Christmas time is here! (Week 41)

Well, as transfers approach things have been getting kinda crazy. I was just flipping through my planner seeing what we did this week and it was pretty much a madhouse up here in Warsaw.

Elder Wilcox

Since Christmas is this Friday we have been doing a couple different things to get prepared for that, for example we have been going to all kinds of retirement homes, homeless shelters, and children's hospitals trying to find service/seeing if we can do caroling. Elder Cowley and I found a pretty good gig at this Retirement home. We went in and talked to the director and she was super excited that we were there and asked us to go on Wednesday and do a big old performance, we are basically their Christmas party. So we are going to do that and it's going to be awesome.

Other than that we have been doing caroling on the Rynek and handing out "A Savior is Born" passalong cards. We were actually just doing that last night, we invited some members and the other Warsaw district and we went and sang carols and talked to people. Elder Jeffs was given a Santa suit by President Edgren and little kids kept coming up to him and talking to him. It was pretty hilarious. He introduced himself as American Santa.

Old Town

Cool miracle that happened yesterday, in order to explain this I need to go back to All Saints Day at the beginning of the transfer. During the Open House on All Saints Day this guy Marek came in and started talking to Bogdan (Member). Bogdan is awesome, he has a lot of enthusiasm about the gospel, but he sometimes gets a little too excited and tells people a little too much. He talked to Marek for like and hour before we noticed and went and talked with them. At the end we gave Marek a Book of Mormon and got his phone number. Ever since then I have been calling him trying to set up a meeting and he always says that he will be in church and we can talk then. But he never came... Until yesterday. He came and he has read half the Book of Mormon already, he was super into Gospel Principles class and asked if he could borrow the book. Elder Cowley was talking to him and he said that he already feels like this church is true, so we will see where that goes. Also he really liked church, he said he felt the Spirit really strong. Super cool.

On Tuesday I had an Exchange with Elder Jeffs, because the Assistents do exchanges with all the Zone Leaders. It was awesome, he is super cool. We talked about being Assistent a little bit, he said that he was surprised at how involved they are in Transfers. To the extent that they decide some of the Transfers and President gives the okay. Elder Cowley and I tried our best to squeeze some information out of them about where we are going/what is happening next transfer but to no avail.

While we were on exchange we met with some cool guys, Michał is a former from like a year ago that got in contact with the sisters in Kraków somehow and asked to meet. He is awesome, he's about 28 years old, and is an entrepreneur. In high school he said he did Bible Competitions, which is a state sponsered sport apparently. And he even got extra points toward his college admissions when he won competitions.

We also met with Nazar, who is Ukrainian. He was really really cool, the sisters contacted him on a tram and he was mostly interested in English, but we slipped in a gospel lesson at the end. 

Other than that we are still meeting with Bogdan and Anatolii, Bogdan is going back to visit their family in Ukraine on Tuesday but Anatolii has to stay here because he is waiting on his Visa. We met with Anatolii on Saturday and it was a really good lesson. We talked a lot about Baptism, he wouldn't agree to a date to be baptized, but is going to pray about it. Bogdan has a huge test today so unfortunately he couldn't make it to the meeting.

Jessica asked about my French investigator. He is actually from Rhuonda, but he speaks French mainly, and medium English and Polish. If I spoke better french we could just teach him in French (its slow going trying to teach in English). He is busy through the holidays, so we are meeting with him again in January.

Sunday was fun, we had a Christmas Program put on by the Jones's in church. The missionaries sang a lot, and a lot of it was in English, but it was really good despite the amount of English that went on. But besides that there were a ton of non-members in Church. I think every companionship had at least one investigator in church. It was epic.

Then Sunday night we went around with the Jones's and drove to every missionary apartment in Warsaw I. They had to do cleaning checks, but they don't know how to work a GPS or find any of the apartments so we went with them. It was pretty fun. Also I got a big bag of Swedish Fish from the assistants so that was cool.

Alright, that's it for this week!

Love you and talk to you soon! 

-Elder Everett

"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

"What even is the church in America" -Elder Jeffs (Week 39)

HELLO!!

Unfortunately we are running extremely low on time right now, so I only have time for a short email!

We started the week off with an exchange with Elders Wynne and Torres, I was with Elder Wynne in our apartment which was really cool. It was strange being with him, because he was my trainer and everything. It felt like tables were turned a little bit haha.

Other than that, we are meeting with some cool people. A man named Emmanuel accepted a baptismal date for the 9th of January, so that will be cool. He is from Africa and his native language is French, I sure wish I had studied better in high school now! I might be able to actually communicate with him in french.

Since this email is so short I'll share a little bit of a spiritual though, along with the quote from Elder Jeffs that is my subject line. He said this during a conversation we were having about the church here. Its crazy because here the church is so small, and sometimes does not function very well, but the foundations of the gospel still hold strong. The church is built upon the rock of revelation, and because of that we know that everything in the church is inspired, and that it comes from a divine source. Even though surface level imperfections may arise, in the core we are rooted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Love you tons!

-Elder Everett

Thanksgiving in Poland (Week 38)

Lots of cool things happened this week, and I am very grateful for that because it's Thanksgiving, yeah!

So I started off the week with a train ride! Mom was asked about traveling solo, we generally travel alone unless for some reason someone else needs to go to the same place. It was funny this time with the whole train thing because there was a little bit of a mix-up. So I had a train at 17:54 going to Lublin, so we went down to the train station and there was a train sitting there and the little electronic readout said "Lublin 12:30" so I figured it was a mistake and got on the train, it pulls away from the station and I am looking for my seat, which was in wagon 19, when I realize that there is no wagon 19, it ended at like wagon 10. So I ask somebody and they tell me that i'm on the wrong train. So they tried to kick me off the train at the Warsaw East train station, but I started speaking fast English at the guy and that managed to confuse him enough that he validated my ticket and I got to ride the train (English is like a get out of jail free card).

Turns out that the train I was on was running 5 hours late and my train was like 40 minutes late, so that was the reason for the confusion. Oh Poland transit...

My Exchange in Lublin was really fun, we got to have an Active member lesson with a really cool member named Irek and then went and visited this crazy family. The Dad's name was David, he was from Jordan, and the mom was polish and they had a daughter, then there was also a random couple living with them, the girl was Polish and the guy was from Turkey. It was really interesting, they told us that the Quran testifies of Christ, just most Muslims ignore the parts of the Quran that talk about it. David and the Turkish guy were Muslim, but had very strong belief in Jesus Christ as the Savior of the World, and as the son of God, which was strange, but awesome.

The Exchange was really good, I think the other Elders needed it. Elder Schwanke is the Branch President down there which is a really hard calling for missionaries because we are so young, but missionary bp's still have to deal with welfare and counseling members individually. He is super solid though, he does a really good job. I loved Lublin a lot, I would like to serve there for sure.

So I'm going to skip ahead a couple days to Thursday, on Thursday night we had Culture night! So this transfer we had a decision between 2 activities, going to see the Moscow Ballet, or going to Filip's Cabaret (Filip is a member in our branch). The Assistants and We decided to go to the Cabaret, and I'm actually glad we did. It was hilarious. We went there expecting Filip, the member, to have a little role in it. Little did we know that he actually runs it, like he is in charge. It was in this cultural center, and it was full of really old people. It was very interesting listening to Polish songs, and random jokes. I fully enjoyed it.

Also on Thursday we had Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving was awesome, we had it at the Chapel and invited the Edgrens and the Jones's. Everyone brought a dish and we had a potluck style thing. It was amazing, very very American. Elder Jeffs also cooked a goose which was awesome, I have never had goose before I don't think. His was very delicious.

Other than that there was nothing super crazy, it has been cooling down a little bit. It snowed in Lublin for a couple hours, then for like 5 minutes here in Warsaw. 

And I am out of time for this week, Love you!

-Elder Everett

Call me Professor Elder Everett (Week 37)

Good week up here in Warsaw, we had some really cool things happen so lets get started!

I'll start with Friday because it was pretty awesome. So last week this guy that we briefly talked with on the street called us and asked us if we could teach 2 of his university classes about basic Mormon Doctrine, where our church comes from, who Mormons are in general, and about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon... so we said yes. Oh yeah, and everything was in English because it was an English class. It was super awesome, we made a PowerPoint with a bunch of scriptures and a couple Mormon Messages. The classes were only about 12-15 people and we just sat around a big table with a TV at the front. We started off with our presentation then opened it up for Q&A. It went really well, the first class was a lot lighter conversation, mostly they asked about us and what it was like living in the States, because it was an American Culture class. The second class asked us some heavy questions about deeper doctrine stuff. It was pretty fun trying to answer their questions with basic doctrine. 

After the class everyone took a Book of Mormon and we invited everyone to read and pray about it to know whether it is true. It was really cool.

We did a really fun White Board on Wednesday, it was with a pair of the Sisters near the university. It was kinda crazy because it was pouring rain and it was super windy so our whiteboard kept falling over. Also nobody wanted to talk to us because of the weather, but luckily at the very end we talked to this lady who was super interested in the Book of Mormon, and we were able to hand her off to the sisters right there. Yeah!

After the whiteboard for some unknown reason we decided to go get blizzards at Dairy Queen, that was really fun because we were already a little cold, then we went and ate a big old thing of ice cream. I started shivering basically as soon as we left DQ, it was crazy. Luckily the Dairy Queen is near the Metro Entrance so we weren't outside for very long and the Metro is warm.

In other news, we got to meet with this super cool less active named Luke. He is from the Congo in Africa, he speaks decent English, and decent Polish. He natively speaks French. We went to their house and hung out with his family, its kinda funny because he has a polish wife and his kids all speak great Polish (for children, kids generally speak really poorly until they are about 10) and he told us he wants help in learning because he doesn't understand his kids sometimes. We got to help him a little with Polish and deliver dinner that the sisters made for them. It was awesome.

Unfortunately we have run out of time! Love you!

-Elder Everett