Back In Kato

This week was crazy, and long, but really good. I think the first week of every transfer will probably feel super long, because of all the change and whatnot.

At the start of the week I was with Sister Bąk and Slagowska in Katowice. Slagowska left for Wrocław on Tuesday, she is serving there with Sister Holden. And Bąk left for Kraków on Wednesday after Sister King got in, she is serving there with Sister Petersen.

On Tuesday, after Slagowska left Sister Bąk and i had a meeting with Barbara, a recent convert, and Krystyna, a long time member. We went to Barbara's house and had Pierogi, and shared Uchtdorf's talk "Grateful in any Circumstance" because that talk is awesome in any circumstances! :)

Bąk and I were both pretty nervous about it, because we set up the meeting when we thought Slagowska was still going to be in the area and she knows Barbara and Krystyna better than we do. Also, neither Barbara or Krystyna speak any English , and Bąk and I both struggle with Polish, so we weren't sure how dinner and the talk and everything was going to go. But it ended up going great! We had such a fun night. Sister Bąk has a lot of trouble understanding Polish, and has some trouble speaking, but she tries so hard that she actually manages to communicate to a decent extent and Polish people find her really endearing and entertaining. And I understand really well but struggle with formulating sentences quickly enough for conversation to flow naturally. So we actually managed to balance each other really well. Bąk talked a bunch and even made some jokes, and when Krystyna or Barbara said something she couldn't understand I translated for her. We laughed like the whole time, it was really good.

We had a really funny thing happen the next day when we took Sister Bąk to the train station to buy her ticket back to Kraków at 19:00. she walked up to the ticket counter and said "Po prosę o dziewiętnaście bilety". The woman stared back at her with a look a shock, and Sister King and I, both realising her mistake, waited to see if she would catch it and correct herself... She didn't so we had to do some quick damage control and let her know that she had just tried to buy 19 tickets... It was hilarious, the we all got a good laugh out of it, including the ticket lady.

Now I'm with Sister King, she's from Draper, and she's super fun. We've been having a great time this week. And Katowice is a cool city. It's got a lot of construction right now because they are building a proper Rynek.

When we were on a bus on Friday I noticed the girl near me was reading Harry Potter 7. So I positioned myself so that I could do a little language study and try to figure out where she was in the book by what I could understand. It was pretty difficult because a lot of the words were way over my head, but eventually I came to a line when Harry said "Gdzie jest Luna?" and from there I was able to figure out that they were at Xenofilius Lovegood's house, right after he reads the story of the three brothers. Also, in Polish, Xenofilius is Ksenofilius. It was really cool though, and I was able to follow a little more of it and pick up a few new words.

Saturday was totally crazy. Sister Ott's family came to Poland to pick her up, so even though she technically finished her mission, she was still running around Poland, and still technically a missionary. So, while she was visiting Katowice, where she finished her mission, she wanted to visit an investigator named Beata, and introduce her to her parents. She also had us come along so we could get to know Beata, and Krystyna was there too because she referred Beata to the missionaries. We had a really good time. Beata is awesome, we had a good lesson with her. After that we had to go get supplies to make lots of pancakes. The branch was having a fireside/party for a senior couple who used to serve here in Katowice and were visiting after finishing their third mission in the Ukraine. They had Pizza for dinner and then, because this is Poland, they wanted Pancakes for dessert. So we had to make up a huge bunch of pancakes it was absolute chaos in the kitchen. 4 of us crammed in there, people coming in every few minutes to ask where the pancakes were. It was super fun though, even so.

Yesterday was District conference so all the members from Wrocław, Kraków and Kielce came to Katowice. It was really cool. I got to see all the members from Wrocław that I just said goodbye to the week before, and I got to meet a bunch of new people. However, now I'm not so sure who are the members I will be seeing every week here in Katowice and who I wont be seeing all the time.

They announced a really cool thing yesterday, Poland is getting a Patriarch! Sometime next year. Wow! We are super excited about it, the church is growing here!

Well, that's basically all for the week. At least, that's all I can remember, a lot happened, so much so that I can't remember it all, it was pretty crazy.

Kocham Was!