we went back to Pani Krystal's house, whom we tracted into the week before. We went in and she sat down and basically explained that she doesn't think she can keep meeting with us and she wanted to give back the Book of Mormon because she feels like she can't change her religion. She went to her grandson's first Communion and she said she thought about us and what we told her the whole time, and decided that regardless of whether it is true or not she wouldn't be able to change either way, because she is so deeply rooted in Catholicism. It was really sad, we left the Book of Mormon with her and told her that if she ever wants more in life to start reading.

On Wednesday we got to meet with a cool guy named Matt, he is full Polish, but both his parents were born in America and he lived there his whole life. He took us out to Hot Chocolate which was really nice, hot chocolate here is different by the way, they just melt chocolate then put it in a cup and you can add whipped cream then drink it. We taught the restoration, he is baptist and he had a couple concerns about more scripture, and people appearing to Joseph Smith. It was overall a really good lesson, he gave us a couple baptist pamphlets in exchange for the Book of Mormon. They were actually really uplifting, it was cool.

Thursday we had our first meeting with Maya after the Tuesday fiasko, and she invited us to meet at some random address out in Nowa Huta, which isn't even where she lives. So we were kinda sketched out that she was going to have a catholic priest on the lesson or something and we were going to get bible bashed. We went out there, and to our pleasant surprise she introduced us to her friend Johnny, who is also really interested and we had a first in his apartment. It was awesome. He is a super down to earth, cool guy.

On Friday we had a cool Chalk Talk, we drew a maze on the ground at Rondo Mogilskie, it was pretty big, then we had people walk through it and try to find the exit... but it was impossible to get to the exit though. Then when people got frustrated we told them "the purple lines don't count" and then they could walk straight out. Then we gave them a little spiritual thought about how when the gospel was taught by Jesus Christ it was simple, but through apostasy it has become overcomplicated, just like the maze. But through the Restoration it is simple and straight again (simple and straight are the same word in polish). We found a couple pretty interested people. There were some Jehovah's Witnesses a couple hundred feet away, and we went and invited them to come try the maze at the end, to which they responded "we have our own jesus" then ignored us.

That night we got to go to one of our member's houses Lucas, he is from Argentina and he is super cool. He fed us shish-kebabs, they were super good. He is awesome.

On Saturday we got to meet with Joey again, we taught him the Plan of Salvation then tried to commit him to baptism, he said he needs to think about it. He had a really cool experience though. Long story short he was walking back from the train station at like 4 in the morning after helping one of his friends, and it was pouring rain, but as we was walking he found a Russian New Testament on the ground which is his native tongue. So he took that as a sign that he is on the right path.

Sunday was cool, it was my birthday, which was fun. The Daltons had us over and made Burritos :) and they made this really good strawberry cake. It was really really nice.

Thats about it, love you guys!

-Elder Everett

Diligence (Week 62)

Hello!

Good stuff this week, it was good getting to start off the week with some face to face contact with you guys, definitely a blessing. We started off on Tuesday with a bunch of lessons, we had back to back lessons from 13-17 with Bev, Tommy, Maya, and Jake. It was super good, Bev was just English help, but that was fun. Elder Wood was falling asleep the whole time during that one. Tommy was good, we talked to him about the Plan of Salvation we didn't get all the way through though. Then after that we met with Bev and Maya, we taught about the Gospel of Jesus Christ so basically repentance, baptism, faith, holy ghost and all the good stuff. It was kinda funny because they walked in acting all weird, we asked them if they were all right and they said not really but wouldn't tell us why. We ended up sitting down and they explained that they had looked through some Anti-Mormon stuff, so we answered their questions then taught our lesson. It ended up going really well and Maya actually committed to be baptized on the 11th of next month, so we will be working towards that.

Bev and Maya are kinda funny because they have a very strange relationship, they are best friends but sometimes they get in fights. For example they are in one right now and Bev won't answer phone calls from Maya, they are awesome though.

Our last meeting on Thursday was with Jake, he came back to church last week and we set up a meeting, he has read the whole Book of Mormon and said that he believes it is true and that Joseph Smith is a prophet and he even said that he feels that answer is from God. Seriously an awesome miracle. We just need to help him understand what that means for him, that this church is the only true church. I think if we got him to understand that he would be willing to join the church.

We totally dropped the ball on Wednesday, we had a meeting set up with Ally on Thursday and we asked Sally if she would come be on the meeting with us, and she was willing, but for some reason when i was telling her about the meeting I said Wednesday... So when Wednesday rolled around we got a call from Sally wondering where we were... It was super bad, so she was kinda mad at us, but she said we could make it up to her by helping her with English so she isn't mad anymore. Also she flaked us when we were planning on helping her with English so we are even.

Later on Wednesday we had Zone Training, we learned about Diligence and finding people, and inviting people to get baptized and stuff. So pretty classic stuff.

We actually met with Ally on Thursday, it was pretty good, she didn't really read so we talked about the importance of that.

We went out to visit Adam on Saturday and his roommate joined our lesson, they are both from some branch off of the 7th Day Adventist church. His roommate Soren knew the bible really well, and I was actually really surprised that he basically understands all the basic doctrines of the gospel correctly, like we were talking about the Priesthood being restored to Joseph Smith and he was describing the difference between the Melchizedek Priesthood and the Aaronic Priesthood really well. It was fun. It was also cool because he would support the stuff we were teaching with the bible while we were teaching.

Sunday was good, we had a somewhat light sacrament meeting attendance but we had a couple visitors and there was a good amount of people. There were too many English speakers and not enough head set translators, so I had to translate from the Pulpit which is always annoying because it slows down the meeting a ton.

Other than that, there isn't much crazy news from this week, love you guys!

-Elder Everett

Dużo Cudów (Week 61)

Dużo Cudów this week. I'll probably just tell a couple of the stories that I told during our skype and include any others that I happen to remember.

So on Tuesday we had a miracle, mostly because it was just a really good day overall. It really restored my faith in a line of the white handbook which says that sundays and holidays are the best days for teaching and finding. My past experience with trying to tract on holidays has been a lot of rejection and people getting angry, but on Tuesday, which was constitution day here, we had a lot of success tracting. Actually we set up a return appointment which we are going to tonight. He told us "Its funny you guys came because I am actually really interested in your church." That was pretty cool.

We also had a couple other good conversations but nobody set up that time.

We also got a new investigator on Tuesday, her name is Maria. It was really interesting how we got in contact with her and her friend Basia. So basically Basia called and told us she wanted to meet and so we set up a meeting knowing literally nothing about her. She came and brought her friend Maria (Marysia is the same person, so i might use both names). Basia is a member, she was baptised in Chicago, but she has been inactive fore about 7 or so years. But she wants to get active again, and her friend Marysia is interested in the church, and seems to be pretty serious about investigating. They are a bit older, but really really nice. This was a direct answer to prayer too, because we have been praying to find more Polish members, and we were thinking we would find people to baptize, but the lord decided to send us a less active.

On Thursday we had a cool experience tracting, we were doing our normal gig. Basically knocking doors and telling people who we are. And eventually a lady let us in, so we went up to her house (the building had 3 floors and each one had a different living quarters, her kids live on those floors). We sat down and got to teach her about the Restoration. She was also a bit older, but really willing to listen and committed to read and pray. And when we asked if we could come back she said "I don't think so, I already have faith, I'm not looking for anything else", but right then she was flipping through the Book of Mormon and read: "Wo be unto him that shall say: We have received the word of God, and we need no more of the word of God, for we have enough!" And she read it out loud to us and basically said the book quoted her. So she said we could come back. Awesome

Then later we kept tracting, and we saw these huge storm clouds running in. So Elder Wood and I counseled with each other to try and decide if we should stay and keep tracting, or go back to avoid getting soaked. So we prayed for guidance, and didn't feel anything too strongly, so Elder Wood said "Lets keep going!" So we turned around to keep tracting and right as we started walking towards the storm we saw a huge lighting bold streak across the sky. We took that as a sign we needed to go home. When we got home we went to grab some food at the supermarket under our house b/c we had no food. And we got into line, and the guy ahead of me in line kept staring at me so I said "Cześć" he replied "Hey! Hows it going" in English. I said good, then he checked out and left. Then when we left we saw him waiting for us .Apparently we contacted him like 3 months ago and never got ahold of him. But he still wanted to meet, so we set up a meeting. Miracle.

We were set up with this lady to teach English at a high school she worked at on Saturday. That was kinda funny, because we went and nobody was expecting us, but we eventually found the class. It was really awkward because we went in and explained who we were, and all the students were like "No, we don't have anything planned today..." (liars, why else would they be in school on a Saturday). So we asked if they would be interested anyway in having a quick English lesson. But they told us they were just about to go home, then started leaving. It was super lame.

On sunday I gave a talk, It was pretty good. It was about Baptism, I kinda had to wing it because I had no time to prepare much, but it was good nonetheless. I also had to play piano for two hymns in church because the Daltons were in Kielce. That was rough. I played Praise to the Man (right hand only) and There is a Green Hill Far Away (right hand only) and Elder Wood played We thank the O' God for a Prophet (right hand only) It was really really bad, neither of us are piano players. But we didn't disrupt the spirit too bad, so it was okay.

Okay that's all the stories that are coming to my head right now, so I'll finish up. I love you guys and know the church is true!

-Starszy Everett