The
reason I am short on time is because we decided to spend the P-day
hanging with some of the youth members of our ward. Cindy and Aj Call
and Ola... I don't know her last name. I might have mentioned the Calls
before, they speak perfect English, so I was able to talk to them just
fine, they talk to each other in Polish though, which is fun. Cindy and I
talked for a while about "Once Upon a Time" she and her sister recently
discovered it and have been having a marathon watching session. Ola is
actually the inspiration behind Olek, who Brat Tribe pretended to be and
Siostra Holden and I taught in the MTC. Brat Tribe and his companion
found her and she was baptised, and now she's known as Olek at the MTC.
She also speaks perfect English, with only the tiniest hint of an
accent. Anyway, we went bowling, and then got Pizza. Polish pizza
doesn't have sauce on it, just bread, cheese and toppings. The sauce
comes in containers and you spread it on top of the pizza or dip the
pizza in it. SO it's different, but still good.
Lately I've been noticing when we are traveling
around that often someone will come up to me and start speaking Polish
to me, asking for directions or something. If Siostra Whitely is not
with me, for example, if we are getting off a tram and she's already off
and I'm not yet, I have to just quickly say "przepraszam, nie mowię po
Polsku" (sorry, I don't speak Polish) and run away. I have determined
that the reason this keeps happening is because I look Polish. People
try to ask be directions because I look like I actually live in the city
and know my way around. Ha ha! I've fooled them! It's pretty cool
though, right? Once I can't actually speak the language properly I can really fool them.
This week was an Elder week, so called because it was all Elder days (except Saturday,
but... później). An Elder day is what Siostra Whitely calls it when we
don't have any lessons, so all we can do is contact. We have one
investigator, and she's already almost a member. Her name is Renata, and
she is dating Bobby Dudiski. I think I mentioned him before, He is "A
freaking kingdom builder" As Siostra Whitely put it. He has been a
member for a while now, he was inactive up until a transfer ago when
Elder Tingy got him to come back. All he said to him was "Robert, we
love you and want you to come back to church." And He came back. So
Renata comes to church with him, and is super awesome and sweet, and the
only thing holding her back from baptism is that she and Bobby are
going to get married first, I think.
Anyway, so we have just been contacting, and doing
work at the chapel, and advertising for English. So that's been kind of
exhausting, contacting is kind of draining. I still haven't gotten used
to the awkwardness of it and the frustration that comes from someone
straight up refusing to even let us try and talk to them. And as I get
better in the language I'm able to better understand what they are
saying to us, and sometimes they are straight up rude. Also, there's
JWs. Ugh! Jehovah's Witnesses can be so mean to us! We were contacting
in the park the other day and this lady heard us try to talk to someone,
so she calls us over, we get all excited because we think she's
interested. Then I hear her say something about the name of God and I'm
like, "oh no, we fell into a JW trap" So she was being awful to us and
basically like started trying to teach is, which is super annoying.
Siostra Whitely was trying to break off the conversation kindly, but the
lady wouldn't let her. Then I guess she started trying to use a
scripture that said something about Preaching to the world about Christ
or something (again, this was in Polish, and I can't remember what
Siostra Whitely told me she had said, so I didn't follow all of it)
Well, Siostra Whitely got annoyed and basically said (in Polish) "Yeah,
that's why we're here, to preach about Christ, now I don't want to talk
to you about this anymore, we're hear to teach, not to be taught,
dowidzenia", and then we just walked away from her, it was pretty cool.
JWs are actually like everywhere in Poland though, I wasn't expecting
that. Anyway, so contacting is frustrating, and I still kinda hate it
most of the time, but I'm trying hard to find something to like about
it.
We did have one lesson this week, a referral from
Siostra Zań. The Zań family are awesome, they have four boys, one who
just turned 8, two who are little hellions, and little baby who is just
about the cutest baby in the whole freaking world! His name is Piotr, he
has downs syndrome, and he spends all his time being cooed at by his
mom, his dad, his brothers, the missionaries, and all the ward members.
While we were planning for our lesson at the Zańs Samuel, the oldest,
came over to Siostra Whitely with Piotr in his arms. Next thing we knew
he was handing Piotr to Siostra Whitely. She was so shocked, she was
suddenly holding a baby and had no idea what to do. Just minutes before
she was telling me how badly she wanted to be able to hold him though.
It was funny though. She only got to hold him for about 60 seconds, but
she remarked later that those 60 seconds had been "glorious!"
Anyway, so our lesson went pretty well, we met with
Siostra Zańs friend Patrycja (not sure on the spelling). She had tons of
questions and was super knowledgeable on religion. I couldn't follow
most of what was said and even Siostra Whitely got lost a little, but
luckily SIostra Zań is a returned missionary, so she was able to answer
most of the questions, and she answered them all really well, from what I
understand. In the end Patrycja said she's not really looking for
religion, and that she isn't a believing person, but we all think she
is, but just doesn't realise it yet. Why else would she be so interested
in religions and be going to all these churches all the time. She took a
Księga Mormona though, and she might be up for meeting with us again
later, so we will see. After that SIostra Zań gave up some food, that
stuff mommy makes that is served over rice, it has sausage in it and
zucini and it's maybe Indian, not sure what it's called. SIostra Zań
made it with hotdogs though. At one point while we were eating, she
turned her back and SIostra Whitely quickly dumped all her hotdog bits
onto my plate. Right there is the benefit of having a vegetarian
companion :) While we were at the Zańs house there was a moment when
Siostra Zań and Siostra Whitely were talking, I wasn't really focusing
on their conversation, but I realised after a while that I had
understood everything they said to one another... of course, as soon as I
realised that I then lost track of the conversation again.
Oh, in Church Yesterday, President Czylański came up
to me and told me I remind him of Maleficent, from the new movie with
Angelina Jolie, I thought that was pretty funny. That's the second time
since the start of my mission that I've been compared to a Disney
villain the last one was the evil queen from snow white, I think I told
you all about that. Pres Czylański likes movies and is always willing to
discuss them, which is awesome for me, because most of the time that's
what I want to talk about!
I think that's basically the bulk of what happened
this week. Not a whole lot happened because it was an Elder Week. We
just went contacting, spent some time doing work at the chapel, hung out
with/did contacting with the Elders, and got to know some of the
members. If I think of anything else that I wanted to include I will if I
have time before I'm done emailing, but I might not have time. Siostra
Whitely and I have FHE at the Kowalski's at 18:30 (in an hour and a half) and we're not sure where their house is. We get to have a less active member lesson though, so yay!
Kocham cię
No comments:
Post a Comment