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!

Slow Week

This week was pretty slow, We had a lot of our plans fall through. But we still had some good times.

We had some good lessons with Agata, she's a investigator that Elders Torres and Jackson were teaching last transfer. She is awesome, super sweet, and she asks tons of great questions. We met with her twice this week and both times we had really great discussions and were able to answer a lot of her questions. Some of them are really hard to, we've had to thumb through the scriptures right there to answer a few of them. But it's really great because we know it means she's really thinking about this stuff.

The branch came up with a cleaning schedule for the chapel last week, and we were chosen to clean the chapel this week. So, all of us missionaries went to the chapel on Saturday and cleaned it, it wasn't too big of a job, but even so, Mariusz (one of the members here) offered to make us dinner at the chapel afterwards. So he and his wife came and made us boiled potatoes and breaded chicken and this strange salad stuff made out of cucumbers and cream, which was surprisingly tasty. It was really good. While they were making the food we watched this "face to face" interview with David Archuleta on LDS.org. It was filmed just after he got back from his mission, so he was still a little awkward, lol. We had fun laughing at some of the funny things he and the hosts said, and making fun of the camera guys, who could not seem to get a shot of the stage without getting another camera guy in it. It was also a pretty good interview though, David said some pretty cool stuff.

After we were done cleaning the chapel we stayed behind to send out a few texts before we forgot. While we were alone in the chapel we found Elder Garcia's iPod, he had forgotten it. I tried to mess around with it but the code lock was on. However, even with the code lock on it still allowed us to take pictures :) So Sister McCleary and I proceeded to take many ridiculous pictures of ourselves, including a brilliant panorama picture of sister McCleary sitting at the table reading on one side of the picture, and peering creepily around the door on the other side of the picture. I want to include a copy, but I need to get it from Elder Garcia and he forgot to bring his usb cable, so that probably wont happen until next week, unfortunately.

Yesterday, Amelka, Prezydent Cieleński's oldest daughter, was running amok with her new makeup she got for her birthday (she's like 5 or something, and she's adorable) She had lip gloss smeared all around her lips and eyeshadow smudged around her eyes, and she just looked dang cute! At one point sister McCleary decided to compliment her, saying "Och, wyglądasz bardzo piękny!" (Oh, you look very pretty!) So, Amelka took that as a request from sister McCleary to make her look just as pretty! So, Amelka proceeded to slab makeup all over Sister McCleary's face, it was so funny, and adorable! Sister McCleary, and Cynthia both tried to get Amelka to put makeup on my face, but just as she was about to sister Malinowska stopped her. It was kind of sad :(

Also, this week we got a "hey Sisters!" from some American tourists, which was on my mission bucket list, so that was pretty great!

That's basically it for the week, not a lot happened, this coming week looks pretty busy though!

Kocham was wszystkich!

Dzień Matki

It was so awesome getting to talk to you guys yesterday! I'm just sad that I didn't have more time, I'm greedy like that :)

This week went by so fast, I'm sure part of it was the excitement of getting to skype on Sunday, but I think another big part of it had to do with the fact that we weren't in Wrocław for a good chunk of the week. We went to Katowice Wednesday morning for zone training, but then, because sister McCleary and Sister Johnston had to do their legal work the next day, we spent the night in Kato with sisters Slagowska and Johnston. We had a lot of fun. We went to their English class which was, of course, very entertaining. Wacek was there, he told me I'm "a sitting girl still" then waved with both arms like limp noodles, lol.

We decided to sit in on Elders Torres and Connelly's class. They only had one student there at first and she didn't want to be in there all alone. Eventually they got a second student in there. It was very entertaining for two reasons though, first because Elder Connelly was being a total sass, lol. Every time their student would say a complicated word in English Connelly would say "You do speak English!" she would then insist that she doesn't speak English, and Connelly would sass her in Polish and insisted that because she knows words he doesn't even know, then she does speak English. The other reason it was entertaining was because Elder Torres can't spell anything, in Polish or in English. At one point he spelled "pumpkin" like "pumpkim"... seriously?! Lol, we kept having to spell stuff out for him. At one point he was writing down a list of food we eat at thanksgiving, so we were naming and spelling things for him. Sister McCleary said "sweet potatoes elder, and they're spelled G-U-L-L-I-B-L-E". He started to write it, but eventually realised what he was doing, we just died laughing at him, and their students just sat there confused, they didn't follow what we were doing.

The next day Sister Slagowska and I sent sisters McCleary and Johnston off on a train to Warsaw for the day. They were going to be back around 18:20 and then 10 minutes later Sister McCleary and I would be on a train back to Wrocław... however, we returned back to the Kato apartment after saying goodbye to our companions to find that we didn't have the keys. All of my stuff, including the keys to the Worcław apartment, were inside the Kato Apartment, so it was then that we realised we would be spending another night in Katowice, unless we had a spare key somewhere... which we didn't. It was simultaneously sad and hilarious when Sister Slagowska called the Elders and said "So... we sent our keys to Warsaw this morning..." The Elders let us into the chapel though and we were able to finish our studies there.

Later that day we had a finding activity in Tarnowskie Góry. I drew the Plan of Salvation on the ground in chalk, which I've been wanting to do for like a really long time but just haven't gotten around to it. It took me a really long tome to finish it all, I finished it only a few minutes before we had to leave, so when I finished I looked at the other missionaries and said "I'm sorry it took me so long to finish this, but, you asked an artist to do this... not not a child with crayons... what did you expect?"

Soon after we got back from the finding activity we picked up Sisters McCleary and Johnston, and informed Sister McCleary that we would not be going home that night. It was all good though because we had a fun time hanging out with the Kato sisters and were able to get back to Wrocław in time for our lessons the next day.

We had literally the funniest tram ride I've ever experienced on Saturday. There were two guys on there who were so drunk that one was just singing softly to the other one who was dying of laughter. They were so ridiculous that everyone else on the tram was laughing at them too. I couldn't understand what the guy was singing about but he sounded like Jabba the Hut but with a higher voice. It was so funny!

On our way off of the tram a guy near the door stopped sister McCleary, and handed her a flower. It was super cute, she was all smiles after that, even though the boy wasn't all that good looking and the flower had ants on it, lol.

And then yesterday I got to skype my lovely family, which of course, was awesome :)

That's basically it for the week, I can't really think of anything else that happened, it was pretty great though.

Kocham was!

TBD

So... Apparently my face is putty... Sister McCleary informed me the other day that the skin on your face grows in whatever direction you pull it. That's why when you apply makeup you are supposed to put it on moving in an upward direction... So, you can cause the skin on your face to sag just by putting on your makeup wrong... AH! when I found this out I kind of freaked out and began pushing the skin on my face up and away so I don't end up with "Droopy the Dog" jowls. I've been paranoid about it all week...

Anyway, as for the rest of the week. It was pretty chill. It was transfers this week. So we had one last P-day as a district. We just spent the day walking around Wrocław looking at all the pretty art and looking at the cathedrals on and around catholic island. Then we went with Elders Jackson and Torres and got Pizza Hut for dinner. On our way back to the chapel we heard some people speaking English, so Elder Jackson, being Elder Jackson, went to say hello. Big mistake, they were super drunk and once they found out we were Americans they thought we were instant best friends and kept trying to get us to sit down and eat dinner with them. I thought drunk Polish people were annoying, drunk Americans are the worst, at least I can't understand what the drunk Poles are trying to say! Lol, we finally escaped them though and went to buy some juice at a store near the chapel. Elder Jackson got himself a poweraid and started drinking it right after he got out of the żabka. In about 2 seconds the whole bottle was empty and Elder Jackson was sad. We heard him sniffling (fake crying, the dork, lol, *roll my eyes*) then he said "What happened to my poweraid! Did I buy it empty?!" He then proceeded to play it up all the way to the chapel, and even fell on the floor in the elevator "crying". It was really entertaining.

Elder Jackson is always doing funny things like that. Earlier in the day we came across some kids doing parkour. Elder Jackson saw them and was like "I want to go over there and do a flip!" So we were all like "do it!" so he did, but instead of running over there, or trying to do some kind of cool lead up to the flip, he creepily tiptoed towards the kids and then at the last second did a flip over the bench they were standing on, then ran away. It was hilarious.

Tuesday was transfer day, so we had to be at the Dworzec bright and early to see Elders Wynne, Jackson, and Torres off on their trains. We then spent the rest of the day, until 17:17 with Elder Remy until his companion, Elder Garcia came in from Kielce. The day before had been sweltering hot, and that morning was a little brisk and rainy, but we thought for sure that it would warm up, so Sister McCleary and I didn't wear coats, and I didn't even bother wearing tights... Unfortunately it did not get warmer, it actually got colder. To top things off, we spent the entire day helping Elder Remy move things between the two Elders' apartments and he didn't have a tram pass, so we had to walk the whole time. So, we spent most of the day outside in the cold, walking back and forth, and those apartments are not close, they are at least a mile apart, probably more.

Needless to say, since that day we've been a little under the weather. I've had a sore throat and Sister McCleary's has a pretty bad cold... We won't be making that mistake again, we've been over dressing for the last couple of days. We'd rather be too warm, than make ourselves sicker.

We had some fun stuff happen on a whitebaord we had with the Elders this week. Most of it happened to Elder Garcia though. He's from Austria, and he's half Filipino, so he pretty closely resembles a gypsy, which makes contacting sometimes difficult for him. Gypsys are always coming up to people and begging for money, they will follow you down the street, into shops, even into cathedrals... yeah. One tactic they have for getting money is they will hand out little cards (which is a pretty common sight, people handing out flyers) but, if you take the flyer, they will follow you and insist you pay them for it. The only way to escape them at that point is to pay them (really bad idea) or basically throw the card at them (or you can do what sister King did once and stick it in the hood of their coat and run away). Well, Elder Garcia tried to talk to a girl and she turned him down, no doubt thinking he was a gypsy asking for money. But then, he tried to hand her an "I'm a Mormon" card and she straight up slapped his hand away and ran for it, lol, it was hilarious!

On that same whitebaord Elder Garcia also started talking to a guy who turned out to be kind of crazy. Picture the rat from flushed away with the toast sign that says "the end is nigh!" and you've basically got a good mental image of this guy. Poor elder Garcia was talking to him for like a half hour, lol.

I think that's basically it for the week... Transfer week is usually pretty slow. This coming week is going to be interesting though, we have zone training and we're going to Katowice for that, and it looks like I'll be staying in Katowice for Thursday too because Sister McCleary needs to go to Warsaw to get her legal work done and unfortunately I don't get to go with her. :( Bummer, I was really hoping I'd get to go to Warsaw when she did her legal work. It's about time she did it though, she's basically been in the country illegally for a few weeks now.

Kocham was!

Transfers, ah!

This week was a little bit stressful, only because it was transfers week and Sister McCleary and I were freaking out because we really wanted to stay together... Well, our multiple requests to Prezydent Edgrin, and God payed off because we are staying together for another transfer! Woo! we're super excited. Unfortunately we had a lot more elders leave than are coming in, so we are losing a companionship of Elders in Wrocław. It's just going to be me and McCleary with Elders Remy and Garcia.

The way we got our call was pretty funny though. We were on our way to the chapel after contacting a referral, which you will read about later, it was pretty funny. And there must have been something going on in the city that day because it was jam packed full of people. The only thing I know of for sure was a tattoo convention. We got onto a tram that was so packed full of people that we were standing in the doorway, pressed against the door, facing each other. After a few minutes of sweltering hot silence I leaned over to Sister McCleary and said "this would be the worst possible time for us to hear the imperial march (Prezydent's ringtone) we both kind of chuckled about that... then, about 30 seconds later, what do we hear coming from sister McCleary's pocket?... that's right, the imperial march. we both looked at each other in shock and I quickly did my best to turn away from Sister McCleary so I couldn't see her reaction when she talked to him. lol, I jinx us a lot...

For example, yesterday we were walking to the tram stop, on our way to church. Sister McCleary was commenting on how perfect the weather was, and what a beautiful day it was going to be, and I couldn't help but think "Watch, the tram we need will pass us right now"... Then we both looked behind us to see the tram coming. So we both started running to the stop. Normally the tram waits at that stop for at least 2 minutes, but this one barely waited for 30 seconds. and when I was just a few feet from the door, with my hand outstretched to hit the button, it pulled away. It was ridiculous...

As for the referral we contacted. That was the mother of our investigator Adam. Adam suggested we go by and see if we could help her with anything a little while ago. And on Friday night when we were at Adam and Agnieszka's we told them we were planning to go visit her. They both looked kind of nervous and were like "OK, we'll call her to let her know you are coming". So, their semi-terrified reactions made us very apprehensive about visiting her. But we did anyway... When we got there she opened the door and was like "Kto Tam!? (who's there!?) So we explained that Adam sent us to see if we could help her with anything. She immediately asked us if we were Jehovah's Witnesses, and when we said no she opened her door wide and told us to come in. It took us a minute to react and start walking in so she suddenly yelled at us to hurry up and get in the house because she didn't have that much life left, lol. She was straight up terrifying, so we ran in and she herded us into her living room and command-form-ed us to "Siadajcie!" (sit down!) We were about 90 percent sure at this point that she was going to keep us hostage. She then asked what we were chodź-ing at, so I explained again. As I was talking her cat came into the room and mewed at us. My face went from very serious and a little scared, to a ridiculously happy smile in an instant. The cat jumped up on the table and I immediately started petting it. Then, once we started paying attention to the cat, Wanda started liking us and we ended up having a really great time there. She's not too scary after a while... but she is pretty hard to understand...

Sister McCleary and I met a really funny babcia on a whiteboard on Thursday. She had met missionaries before in Warsaw and in Łodź and was super nice. She talked to us for a while about various things. Her son who lives in Florida who now speaks Polish with an American accent, her daughter in Łodź, the fact that she was going to meet with missionaries and then got tired, lol, she was really funny, probably the funniest babcia I've ever seen. The best part was when this old guy walked by shouting random stuff (which is a pretty common occurrence in Poland) and the babcia stopped mid sentence, looked over at him and shouted back "Dziadek, cicho!" (Grampa, quiet!) It was so funny, we all just died laughing.

Then, on Friday we had our culture night, so we went to sky tower as a district. Sky tower is the largest building in Poland. it was pretty cool, we took lots of pictures, and of course, we all had to take "tool shots", meaning pictures of us posing majestically in front of the windows, looking out over our territory.

On Sunday we had cleaning checks. So after church we went home to eat lunch and clean. While we were eating we decided to watch Emma Smith: My Story. By the end of the movie Sister McCleary had fallen asleep, so I just went about and finished the cleaning before the elders arrived. Through all the cleaning Sister McCleary didn't wake up, even when I vacuumed in the same room next to her head. And that vacuum is pretty loud, so loud that I didn't hear the elders knocking on the door and ringing the doorbell. I eventually heard them and let them in, and they went about doing the cleaning check and talking loudly. But sis McCleary would not wake up. We even called out to her a few times. She didn't wake up until they were leaving and I went into the room and shouted "Sister McCleary! Are you dead? Say goodbye to the Elders!" then she woke up and looked around confused just in time to see them leave, it was hilarious! She is a very heavy sleeper, sometimes I build pillow forts around her while she is taking a nap and she wakes up in confusion, it is very entertaining for me :)

That's basically it for the week. I'm very excited to be staying in Wrocław, and I am ecstatic to be staying with sister McCleary!

Kocham was

Jinx Infinity!

This week was pretty great, there were so many little things that happened that were just really cool or really funny, so I'm basically just going to write about those things.

I should probably preface this first story by talking about our district's current obsession - Jinx. We have been jinxing each other constantly, and we abide by the jinx rules, when you jinx someone they owe you a jinx juice, or sometimes a jinx chocolate bar, or if someone jinxes someone else too many times in a row, a jinx pizza. Anyway, Sister McCleary and I have got unity out the wazoo so we are constantly jinxing each other.

After we finished emailing last Monday we went with Elders Torres and Jackson to a cathedral on the Rynek and climbed the 289 steps to the top of the tower to look out over the Rynek. It was really cool, and the view was gorgeous. On the way back down the spiral staircase Sister McCleary and I said something at the same time. We then proceeded to shout "Jinx! Jinx again! Jinx again!! Jinx again!!!! JINX AGAIN!!!" In the stairwell for at least 30 seconds until Sister McCleary finally hit me with "JINX INFINITY!" It was a very entertaining moment, the Elders just stared at us. Thank goodness they were the only other people in the stairwell.

We've also jinxed each other several times during lessons, and on the phone with sister Smith, and we've had to fight not to jinx each other at the end of prayers, it's pretty crazy.

That night Sister McCleary left for an exchange to Katowice. About 2 hours after she left though I got a call from Elder Weggersen saying that they couldn't find her train listed anywhere and that there had been a whole bunch of train accidents in southern Poland. Unfortunately I had kept the phone with me, against my better judgement because Sister McCleary had insisted I have it with me in in case we needed to get in touch with an investigator or something. So I spent the next stressed filled couple of minutes telling Elders Wynne and Torres the plot to "Death Becomes Her" in excruciating detail to try and calm myself down until Elder Weggersen called back to tell me that they had found her safe and sound and very confused about why everyone was so worried about her.

Sister Smith came here with me and we had a fun exchange together. We talked to some cool people, and had a good whiteboard with Elders Wynne and Torres. Unfortunately Sister Smith was very sick, so at one point during the whiteboard we had to take a moment to rest on a bench. We called it "reverse bench contacting" because if someone came close by and looked at our badges we would try to talk to them. It wasn't terribly effective. At one point Elder Wynne noticed us sitting down, so he contacted his way over to us to see how we were doing. As soon as he got to us, this really creepy drunk dude came by and started talking to us. Sister Smith was so sick, and just done, that she just looked and him and said "I don't speak Polish" But the guy just looked confused and kept babbling. So Elder Wynne stepped in and started talking to him. He was basically trying to scare the guy off because he kept trying to walk back over to us, and he was super drunk, and possibly crazy. So Wynne, slowly walking towards the guy and around us in a circle to keep him from getting to us was just like "Hey, we're talking to people about baptism" (but in polish) "We want to baptise you, when can we meet with you?" They guy would not leave though, even though he was like "No, I don't want to get baptised, I don't believe in a prophet, I only believe in the Pope" and stuff like that. It was weirdly hilarious though, Sister Smith and I couldn't stop laughing. Eventually Elder Torres noticed and came over to help and we were able to slip away without the creepy guy noticing. It was really funny to see Wynne slowing walking towards the guy, pushing him away from us. It was somehow simultaneously aggressive, and totally not aggressive.

At district meeting Sister Smith and I had to do a roleplay with Elder Wynne. Elder Torres had planned the roleplay and basically we were supposed to tract into Elder Wynne and we would find out what his deal was once it started. So, we knocked on the door and it creepily swung open to reveal Elder Wynne sitting down, waiting for us. He invited us in and we started asking him questions to get to know him. He told us variously things about himself and how is parents left him this enormous mansion after they died. It was around the point when he talked about how, as a boy his father would have to warn him not to fall into holes in the backyard when Sister Smith and I realised where this was going. We linked it to the gospel through prayer saying something like "What would you give to be able to talk to your father again?" Then sister Smith Asked him "What do you believe in?" and Elder Wynne responded "I believe in Harvey Dent". Then Sister Smith lost it and shouted "Flip the table! I'm not teaching Batman!" It was so funny, we all just died laughing. The sad thing is that roleplays like that are actually relatively common in our district meetings.

On Thursday I made Carbonara for me and Sister McCleary. It was pretty good. A little bit different than how dad makes it because instead of being able to buy just straight up bacon I had to buy a slab of pig, so the bacon pieces were kind of big. But it tasted pretty close and it was really good.

On Friday, we had a lesson with Lucyna, and at the very start I asked if we could start with a prayer, then noticed the door behind me was wide open, so I went to casually shut the door, but instead I somehow managed to rip it right off it's hinges and send it crashing to the ground... I'm not sure how that happened but me and Lucyna just stared at it in shock and Sister McCleary just busted out laughing.

That night, Sister McCleary made this really yummy chicken casserole that her mom makes. While we were making it though we had to leave the house several times, to run to żabka to pick up an ingredient, or to make a trash run. Each time we would get back into the house I would change back into comfy clothes, and each time we would leave I would change into clothes that I was alright with being seen in. The last time we got into the house though, Sister McCleary decided to play a prank on me. As soon as I had changed back into my comfy clothes she shouted - "Oh crap sister, I forgot a really important ingredient for the chicken! We need to go to żabka now!" So I changed, once again, into my presentable clothes. And as soon as I was fully dressed Sister McCleary, completely unable to keep herself from laughing her head off at me, said "Just kidding". If you've ever laughed so hard at something that you just couldn't physically stay standing, then you know how hard we were laughing, because we both just collapsed, it was great.

On Friday we had a whiteboard with the Elders. Sister McCleary and I we're having no luck at all and the weather was slowly starting to get worse. I was determined to get someone to stop and talk to me though. Eventually it started Hailing, so we had to concede to the weather. Elder Jackson was still talking to someone though so Sister McCleary suggested we go into the shaded area of the park and try talking to a few people. So we did, and after just a few minutes we finally found someone who wanted to talk to us. I don't quite remember her name but we had a really good discussion with her, even though she was super sassy. In the end she said she was to busy to meet, and she told us that this stuff was for Babci (grannies). We get that response so much that Sister McCleary and I both kind of lost it and said "Czy jesteśmy babciami?" (are we grannies?) It was so funny, the girl just laughed and was like "no I didn't mean it like that!" I felt like we made a good connection with her though, and the next time she meets missionaries she'll remember us and how we made her laugh, and hopefully made her think about spiritual things.

On the way back to our apartment that night we got onto a tram and a man who was straight up drunk off his feet sat next to Sister McCleary and immediately tried to strike up a conversation with her. He was so out of it, and so hard to understand that Sis McCleary was having none of that and said "I'm sorry, I don't speak Polish" the man responded in very broken, very slurred English that he spoke some English. So, Sis McCleary switched suddenly to an Irish accent and said "I'm from Ireland!" then proceeded to fake a phonecall. The guy could not understand a word she was saying, and eventually turned to talk to someone else. It was really funny, and we know at least one woman near us on the tram understood English well enough to understand what Sis McCleary was doing because she just started laughing.

Well, that's basically it for the week, it was basically just tons of little funny moments, I'm not even sure I got them all, it was a hilarious week.

Kocham was!

Year Mark!

This week was awesome! We had tons of fun, and saw so many miracles. First of all, it was my year mark, you might have been able to tell from the Subject line :) We had a lot of fun celebrating. The district all pitched in to get me a big pack of magic cards, which I've been having a lot of fun with. We also had a fun time celebrating with Elder Torres and Elder Jackson (it was Torres' year mark too)

We went to a cool Ukrainian restaurant on the Rynek. The food was really good, Sister McCleary and I both got little pots of meat and potatoes that were fantastic. Elder Torres got some kind of naleśniki, but Elder Jackson ignored all the advice I gave him and went for the cheapest thing on the menu, a soup, which he really didn't like. Then we went and got ice cream from a place called "Tra-la-la-la-la"... literally... It was packed in there, about a billion couples had all decided at that moment that they wanted ice cream, so we had to move through a sea of people to get to the counter to pay and basically force our way through a mosh pit to pick our flavors. There's a bit of a problem in Poland... no one knows how a line works... People stand literally pressed up against you when they are standing in line and you can get line-jumped by pani's in a moments notice if your not careful. At one point Torres and I were standing in line, and I could feel the couple behind us trying to edge their way in front of us, so I turned to Torres and said "Elder, assert your dominance in line!" He immediately took a step forward until he was basically pressed against the glass and we were able to go next. After that we went to to chapel so elder Torres could give me a copy of a song he had on his phone. While we were there Torres sat on a chair and it broke, so he proceeded to destroy what was left of the chair. It was very entertaining. Then later that night Sister McCleary and I burned my dictionary. It was the one they gave us in the MTC and I kept it with me all this time so I could burn it at my year mark, because it's terrible! And that's how I celebrated me year mark.

The rest of the week was pretty great too, we had lots of funny things happen and like I said earlier, we saw lots of cool miracles. For example, on Saturday we had nothing planned, so we were going to go out and just contact around for most of the day. But, in the morning Elder Torres called and asked if we had time to do a whiteboard. We said, sure why not. Because we decided to have that whiteboard we ended up taking the tram from our house, whereas we would have probably just walked if we'd been contacting, and while we were waiting for the tram a guy came up to us and asked us what our badges were about. His name was Igor (yes, Igor!) and we were able to talk to him the whole tram ride, and got off a stop early so we could invite him to church and get his number. He said he doesn't have a ton of time right now (he's a student) but he's super interested to learn more, and he's said he's got a friend who might be interested too.

The other awesome contact we had that day was Invisababcia! During the whiteboard sister McCleary and I were contacting together and at one point there was literally no one coming from any direction, when suddenly I heard sister McCleary said "Dzień dobry Pani" I turned and saw a tiny bacia (granny) standing in front of me, she had appeared literally out of nowhere but somehow sister McCleary had seen her. We talked to her for a while, gave her a book and invited her to church (we tried to set up with her but she had already wandered off saying multiple goodbye's "wszystkiego najlepszego, do widzenia, do zobaczenia, pa!" before I'd finished getting the words out. But she was super cute, she kept complimenting me and Sister McCleary on our Polish, and when she found out that we teach ourselves the language she freaked out, it was hilarious!

Yesterday was awesome too, we had a mega lesson session at Adam and Agnieszka's house. Adam has been investigating the church for about 23 years, and Agnieszka in one of the members here. we go over to their house pretty regularly for lesson, and to help them with English, and they help us with Polish. Last night we went over and had a lesson about the word of wisdom, there were parts of it Adam didn't understand, and Agnieszka wanted some clarification for using wine in cooking and coke, etc. After our lesson with them we had a lesson scheduled over the phone with our Ania, our investigator who lives 2 hours outside Wrocław (you might remember her from my emails last time I was in Wrocław, she was the one who randomly showed up to church one day, she's still super interested, but doesn't have the funds to travel to Wrocław very often) We asked Agnieszka if she would be on the lesson with us for Ania, and she agreed. So we had an awesome lesson with her. We were really thankful to have Agnieszka with us on the lesson, it's sometimes really hard to understand Ania over the phone, which is a bummer because we can only ever talk to her over the phone! After that we continued our lesson with Adam and Agnieszka a little more. It was crazy, but tons of fun.

We had so many funny things happen while we were with Adam and Agnieszka. They told us about the giant statue of Christ in Poland, which is even bigger than the one in Rio de janiero. Except that the one in Rio watches over the city, and the one in Poland watches over a Tesco. Also, the Polish people call the statue Godzilla, lol.

They also told us how lost of Catholic Poles believe that being catholic = being Polish, and they told a story about how an old Polish man once told a reporter that Jesus was a Jew before he got baptised, and after his baptism, what was he? he was Polish, lol!

Also, there were a few times during the lesson with Ania where I wrote to Agnieska on a piece of paper to make sure I was understanding what Ania was saying. After the lesson Agnieszka looked at what I wrote and, laughing, said it looked "jak kura pazurem" (like chicken scratch) we all died laughing. You all thought my handwriting was bad before, well it's only gotten worse since i left, the influence of Poles and their terrible handwriting has destroyed anything that was recognisable in my writing. Sister McCleary often jokes that she needs a Urim and Thumim to read my notes.

There was also a funny moment when we found out that it was chocolate day yesterday. Sister McCleary is allergic to chocolate, and Adam and Agnieszka are well aware, they always remember to put out some kind of snack that doesn't have cocoa in it when we come over. Well, we found out during the lesson because Cindy Call sent us a text telling us it was chocolate day. When Sister McCleary read that, Agnieszka looked at her and just busted out laughing, it was so funny.

Oh, another cool thing that happened, Church was absolutely packed yesterday. We had tons of visitors because the Edgrens came with one of their sons and his whole family. It was really cool to see so many people in church. We almost didn't have enough water for the sacrament.

That's basically it for the week, it was so great.

Kocham was