The Plague!

The start of this week was awesome. I mentioned last week that we'd be going to a castle. Well, that's what we did, and there was so much snow there that it was literally past our knees in some places. Unfortunately the castle was closed, so we couldn't get in... fortunately there was a little section of courtyard that was separated from the rest of the castle because you could easily climb into it. So we went there and had an epic snowball fight! It was so much fun! We hid around in the windows and broken sections of the castle wall, and ran and jumped and dove all over the place, and at one point elder Taylor shoved Daniel's face into the snow, it was hilarious! Unfortunately I lost my badge... but it was totally worth it! We weren't even cold, until the drive back, then we were freezing.

That was really the highlight of the week though, because the rest of the week was kind of a bummer. We had legal work to finish on Tuesday, which we thought was only going to take like 30 minutes, but ended up taking like 2 hours. We also has a bunch of stuff break in our apartment, so our landlady and one of the building maintenance men had to come by and fix everything, twice.

We also, had plans to meet with this awesome girl we met a few weeks ago. She was so cool, and really interested in everything we told her. We had this meeting scheduled for like 2 weeks, and we were texting her about it, and she always responded really quickly and was super excited. And then the morning of she wasn't there, we waited 15 minutes. Sent her a text, fifteen more minutes, tried to call, it was busy. A few minutes later, she texts us, she got in a car accident and was in the hospital! It sounds like she's OK, but we haven't heard much from her since then. That was really sad though.

We had a tiny highlight after that because we finally got to go to institute, and it was also fat Thursday so after institute we got lots of pączki (donuts) and we got to have a lovely relaxing chat/lesson with Daniel about how we can bring back the less actives. SO Thursday night was pretty fun, but when we got home Sister Smith was feeling sick and went right to bed, leaving me to make her Sister Training Leader calls for her. Sister Smith coughed all through the night, and barely got any sleep. And the next day she was dead on he feet.

So, we stayed inside all day on Friday, and we were so bored! We watched The Testaments, Legacy, Ephraim's Rescue, and 17 Miracles, and while Sister Smith rested I walked her through a few episodes on The 10th Kingdom. We also played Uno for a while, but sister Smith was too weak to hold the cards, so I would hold them for her and she would point at which one she wanted to play. We also had the Elders running errands for us, because we didn't have enough food in our apartment to last us the whole day, and Sister Smith needed medicine. By the end of the day Sister Smith was starting to look and feel better, at least enough that she could walk around the apartment and could write in her journal.

That night Sister Smith woke me up at 3 in the morning, she had been coughing and couldn't get to sleep at all. She thought if I told her a story it might help her get to sleep, so I told her the entire plot of Shrek, because she said she didn't remember it too well. The next day, she was feeling awful again, and partway through the day I started getting chills and feeling sick to. We both slept for a big chunk of the day, and eventually forced ourselves to leave the apartment for a little over an hour, to go to Elder Weggersen's Norwegian class, because we could not stay couped up inside for two straight days! That night we celebrated Valentines day by watching Legacy :)

We managed to feel well enough to go to church yesterday, and even stayed through all three hours and the coordination meeting after. But after that we went straight back home and languished in our illness for the rest of the day. Today we both have horrible coughs, and some chills, but for the most part we are OK.

This week wasn't without funny moments though...

One of the members here, Zygmut, he always hands out candy at every branch function, before church, after church, at branch activities, when he comes to clean the chapel. On Saturday he came to the Norwegian thing, and he gave us all yummy lemon candies. Then, on Sunday, before church, after seeing me and Sister Smith in our illness on Saturday, he handed out cough drops to everyone.

I had a funny moment on valentines day, when we finally left the house, I was so happy to be out and was soaking up every minute. But after a while I realised there were very few people outside. I looked around and most of the people I could see were couples. I thought to myself. "What's going on, where is everyone? What is this a holiday? probably some crazy Polish holiday, there are millions of them! All I see are couples, what is it, some kind of couple holiday?..." And that's when I realised that it was Valentines day, and that made me laugh.

This week at English we were all waiting for Wacek to say something ridiculous to Sister Smith. She was kind of avoiding him. He kept going in an out of our class for the five minutes before it started. But eventually decided to go to the Elders' class because the clock we used to have on the wall broke. Five minutes before the end of class though, he came back in. And at the end of class we were waiting for him to say something to sister Smith, instead he came up to where I was sitting at the front of the class, leaned in and whispered "You are a sitting girl!" then smiled smugly and waddled away... lol, I really think he just uses whatever vocabulary he knows, and, is also crazy.

That's basically it for the week. It was extremely uneventful, and it was not fun to be stuck inside with nothing to do for days. But i am hopeful for this week. We are both feeling somewhat better, Sister Gammon is coming here from Kraków on exchange tomorrow, and Sister Owen will be spending a few days with us too.

Kocham was

Quite the Kerfuffle

You may remember that last week i said we were going to a castle... that didn't end up happening. We found out just as we were about to leave that Elder Connelly was going to be coming back from Warsaw and the Elders would need to be in town in order to pick him up. So instead we went and got pizza and were planning to take it back to the chapel to eat it while we waited to first, find out when Elder Connelly would be coming in, and then until he actually came. The problem was that when we got to the chapel there was something wrong with the door, we couldn't turn the key enough to unlock it, and we didn't know why.

We tried everything for a while, then gave up and ate our pizza on the stairs, then tried to open the door again for a while. We thought about climbing onto the balcony and going through the windows but they are all locked from the inside. We tried the spiral staircase that leads to the kitchen, but it was locked. We even tried calling the Landlord, but he didn't answer his phone. So instead we called Prezydent Urban, who happened to be getting lunch at the mall nearby. We joined him for lunch and talked deep doctrine with him for a while before going back to the chapel. We then got a locksmith to come by and check the door. He pounded on the door, and kept trying to turn the key, and basically did all the same things we had already tried...

SO, then we called Jessie, who had keys to Prezydent Urban's office (because he forgot his keys at his house) and Jessie came and opened the office. Then he and Prez went through a huge box of keys in there and pulled out some that they thought might go to the kitchen door, through the spiral staircase. So, we went there, and as we were trying to unlock the kitchen door, we heard a babcia (granny) from the floor above yelling at us. She had heard us walking up the spiral staircase, and I guess she thought we were trying to break in. We tried to explain to her that we were locked out of our church but she kept telling us that all the churches are outside, there aren't any churches in this building. And we were like, "no, seriously, we live here", and she was like, "no one lives there!"

Anyway, it was a bit of a fiasco, and we couldn't get the door open because there was another lock on the inside of the door that we couldn't unlock from the outside... Finally, Elder Burdick, on a hunch, picked up a random key off of Prezydent Urban's desk and tried it in the second lock on the front door (the one we never use because we don't have keys to it) and that worked... for some reason... anyway, this was after several hours of trying, so that was basically our p-day... at least it was an adventure :)

This week we also had another exchange, I went to Kraków with sister Petersen, and we had lots of fun. We taught a fun English class with the Elders in which we had fake job interviews and we basically just made up a whole bunch of ridiculous reasons why we are qualified to be astronauts. Things like "I can survive in a vacuum atmosphere" And "I've already gone to the future and met aliens, and now i speak their language." Also, Elder Hubbard let me play with his 2 by 2 rubiks cube on the bus ride back to Katowice for zone training (we were having zone training at the end of the exchange, so instead of going back by myself, all of the Kraków missionaries came with me) I expected that playing with this rubiks cube would take up some time in the journey and occupy me for a while, but when he handed it to me, I messed it up, and solved it in about 30 seconds...

Because we had zone training this week we got to go to Wrocław on Friday, that was super cool, though it was bitter cold there. We got to eat at Frankies which I'd been wanting to do for a while, and we got to hang with the Wrocław missionaries for a bit, but we had to leave soon after zone conference ended so we didn't get to stay and have lunch and chat with them. We had a good train ride back though. We started talking to a girl in out train compartment and had a really great conversation with her. Elder Weggersen was being hilarious and ridiculous, and told us all a long story in Polish about an epic battle between two kings named Frank and Bobby... I thought there was going to be some point he was making in it, but there wasn't, he just told us all a random story, lol. The girl seemed more amused than bewildered by his story though, so whatever.

After that we had a "girls night" with Kaja, we got ice cream and watched "Jospeh Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration" the 2002 good version. Sister Smith was really excited to so us this one, because I've never seen this version, and we were pretty sure Kaja hadn't either. When it started though Kaja was like "I'm pretty sure I've seen this before", Sister Smith was like "Are you sure, what do you remember about it." and Kaja said "Is is super cheesy?" lol, that just cracked me up. I love that movie, but it is super cheesy at some points. The 2002 version is much less cheesy though... I don't understand why they took that version and edited it to make it not as good...

On Saturday Elder Taylor came back from Warsaw, so we celebrated by getting lunch with the Elders, and eating muffin's he had brought with him from Warsaw. Sister Smith and I also started our Polish week! We are really trying to only speak Polish to each other this week. So far we've had a few moments where we had to break into English because we just could not get our point across, but so far we've done pretty well.

Yesterday morning, we woke up, took a look outside and saw a winter wonderland... it had snowed so much! We left our apartment for church bundled up with big coats and hats. I wore my new bright yellow gloves and hat that says "Hello Sunshine" (sent by mom and the relief society ladies, thanks for the package!). I turned to Sister Smith at one point and asked her "Can I go contacting in this hat?" And Sister Smith replied "I don't want to go contacting with you unless you wear that hat!" lol. Anyway, on the way to church the snow was so deep, and the wind was so strong that I had to basically hold on to Sister Smith the entire was so she wouldn't fall, especially since her hood kept blowing in front of her face and she couldn't really see for most of the journey. It was very entertaining, we made it though, and a few members even made it too :)

Today it's still snowing, we hope it will stop and clear up and eventually become summer again, but for now, we'll just need to keep braving the cold... We're also planning to go to that castle again today... hopefully it works out :) wish us luck!

Kocham was!

All Kinds of Crazy!

This week was pretty awesome and pretty crazy, we kicked things off with an exchange. Sister Smith went to Wrocław with Sister Holden, and Sister McCleary came here with me. We had a fantastic time! Sister McCleary is a ton of fun! She's from Utah, and used to work at Desert Star, and she had a lot of stories for me about it. Sister McCleary told me all kinds of hilarious stories during the exchange, but that's not all we did, we also had a lesson!

On Monday morning as we were getting ready for our p-day activities we suddenly got a call from one of our investigators who we hadn't been working with for almost 2 months. Her name is Lara. She asked if we could come over for lunch and a lesson. So Sister McCleary and I went to visit her, she made us soup and then, basically told us she wants to get baptised. I was so shocked at first that I think I asked her to clarify like 3 times. "Okaj, jeśli rozumiem, chcesz zostać ochrzczona?" (Ok, if I understand, you want to be baptised?) She just laughed, she said later that she was amused by how we just lit up at the very mention of baptism, we were like "Yeah, it's so important! We know what it means that you want to take this step, you want to come closer to Christ!" yay! It was really great. I was a little worried about how the lesson would go though because sister McCleary is only in her first transfer and I knew that I was going to be talking a lot, but it went fine and I was able to say a lot more than i thought I would. there were even a few moments where I found myself speaking but I had no idea what word I was going to say next until I was saying it, just like those missionary stories you always hear :) We weren't able to set a date before we had to leave to catch our bus though. But we met with her again on Sunday and talked to her more about it and what to expect and helped her pick a day. It's still not official yet, she wanted to pray about that day to see if it's the right time for her. Pray for her guys!

So yeah, that was huge, and now everything else in the week looks a little less exciting by comparison, but really, that was the most important and exciting thing, everything else is just funny. On Thursday we went tracting, and had a hilarious experience, which is usually the case with tracting. We had just started on a new floor when two ladies came up in the elevator. So Sister Smith turned and started talking to them. Their first question was "Are you Jehova's Witnesses?" I didn't hear what their response was when Sister Smith told tchem that we're not because the woman who's door we had just rung came and I turned to talk to her. She gave me the "nie ma casu" (I don't have time) and shut her door. I turned to see both women facing Sister Smith and talking quickly while she looked a little shocked. Then I noticed that the women were dressed similarly to us... JWs...

lol, we had accidentally tracted into JWs and somehow started a scripture war, as is usually the case when you start talking to JWs. What those poor ladies didn't know is that Sister Smith is a master scriptorian, and her face lit up like Christmas when they asked her to find where in the bible it says that Jesus is Jehova, not God. Lol, I mostly just stood there and watched while Sister Smith pulled out scripture after scripture, confounding the JWs. It was actually a very civil discussion though. Sister Smith has nothing against Jehova's Witnesses, her father was associated with them before he joined the church and he always invites them in when they come by, so she's used to them. It was a very entertaining experience though.

One of the funniest moments of the week happened on Wednesday, at English. I think I wrote about Wacek last week, and his strange comment to Sister Smith. Well this week he had more things to say to her. I don't know how it happened, but they seemed to have started a vendetta against one another, and the results are hilarious. This week, before English started the front door was shut, we usually leave it cracked before English because it can't be opened without a key. There was someone knocking at it for a while but we didn't hear it at first because they were knocking very quietly. So Sister Smith finally noticed and ran to go get it. When she opened the door and woman walked in, and the Wacek poked his head around the door and strolled in like he owned the place. He then pointed at Sister Smith and said "You are a terrible girl! Very beautiful, but terrible." and then walked off.

Then he then did not come to our English class as he usually does, but instead went to the Elders Weggersen and Burdick's class. When class was over, Sister Smith went up to Elders Weggersen and Burdick and was talking to them about something when Wacek suddenly walked up to Elder Burdick and said -

Wacek - *pointing at Sister Smith "Did you know, that she is a very ugly girl?" Sis Smith - "Hey! You want to say that to my face Wacek?!" Wacek - *raises his arms victoriously and walks out of the room backwards with a look on his face that says "yeah, I just said that!"

Lol, it was so funny, Sister Smith and I could not stop laughing about it the whole week, Wacek is so crazy it's hilarious.

Well, that's basically it for the week, lots of fun, super exciting. This week should be really great too, today we are going to see a castle, so we're kicking the week off nicely.

Oh, also, I'm acting as district leader for the next couple of days, heh heh :) Elder Taylor (our actual district leader) got really sick on Thursday night, and had to go to Warsaw to visit a legitimate hospital, (because apparently we don't have any of those in Kato... which is a little disconcerting...) we're not sure how long he'll be gone, but while he's gone, I'm the only person left in Kato who doesn't already have a title (Sister Smith is the Sister Training Leader, and Elders Weggersen and Burdick are the Zone Leaders) so I've taken the role of District Leader :) yay for mutiny!

Kocham was!

Mini Mission Magic!

This week was full of all kinds of awesome! First off, We had Cindy Call, I mean, Sister Call, with us, serving a mini mission, and that was awesome! She is the best! We were able to speak a lot of Polish with her, and she taught us a lot of cool stuff about pronunciation, and she was just a rockstar missionary in general.

We went tracting Tuesday night, following up with the tracting letter again. We got through most of the building with no success. we met a few people who said we could come back, and there was one very kind lady who was really sick and is going to be getting surgery soon who said we could come back in a few weeks. We've been praying for her.

And then, just before we finished the building, we got a guy who hadn't received the letter, but was super nice and interested.  He let us come in, and we talked to him about the restoration, and gave him a Book of Mormon, invited him to come to church and he said he'd like to learn more, though he's very busy with work, so we're not sure when we will be able to set up with him again. It was really cool though, and we were very lucky to have Cindy with us, because he had a lot of questions, and we didn't know what he was asking most of the time.

As we were leaving the building too we ran into a woman who we had talked to earlier, she had gotten the letter and read it, but still didn't really understand who we were, she thought we were Jehovah's Witnesses. She had been super nice to us when we knocked on her door though. We explained who we are and she seemed a lot more interested once she understood that we weren't JW's, and we were able to give her a book.

The next day the Edgrens arrived in Kato, bringing tons of food for the Zone Conference on Friday. We helped them get all the food put away, and prepped the chapel a little for it. We also had English class, and had a very entertaining moment right at the beginning. There's one guy in our class who is quite a character, I'm not sure if I have mentioned him before or not. But his name is Wacek and his kind of old, and sometimes makes odd comments at odd moments. Just before class started, he walked up to Sister Smith and said to her "Last week, you weren't beautiful, but this week, you is very beautiful." Lol, it was really funny especially since last week he walked into our English class, stayed for about 30 seconds, then turned around and went to the elders' class instead haha!

Friday was Zone Conference, it was a "mission tour" where Elder Charles (one of the seventy) and his wife traveled around to a couple of different missions and basically just talked to us about goals and recognising the spirit, and our purpose as missionaries and all that. It was really cool. Elder and Sister Charles are super cool and really nice.

That night Sister Smith went with the APs to Warsaw because they would be having another Leadership training thing on Saturday, and Sister Call and I stayed in Kato together. We went tracting again Saturday night to pick up the last couple of doors we had used the tracting letter on. We finished tracting those doors really fast, within the first hour, and our bus wasn't coming for another hour, so we decided to just tract another nearby building without the letter. I chose a building that I felt we should go to, which had lots of lights on. That made me both excited and apprehensive because it meant one of two things, either we'd get let in right away, have an awesome lesson and finish just in time for our bus, or we'd get a ton of rejection.

I felt like we should go there though, so we did. And we got a lot of "no"s Sister Call and I made the most of it though, we were laughing and talking about Kung Fu and The Last Airbender, and just having a great time. At one point we found a bird doorbell, that made chirping sounds when you pressed it. That person wasn't home too so we pressed it a lot, lol. We had a few crazy things happen, a few people opened the door having clearly just come from the shower. One woman yelled through the door that she had been taking a shower, but said we could come back later. And one woman said no, shut the door, then opened it again two seconds later and yelled at us how we're young girls and we should be working, and shame on our church for making us do this, and crap like that. When she shut the door, Sister Call and I couldn't help but bust out laughing, it was just so bizarre, lol.

We almost got through the whole building though and we're going to need to leave because our bus was coming in about 10 minutes. But I really felt like we should just finish the building, so we kept going. The fourth door from the end was a big beautiful fancy door, and Sister Call was commenting on it saying "This looks like the door of a business man, I bet he's nice." just before the door opened. I introduced us, but had trouble getting the whole introduction out, because I was distracted by the cutest little puppy who ran out and started jumping all over me, trying to get me to pet him. Sister Call and I both broke down and started petting the puppy, while talking to the owner. He was a super nice guy, and was really interested in everything we had to say. He let us come in and we decided we'd just catch the later bus. We had a really great lesson with him and again, I was super happy Sister Call was there because he had a ton of complicated questions. We ended up teaching him right up until the next bus arrived, and hour later, and he said we could come back, and asked if he could come to church (he wasn't able to come yesterday though because he already had conflicting plans). So yeah, it was a really great experience and we're really hopeful about him, unfortunately, we realised on the bus ride back that we forgot to ask him his name... cause we're the worst, lol.

That's basically it for the week, it was a lot of fun. I'm a little apprehensive about this week though because it was starting to warm up at the beginning of last week but on Saturday it took a dreadful turn for the worse and now we have snow everywhere outside. It's really good snow for snowball fights though. Sister Smith and I were joking about pelting little kids with snowballs on the way to come email today. We saw this adorable little boy with his grandma (he was probably about 2 or 3) and Sister Smith was all "Oh my gosh, he's so adorable!" And I was like "I know, he's so cute I want to throw a snowball at him!" Anyway, so yeah, the weather is bad, but I'm still hopeful. Pray that spring arrives in Poland, cuz I'm sick of Winter.

Kocham was!

Mormoni, W Bytomiu

This week was super fun, we had Łukaś, a recent convert from Karków, here on a mini mission with Elders Weggersen and Budick. Łukaś is an awesome missionary, and he's really funny.

This week was the week of innovative finding activities! We planned out a bunch of cool ideas for out of the box finding activities, and put a few into action. This biggest one was shoe shining! We decided to have a big district finding activity and shine shoes for free. We went to Bytom, a city about a half an hour from Katowice, by bus, (because we are also trying to spread out away from the chapel) to do it. And it went really well, we got some good contacts from it and people really liked it.

There was one really cute moment, when two little boys came up to Elder Taylor and the older one asked if he could shine the younger boy's shoes. His shoes were not the kind of shoes that needed shining, but Elder Taylor told him he'd clean his shoes for him. So the little boy, all excited, sat down on the chair and Elder Taylor cleaned all the dirt off the boy's shoes. He was really happy, and it was adorable :)

Sister Smith also talked to a woman who was unfortunately at work, so she didn't have time to talk much, but she was really interested, and told us to go into the art gallery where she worked and get her email from the people there so we could contact her. So while getting her email we got to visit an art gallery for a minute, it was pretty cool, but it was very much a modern art gallery, and had a lot to do with hair. Looking at some of the pieces made me think of "the ring", and kind of creeped me out, I assume that was the point of it though.

While we were doing the shoe shining stand two teenage boys came by and started talking to us. They had heard about Mormons and were interested to hear a little about us. After a few minutes though, three girls (friends of theirs) came by and the boys called them over saying "Mormoni, w Bytomiu!" (Mormons, in Bytom!). They all gathered around while Sister Smith, Elder Connelly, and I talked to them. It was pretty cool, teaching 5 people at once.

We also started up sport Saturday again. It used to be a big thing here in kato, we have pictures all over the place from sport Saturday and various other YSA activities, we also used to have a lot more YSA. So we decided to start it back up and we got a great response from it. We had quite a lot of people come and we had a great time. Łukaś and I played frisbee for most of the time and got pretty good with it by the end.

We had a bit of a chaotic morning though, trying to get to where we were going to have it. Prezydent Urban planned it all, and didn't tell us a whole lot about it until the morning of, so we didn't really know where we were going when we set off for it. Daniel had brought his car too, and couldn't find a parking place in Katowice so he was going to have to drive there. So Sister Smith and I, and Elders Connelly and Taylor rode with him, and we got super lost. it was really funny. We ended up having a great day though, and when we rode back with Daniel after sports day was over, we stopped at the drive through at McDonalds which I haven't done in months :)

It was also pretty funny because the place Prezydent Urban had picked out for us to have Sports Day at was a school with a huge fence around it. We got there and Prezydent was like, "OK, now, we climb" and he just hopped over the fence" We weren't really sure how OK it was for us to be there, but it all worked out. When were were leaving though I climbed over the fence and as I did Prezydent said to me "Sister Lillywhite, now, you are a real Hoolie Girl!" lol.

Also, last night we tried out the tracting letter for the first time! We only got through half of the building and there were quite a few people who weren't home. We didn't get to teach anyone, unfortunately, but, there was a really cool guy who said we could come back later (he had his family visiting and couldn't talk) Most of the people we talked to had read our letter though and were prepared for our arrival, so even when they turned us down we had a much more positive response and a lot fewer angry people. woot! We're going back this Tuesday to try again and pick up the doors that didn't answer, so we'll see how that goes.

That's all the really important stuff that happened this week, it went by pretty fast, and now I can't remember a lot of what happened.

Exciting stuff for this week though! Cindy Call from Wrocław is coming here on a mini mission. She'll be here later today, and she'll be staying until Sunday! It's going to be really cool, I can't wait!

Kocham was!

Rubik's Dodecahedron

This week was pretty chill and not a lot really happened. There were random holidays on Monday and Tuesday, that I didn'tt really understand the purpose of and which were kind of inconvenient for us because all the stores were closed, but such is life in Poland :)

We spent a lot of the week preparing these tracting letters we're going to start using in the mission. It's basically a letter explaining who we are and what we want to talk to people about and they have a time on them when we will be by the building to tract. So we drop them in peoples' mailboxes and come back later at that time, and then, if they want to hear our message they know we're coming, and if they don't want to, they can't get mad, because we warned them. The problem with tracting the classical way was that often people would just slam the door before they even knew who we were, and usually they'd assume we are Jehova's Witnesses, but now they will know! It's gonna be cool, Kraków has been using them for like a month and a half and they've seen a lot of success from it.

We also had to Zameldować this week, which basically means we had to declare to the courts that we are living in Katowice, or something like that, I'm still not totally sure what it is, but I was supposed to do it last transfer, and when we tried they freaked out and said I needed to wymeldować first (whatever that means). We finally got it sorted out though and both Sister Smith and I got it done. It was pretty crazy though, a lot of paperwork, and we had to have our landlady there, and we got help from Elder Taylor, cuz he was an office Elder for a while and knows how all this legal stuff works. My favorite thing to do when we're doing legal work is to wish the person who helps us a good workday when we leave, it always just brightens their day. When I said it to the first woman who helped it she was kind of shocked but very appreciative, it was cool :)

I've also seen a ton of improvement in the language this week. I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but I've been reading the Book of Mormon side by side in Polish and English, The Other Side of Heaven style, except that I try to translate from the English into Polish before I read it in Polish. Anyway, it's been super helpful, and I had many moments this week when I was talking and noticed that I was able to say things quicker and easier and case words correctly more instinctively.

Friday was the ninth, Which means I've been on a mission for nine months! so as a district we had dinner and celebrated my halfway mark! The time is going by just way too fast! That day I also solved a Rubik's Dodecahedron, czyli, a twelve sided Rubik's cube that isn't a cube at all. I borrowed it from Elder Taylor, who borrowed it from Elder Burdick, and I solved it in one day. And I've solved it quite a few more Times since, it's really cool :)

That's mostly it for this week, it just flew by, I barely even noticed time was passing, but that just seems to be the nature of the mission.

Kocham was!

New Years!

Hey guys! Sorry, I don't have a ton of time to email today because it's some holiday I've never heard of today and so both of the libraries we normally email at were closed today and we've had to take turns emailing on the one computer at the chapter and Sister Smith and Elder Burdick both took forever and and a day to email.

So!

This week was Zone training, and since my companion is Sister Training leader I got to experience it twice, but it's all good because one of those times was in Wroclaw! Yay! So I got to hang out in Wroclaw again, so that was awesome, unfortunately it was on New Years day, and we forgot that when we left, so none of us ate any breakfast that morning. So, one 3 hour train ride later we were in Wroclaw and starving and we couldn't get any food, so we wandered around the rynek for a little while before training started, looking for a  place that was open, any place. It all worked out though because the Wroclaw Sisters brought us some food.

We had some really cool experiences with a new thing Elder Burdick talked about in zone training. He and his trainer would pray to be able to see someone they should talk to the next day. So, the night before New Years Eve we tried it, and when we did it I pictured a pair of eyes with dark eye makeup and sister Smith thought of a woman with short brown hair, who was waiting. The next day, we were walking towards the chapel and passed a woman waiting for her tram, with short brown hair. So, we stopped and talked to her, and she was super cool, and really nice, and at one moment during the conversation she looked at me, and I recognised her eyes as the ones I had seen in my mind the night before. It was so cool! Unfortunately she had to run for her tramwaj and I gave her a Restoration pamphlet, but realised later that it was in English, for some reason, I don't know how I got English ones in my bag. But, even so, it was a really cool experience and we've been doing it more since and had other cool experiences with it.

New Years day was pretty crazy. New Years is a big deal here, and the fireworks would be super illegal in Utah. It literally sounded like bombs were going off in the street, they were deafeningly loud. We also had to be inside by 5 for our safety, but even at 3 we felt very unsafe walking the streets because people were already setting off bombs. It was really cool though because We were allowed to watch a lot of movies that we normally can't really watch. So Sister Smith and I borrowed Elder Burdick's flashdrive and had a movie marathon. We watched Baptists at our Barbecue, One Good Man, and The Other Side of Heaven. It was fantastic! I haven't watched a feature length movie in almost 9 months and it was so needed! It was fantastic and I really enjoyed all three movies, especially, strangely enough, Baptists at our Barbecue, mainly because many of the situations in the movie (the tiny branch, the crazy people, the weirdness of everything) reminded me so much of Poland! It was awesome!

At Midnight we were awoken by the street exploding outside! I took some video, I'll try to see if I can upload it to dropbox, if I've got time. There were fireworks going off right behind out building, in the middle of the street, it was crazy. And then, Kaja called us, to wish us a happy New Year, so that was fantastic!

There's not too much else to tell about for this week, at least not with the short amount of time that I have right now, sorry about that.

Kocham was, I hope you all had a great new years and that you will have a great week this week :)