Prepare to Serve

Monday, October 19, 2015

And Then There Was One

One more week! That's right y'all, my mission is coming to an end... It's OK, I'm not freaking out too much. I'm trying to make the best of the time I have and do everything I can to help leave Kato and Poland better than when I found it, and to make as many great memories as I can. This week was pretty good for memory making, we had a lot of fun things happen this week.

We had some fun experiences tracting. We got let in a few times, of course one of those times a woman let us in and then when when we knocked on her door and man opened it, looked at us like "Why the crap are you here?" and told us to go away. But another time it was a guy named Leszek and he was cool. We talked to him for a while, about how God is our Father and he loves us, and how he doesn't make bad things happen in the world (he was one of those "why does God allow bad things to happen?" people). He was very open to talking but didn't seem too big on changing right now, so maybe we'll recommend the Elders go check on him in a while.

On Tuesday we (as a district) went and had dinner at our Branch Mission leader, Lukasz's house. Elder Burdick was there on exchange, which was fun because he and Elder Weggersen were the ones who found Lukasz. We also had Daniel, a recent convert from Warsaw 1, there on a mini mission. So all 7 of us were crammed into Lukasz's living room, while his children ran amok around us. It was so much fun! Zuza, Lukasz's 2 year old daughter, really took a liking to Elder Park, and showed her affection by throwing little kinder toys at him. He would then pretend to be hurt, which of course made the game more fun for her, and slide the toy back to her, supplying her with more ammo! I was sitting right next to Elder Park, so I got caught in the crossfire a lot. Thankfully the toys were so small that they didn't hurt at all when they'd bean me right in the head.

I finally finished my most legit English poster ever!



​On Wednesday we really wanted to use it for an English whiteboard before English class. So we got it all set up and went out to do it. We took about 5 steps outside of the chapel when we realised it was raining. The poster isn't laminated, so it would be completely ruined if we used it in the rain. So we turned around to go back and just as we did a woman stopped Elder Park (who was holding the poster) and sis Allowitz who was next to him, and asked "I heard somewhere that you guys teach a free English class" (or something along those lines, it was in Polish). Elder Park, being Elder Park, just smiles and points to the Poster he was holding. She laughed at that and we proceeded to explain more about the class and give her an Ulotka (flyer) so she would remember. We then turned right around and went back into the chapel. We ended up leaving the poster inside and just invited people to English in the rain, but it was funny because it was the most successful 5 second English whiteboard any of us had ever had!

Thursday was a bit of a fiasco. We went to visit Anna (who just got baptized about 4 months ago) for a lesson, but she lives in Zabrze which is like a 30 minutes bus ride away, plus after we get to Zabrze we have to hop on another bus to get us close to her house. We got to Zabrze and went to find a bus to take us to her house. I read the schedule and saw that the 86 would take us there, and an 86 had just barely pulled up. So we hopped on, and were just chilling out when I realised we weren't going the right direction to take us to Anna's house. And the schedule said it was the 3rd stop and we were already at stop 4. So in a panic we got off the bus, right as it reached a stop in the middle of nowhere Poland. And double checked the schedule. Unfortunately I saw right as the bus doors shut and it drove away, that the bus does go the Anna's stop... it was just going Backwards along it's route for some reason... So annoying. Unfortunately the next 86 wasn't going to be there for 40 minutes and we were supposed to be at Anna's house 5 minutes ago, so we resolved to walk one stop back and hope we were given some other options. We called Anna to tell her we would be late, but unfortunately she has trouble hearing through the phone on a good day, and to top it off we were walking next to the highway, so she basically couldn't hear me at all. So we texted her. She's really patient and nice though so she was totally fine with us being late. Unfortunately, sis Allowitz realised that in the excitement of jumping of the bus early, she had left her water bottle behind on the seat. Sis Allowitz loves this water bottle so much, she found it in the Kato Apartment, it used to belong to Sis Slagowska, but now it belongs to sis Allowitz. She wrote her name on it 3 times, and carries it everywhere. She was sad, but put on a brave face. I told her we'd look for it if we managed to get on an 86 on the way back. We did catch an 86, but the water bottle wasn't there 😔. We did eventually get to Anna's house, an hour late. She was so sweet though and had cookies waiting for us. We had a great lesson with her, we had her choose a Christ-like attribute and teach us about it. Then we headed back to the bus dworzec. When we got there we saw an 86 pull up. We both quickly ran to it and checked the seat, but it wasn't there. So we went and asked the driver. When we asked him "Have you seen a purple bottle anywhere" all frantic like, he just looked at us like we were crazy and pointed to the dash board where sister Allowitz's bottle was. We both screamed happily, grabbed the bottle, and jumped off the bus (before it took us out to the middle of nowhere again) The driver still looked a little confused but was smiling now. And sis Allowitz admitted to me that she had been faking it when she told me she didn't really care about her water bottle, she loved it and had been devastated. We got it back though! It was a miracle!

Saturday was a wrench day! That means that a wrench got thrown in all or our plans! We had to re-plan our day so many times, and switch things around because we needed to do this thing, or someone called us and asked us to do this that thing. Or we forgot about this other thing we needed to do. The last time we sat down to re-plan the rest of our day, sis Allowitz and I didn't even bother trying to write it in the planner because it wouldn't have been legible.

On the bright-side... At the end of that frustrating day, we did know two very important things, we found out that we did not have to teach relief society, like we thought we would, woo! And that the Wrocław missionaries would be coming to district conference the next day. Which was super great, and not just because it meant I got to hang out with sis McCleary once more before I go home, but also because we needed them for our musical number. There was some debate over whether or not they'd be able to come, and it was really frustrating for us because we didn't know if we'd have enough people in our choir. It was a really good thing we had them though because we would not have had enough people singing, there were only 4 Elders singing, total, and 2 of them were Wrocław Elders, Elder Owens and Elder Lanterman. Our musical number went really well though, especially considering that Half the choir didn't even know the song, or even that they would be singing, until that morning.

Random funny stuff -

When we were on our way to Lukasz's house there were some teenagers near us on the bus. Elder Burdick asked them what stop we were at and they told him and then asked "You guys are Mormons, right?" We of course said "Yeah!". Then one of the guys told us he had met with missionaries for a while, but had gotten really busy with school and wasn't able to keep meeting. He said though "I like Mormons, they're way cooler than Catholics" We all died at that, it was so great and funny!

We met the cutest little kitty out tracting! We named her Pani Emma, and she let us pet her for a really long time, and was so sweet, and then followed us tracting for a little while, like our third companion... well fourth with the Spirit.

Our washing machine broke on Friday! It stopped draining. We don't know what the deal is. We thought maybe there was something clogging the line. We tried to take it apart to find out, and we successfully found some places in the line that were not clogged, but we couldn't open the part that we think is clogged, we didn't have the right tools. So tonight someone is coming over to fix it. In the mean time, we can't wash our clothes. We smell bad! Woo!



That's it, that's all I have to say about this week. It's crazy to think this is my last week on the mission. I have loved my mission more than I ever thought I would. I Never wanted to serve a mission when I was little, because I thought for sure it was going to be a year and a half in which I was not going to have any fun, in which I wasn't allowed to have fun. Instead, the mission has been the most fun thing I've ever done! Sis Whiteley told me in my first transfer, that if I wasn't having fun, while doing missionary work, I wasn't doing it right. I kept that in mind my whole mission and it's really helped me to love every second of my mission... even if some of the moments have to be loved in retrospect. I can still look back on my mission and see the changes that I've made in myself, and how even the crappy times helped shape me into a better person, and I can know that even those sucky moments were for my good.

Man, I don't want to leave Poland! I love this country so much, and the people, and the language! Even though it's flippin' hard! But I'll be back to visit, and I know that I need to continue on with the next stage of life. The mission isn't the end-all, be-all, it's just a side mission. An awesome side mission! Which has given me so much experience and skill points that I can used in the rest of the game! Czyli Life!

Kocham was wszystkich!

P.S. I have a Wacek update... I got a picture with him! The Man, the Myth, the Legend!

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