Super Packed Week

This week was pretty cool. We had tons of fun experiences I saw lots of improvement in the language, and we saw some cool answers to prayer.

The week kicked off with Sister McCleary and I babysitting Elder Garcia while we waited for Elder Burdick to get in from Katowice for their exchange. We had a lesson scheduled with a former investigator, Elżbieta, who texted us last week and asked if we could meet. So, we figured we just have Elder Garcia join us on the lesson. It went really well. I saw so much improvement in the language. I was able to say things I had no idea I could say, and I understood almost everything she said. The spirit was crazy strong in that lesson too, it was great.

The next day we basically had an Elder day, we had district meeting, then went to lunch as a district, then we did a whiteboard. It was really fun. After the whiteboard though we stopped back at the chapel to pick up our leftover pizza from lunch and prezydent Cieleński called. He talked to me for a minute and then said "Hey, can your companion give a talk this Sunday?" So I responded with "I don't know, how about you ask her." Sister McCleary, who was on the other side of the room talking to the Elders, realised what he'd just asked me and immediately started saying "No, No, No, No, No!" Until I handed her the phone and she was all "Hi, prezydent! Of course I'll give a talk." He'd heard her though so he just died laughing for a moment and all of us in the room couldn't help but laugh too.

On Wednesday Elder Burdick went back to Katowice so we babysat Elder Garcia again while we waited for Elder Remy to come in. We had to do a lot of traveling around for some reason, I can't remember now, and it always seemed like we couldn't get the trams we needed so we did a lot of walking. Which wouldn't have been a problem except that it was pouring rain all day, so We looked like drowned rats. It was all good though because Sister McCleary was super hyper and really entertaining. She kept switching accents at random and saying and doing crazy stuff, it was so funny, and the rain only seemed to spurn her on!

Thursday we had a whiteboard planned with the elders, and I was super worried about it because I had zero energy. I was falling asleep during studies and I couldn't concentrate at all, I knew I was going to be less than useless on the whiteboard. So I prayed to have energy because I didn't know how else I was going to get through it. On the way to the whiteboard I was still dead, but once we got there I perked right up and was able to talk to people and understand what they said just fine. It's really cool to see answers to prayers even when they are for simple things like that. Then that night I made Carbonara again, and this time it turned out much better.

On Friday we had an awesome lesson with Agata. She had a lot of great questions again, but we were able to answer them all, at least for now, I expect she'll have more the next time we meet. She's going to Paris this week so we wont be able to meet with her until next week. About 5 hours after our lesson she texted us saying "oh, zapomniałyśmy się pomodlić na koniec!" (Oh, we forgot to pray at the end!) She's so cute :)

We also contacted a referral we got from the łódź Elders and set up a lesson for Friday. Unfortunately we have to reschedule because we just found out we are having zone conference on Friday. We have several lessons scheduled for Friday that we have to change up, and we're not even having zone conference with our zone for some reason! We're going to Poznań and the rest of our zone is going to Warsaw... So yeah, we're just a little annoyed about that.. but whatever.

Saturday was crazy, we had a whiteboard with the elders, talked to a couple of really cool people. Met a girl who's dad was an investigator. We gave a book to a guy named Stanisław who was really interested in reading the Book of Mormon, and said he might want to meet with missionaries after he's read some, fingers crossed. At one point I tried talking to a babcia who walked away mumbling "Nie rozumiem" (I don't understand) I called after her in Ponglish (half Polish half English) (not quite loud enough for her to hear) "You rozumiesz mnie! (you understand me) Wiem to! (I know that!) My polish is at least good enough to be understood!" Sister McCleary was just dying laughing. We then got to pet a huge husky that was at least as big as one of the dire wolves in Game of Thrones, it was great :)

Then that night sister McCleary and I bought a disposable grill from the żabka under our house and had a grill on out balcony. We had meat and peppers and onions and pineapple and it was really fun and really tasty.

That night I also made cheese cake for the lunch we were having after church the next day. It turned out really good, if I do say so myself. The crust could have used a bit more work but the cake itself was a huge hit. At first I just took out a few rows and put it on a plate thinking maybe a few people would want some and if they ate it all I could get some more out of the pan. I realised quickly that I would need to move out the entire pan when the prayer finished and the first thing that happened was that about 3 people went straight to the cheesecake and grabbed a piece. Everyone was talking about my Sernik (cheesecake) and Prezydent and Sister Cieleński asked me for the recipe (or as he called it, "the directions" lol)

A funny thing happened during the lunch, the kids were all running around super hyper, Łucia and Amelka were chasing each other around the room, and at one point they ran toward the kitchen, past Elder Garcia. He reached out to scare Łucia as she pasted and she spazzed out, took a hard left and ran straight into the door frame. Łucia was totally fine but Elder Garcia was super worried, and Prezydent Cieleński (Łucia's father) just shook his head and said "not your fault" lol, I just died laughing, I couldn't help it, it was so funny.

Sister McCleary gave her talk too and it was so great, it was on prayer. I noticed a funny thing here that doesn't seem to be the case in US wards. In the US when a missionary is asked to speak it feels like it's a bigger deal, like we expect a lot out of the talk, it should be long, and not read from a paper, all of that. Here, because all the members know that their language is really difficult, it feels like a missionary's talk is expected to be on par with a child's talk. Not very long, read from a paper, contains a few mistakes, stuff like that. At least, the couple of times I've given a talk I feel like a little kid, lol, it's kind of funny.

Wow, this week that crazy, there was so much stuff I just had to write about it from day to day. That's basically all that happened though.

Kocham was!