29 May 2014

  Happy Birthday to Douglas and Jessica!

Hope you both have a wonderful day  

It has gotten quite warm.  Wayne and I walked to the office Thursday morning and wished we could have taken a shower when we got there.  But, the office is air conditioned, so we feel very lucky to be there.

Thursday was MLC and Dr. Wing was still here to talk to the Zone Leaders and Sisters and tell them as the leaders of each district  how to look for signs of anxiety or depression. He also told them about health issues that he sees a lot of in missionaries and how to help them.  Our office Elders - Smith and Meherg took Dr. Wing and his wife downtown and showed them around a little bit.  At about 16:00, Wayne's phone rang.  It was Elder Smith and he told us that he had just been in an accident.  He felt so bad, especially since he had the Wings with him.  The other driver convinced the police that it was not his fault and so the police told Elder Smith that if he gave them 450 zlotys ($150) that he could go.  Well, he didn't have that kind of money, so Wayne called the president and he went down to help.  He did pay the police officers and everyone left. There was hardly any damage to our car.  In fact, Elder Smith took a cloth with some polish on it and you can't see anything now.  Also, on Thursday, Elder and Sister Hutchinson (Senior couple) came into Warszawa, because they were leaving on Friday.  

We finally left the office at about 6:00 pm and had to drop something off at the mission home.  When we stopped, they were just sitting down to dinner.  This is who was at the mission home that night - E/S Hutchinson, E/S Wing, Pres and Sister Edgren, Sister Edgren's mom and sister, (who had come for a visit) and then she invited us to stay for dinner.  It was very good. 

On Friday, the Hutchinson's flew out at 6:05 am, E/S Wing got on a train to go to Krakow, where they caught a plane back to Germany and Sister Edgren had to take her mom to the doctor's because her foot was hurting her.  And then our Area Seventy came in on Friday afternoon so that he  could go down to Auschwitz and check on things for President Uchtdorf's visit.  The President drove Elder Adler down to Krakow on Saturday and returned that night.  We were all invited to the chapel on Saturday for a "fireside" with Elder Adler.  He gave a wonderful talk about finding "Joy in the Work".  

Oh, also Elder Wing, when he got down to Krakow on Friday, talked to one of the sisters who has been struggling a little bit.  Her and her companion were told that she was going home.  She's only been here since January.  So they came up on Sunday and flew out Monday.  I went into the office on Saturday and made up her certificates and got her travel itinerary for the President.  I also went in on Sunday to check her in on the flight.  Wayne and I went over Sunday night to say goodbye.  It was really sad to see her go.  On Sunday, both branches met together in the chapel.  It was very exciting to see a full chapel and cultural hall.  Elder Adler spoke again and this time he spoke about love.  

In between all of this, we found a little time to go grocery shopping and clean the apartment and do the laundry.  Oh, on Friday morning, Elder Smith called again told us he just got a ticket for driving across one of the bridges that is closed every morning from 6:00 - 10:00 to automobiles.  He just wasn't having a good week.  And the policeman told him he would have to pay him 300 zlotys right there and then.  Of course, once again he didn't have the money, but here was a little miracle.  There were two policemen in the car and the one that was still sitting in the car, came up to Elder Smith and told him he would cut the fine in half because he (Elder Smith) reads the Bible.  On the license plate cover, our cars have a sticker that says "Czytałem Biblię i Księgi Mormona"   (I read the Bible and Book of Mormon)  They offered the policeman a Book of Mormon, but he said he couldn't accept any gift from them.  

On Monday, Elders Smith, Meherg and Wayne went to a museum that has tanks and other things from the war.

Here's a few pictures:

That's Elder Meherg

And there's Elder Smith

FHE was very good Monday night.  I really love teaching the people that come.  They all are very tender in the gospel and just soak everything up.  I made some pies for dessert.  A banana cream, chocolate and rhubarb pie.  They were all gone except two pieces.

On Tuesday, it was Zone training and the president said that we could leave the office elders in charge and go to it.  So I decided to make some lunch for our Zone.  I made some chicken salad and egg salad for sandwiches.  We had grapes, pineapple and strawberries also.  And I made some chocolate cookies for dessert.  Everything was gone.  They sure can eat.  But it sure is fun to see how much they appreciate it.

And they sure have fun getting together.  

It was another busy and fun week.  You can't help but love all of the wonderful missionaries we have here.  Wayne and I are very lucky!

We miss you and love you. 

22 May 2014

Another week gone by.  Too fast - too fast!!!  Every morning when Wayne and I get to the Mission Office, we begin our day by reading together a conference talk.  We started with the April 2010 conference and have worked our way up to the April 2012 conference right now.  Elder David Evans said the following:

"During this conference and in other recent meetings,¹ many of us have wondered, what can I do to help build up the Lord’s Church and see real growth where I live?

In this and every other important endeavor, our most important work is always within our own home and family.² It is within families that the Church is established and real growth occurs.³ We are to teach our children the principles and doctrines of the gospel. We need to help them have faith in Jesus Christ and prepare them for baptism when they are eight years old.⁴ We must be faithful ourselves so that they can see our example of love for the Lord and His Church. This helps our children feel joy in keeping the commandments, happiness in families, and gratitude in service to others."

Wayne and I have come to truly realize the importance of our Heavenly Father's plan.  And how much our family means to us.  The missionaries here in Poland are trying very hard to bring families into the church, but more often than not, it's just one member of the family that joins.  We have 12 baptisms planned for the month of June and they are all single baptisms.  One day we are hoping this all changes and that there will be many families sitting together in church and receiving all of the blessings of the gospel.

Friday was really busy.  Elder Wing (Eastern Europe Medical Doctor) is coming over from Germany to look at the hospitals and medical facilities we use for the missionaries.  He will be going to 4 of the cities of our mission and we had to make the arrangements at the hospitals and get train tickets, etc. Also, we still need a service project for the YSA conference, so I got to call and talk to the Stays.  It was really fun to talk to Rebecca and find out all that they have been doing.  They are trying to send things to Serbia right now because of the flooding.  On Sunday, they will be making a new District in Poland for four of the cities.  It will be the Bydgoszcz District and so lots of paper work had to be done.

6 of the missionaries we have here in Poland will be staying at the Mission Office on Saturday night when President Uchtdorf is here in June.  There is a tub in the office and the faucet is such that we can put a shower hose on it.  So Wayne and I went to Castorama (Home Depot) and bought all the stuff we needed to convert the tub into a shower.   We also went to Makro (Sam's Club) to get some more food for MLC (Missionary Leadership Council) which will be held next Thursday.

After church on Sunday, Wayne and I took a walk over to the Summer Palace again.  We went in the back and walked through the gardens.  It was a beautiful walk and made a good end to the week.

They had on display what the king's army camp would look like.  It was closed so we could go in any of the tents.  But it looked cute.

This is the main part of the gardens.  We walked for about 45 mins and still didn't cover all of the garden.

This is the back side of the palace.  It is all gold and white.

The Vistula River is the back boundary of the Palace gardens.  It was very peaceful and lots of people were walking around, just like us.

I tried to get close to this duck, but it started to take flight just as Wayne snapped the picture.

This is the reading garden.  One of the statues is holding a book and the other one has his arm resting on the earth.  In the distance you could hear and woman and man singing from the church tower.  They do that every Sunday night.  

And this is the place that they held the Light Festival at Christmas time.  This is where they had the Alice in Wonderland lights.  It looks a little bit different now.

And we took another picture of the front of the Palace.  It is huge!

We had a big turn out for FHE on Monday.  We gave a lesson on being spiritually prepared.  Especially within our families.  As we read in Alma about Captain Moroni and how he fortified the cities against the Lamanites, we built a city with the earth and pickets and towers.  Then we had the fiery darts from the Lamanites all around the city, but they couldn't penetrate.  So we compared that to how we can protect our families from the fiery darts of today.  We knocked down one of the walls (which consisted of going to church, reading the scriptures, prayer, etc) and they could see that without those things the darts could penetrate and our defenses would be weakened.  I made chicken salad for sandwiches and cut up some tomatoes and cucumbers.  And cookies for dessert.  Here is some of our group.

We got everything done for Elder Wing and got him sent down to Lodz on Monday.  We asked Elder and Sister Kowalski to drive into Katowice and bring the sisters with  them this Thursday.  And then they will take a train to Warszawa so that we can do their legal work.  They told me that it took them 8 hours to drive to Wroclaw from Warszawa on the 7th.  (It's normally a 5 hour drive)  And she also said that they haven't taken the car out of their parking garage because they are too scared to drive.  So they are kind of leery about driving to Katowice.  They have never used a cell phone either, so that has been fun trying to contact them.  I found that email is a good thing.  

When we walked home from the office on Tuesday, we were near our apartment complex and I just happened to look over at one of the cars parked on the street.  This was really weird.  You probably can't see it very well, but the license plate is from New Jersey.

Wonder how it got here!

Also coming home from the chapel we go down this one road where the homes are behind a fence and behind the fence is a whole bunch of trees and shrubbery.  You can't see the homes very well because of all the green.  Anyway, we have driven this was many, many times and just saw last night that some of the greenery we have been looking at is fake.  Attached to the fence is a plastic sheet with leaves and shrubs painted on it.  

So all the green behind the fence is phony, except for the trees.

Well, that's it for this week.  School is almost out and summer begins.  Have lots of fun and enjoy.  We love you all and miss you.

15 May 2014

Happy Birthday Heather

Hope you have a most wonderful day!

We had a busy day at work on Thursday.  Wayne and I had to get a lot of things done because on Friday we drove down to Szczyrk again and stayed at the hotel where the YSA Conference is being held. But Thursday night we had a thunderstorm here and after it was over, we had a beautiful rainbow over our apartment.

We tried to get a good picture.  I think we need a better camera.

 There were 5 of the YSA committee there and Pres. and Sister Edgren, the Roulstones, Brat Turek (CES Director for Europe), Brat Jarosz and us.  We got a lot of things accomplished.  We drove down with the Roulstones.  I took about 5 hours to get there.  We ate lunch when we arrived and then started looking at rooms and negotiating the food portion of the conference.  After dinner we all went on a hike to see what the best route would be for all of the YSA's at the conference.  The place looked a lot different with everything green.  

Here is looking outside of our room at the hotel.

And here we are eating lunch.  They fed us soup (tomato or mushroom), fish, a coleslaw salad and some ice cream for dessert.  I actually ate the fish.  Found a couple of bones, but on the whole it was okay.

Sister Edgren, Sister Roulstone, Elder Roulstone and Czarek.

Patty is stsanding with Czarek, Wojtek and Lucasz, and Brat Turek is facing us.  Brat Jarosz has his back to us.  And that's my head of gray hair in the corner.

On the hike, we saw a beautiful little church.  It rang bells every hour.  

And then where ever you go, there are always little statues of the Mother Mary or Jesus Christ or just a cross.  But there are also flowers by it all the time, too.  Don't know who puts them there, but they are there.

So this was on the way to the trail.

When we got back from the hike, we all met in Czarek's room for a meeting.  It was quite cozy.  Everyone was on beds or the floor.

Patty is the main chair person of the committee and she is doing a wonderful job.  That's President Edgren on the floor with his back to us.  

It was a good trip, but very long.  We got home on Saturday afternoon.  I had wash to do, cook some dinner for Sunday for the missionaries and iron some of Wayne's shirts.  President Edgren allowed all of the missionaries to Skype home for Mother's Day.  They were all so excited.  But any way, we let them use our computer and one of the computer's in the mission office.  So right after church, we brought the Sisters and Elder Blom in the car with us back to the mission office.  Elder Blom and Sister Poklinkowska were skyping at 2:00 pm.  So Wayne and I were at the mission office for 6 1/2 hours.  We had the two computers working, one in the president's office and one in the main room.  We had 10 missionaries talking- each taking about an hour.  You could hear the screams of joy when they finally got connected and saw each other.  It was fantastic!  I made two pans of casserole and one big pan of a raspberry/blackberry cobbler with ice cream.  Everything was gone.  Oh and some bread, too.

So Monday, the office elders took the Kowalski's (new Senior couple) paperwork down to the Ursad to get their legal process started.  The people there wouldn't accept any of the paperwork because it had change on May 1st.  And one of the elder's had his wallet stolen over the weekend.  We had to report that, contact his parents to discontinue his personal card, and have him go the government office in the town he is in.  Plus in the morning before we left for the office I had to make dinner for FHE.  Let's just say, Monday was a crazy day.  We did have a good FHE though.  There were 11 people there,  It was awesome and we talked about baptism.  When we were leaving the Sisters were heading to the chapel with an investigator.  It was a guy, so they asked us to be with them for a little while.  Bartik was the person's name and he had a lot of questions and listened very intently.  We bore a testimony about prayer and the first vision.  By the time that was over, we drove the Sisters to their apartment because it was 9:15 and they are suppose to be in by 9:30.  We got home about 10:30.  Long day.

Tuesday was a little more quiet, but I had to contact our lawyer's office here in Poland to ask them about the new legal paperwork, because we didn't understand it.  And also, they are taking finger prints now, so we will have to have the Kowalski's come back into Warsaw after we figure it out.  And one of the Sisters started getting a bad case of acne and she told her mom about it.  Her mom contacted some skin doctor she knew and he wrote some prescriptions for her.  She purchased the prescriptions in the US, packaged them up and shipped via FedEx and put on the paperwork the word medication.  Boy you sure can't do that.  In the past few days we have had to fill out three different forms, try to convince customs that the medication isn't going to be sold and that it isn't harmful drugs.  Yet, they won't let us come down and open the package for them to see what's in there either.  So don't ever try to send medicated face cream oversees.

On Wednesday at English class, we read a story about Mothers.  It's Mother's day here in Poland on the 26th.  We also played the Easter Video the church put out called - Because of Him.  It was a very good night.  For our game, we played something fun.  You tell 3 things about yourself and one of them isn't true.  And then everyone has to guess which one isn't true.

So that's all.  It was a wonderful Mother's Day.  We did get to talk to some of the kids.  Not all of them because it got to be too late.  But we enjoyed being with the missionaries and feeling their excitement.  

And the best news of all this week is that my brother Rob is being ordained an Elder on Sunday in Nevada after 50 years of being outside the church.  It was very special news and I wish I could be there.  Rob also told us that he and my other brother Gary flew to Washington DC last week to attend our Aunt June's 100th birthday party.  Good things like this out weigh any of the bad. 

We love you and miss you all.

8 May 2014

It seems like we didn't do anything this past week, but we were not able to go anywhere or do anything either.  On Friday I was working in the church system on the computer to change some of the proselyting area names and change some of the houses that were assigned to Elders and now Sisters are living in them.  So anyway, I changed one of the districts and didn't like how it worked, so I selected delete, but I forgot there were 8 elders and 2 sisters that I put in that district and now they are gone.  They no longer exist in our mission.  I tried everything I could think of to make it work right and nothing happened.  More to this further down.

On Saturday it was 38 degrees and rainy all day.  We went shopping and came right back to the apartment.  It was cold!  I did some laundry and just cuddle up on the couch.  We prepared our FHE lesson and read the Sunday School lesson.  One of the new missionaries (3 weeks out), Elder Platter got up and bore his testimony on Sunday.  I was impressed.  He knew the language very well and bore a beautiful testimony.  And him and his companion blessed the sacrament also.  There was a couple visiting from England in our branch and we talked with them for about 20 mins.  Can't get enough of that British accent.

So Monday, I had to get everything done for the new couple coming in on Tuesday.  We also received notice from the missionary dept. (finance) that they were going to equalize all of the Senior Couples apartment payments so there isn't such a discrepancy.  Just like they did for the young missionaries back a long time ago.  And I wanted to call Salt Lake to see if they could fix my problem of the missing missionaries.  We spent all day  working on the apartment equalization.  We have one couple paying $1,176 and one couple paying $587.  When we got everything put together, our average payment for any couple coming to Poland will be $938.  Quite a jump for the low end couple, but it just seems right that we should be helping everyone out with living expenses.  I didn't get anything accomplished for the new couple, nor did I call Salt Lake.  We left at 4:30 pm for FHE.  I just made a casserole and some carrot cake.  During FHE, the Hutchinsons (Senior Couple from Katowice) showed up.  They had served here in Warszawa.  In fact, they are the ones that we replaced in the office.  Sister Hutchinson's 2 sisters came over to visit and they had just picked them up from the airport.   It was a fun evening for everyone.

Tuesday morning, I had to work fast to get things done for the Kowalskis.  They came about 12:30.  Poor Elder Kowalski.  He was very, very tired.  We tried to go over everything with them, but they just kept asking the same questions and so we gave them the basics and they left with President and Sister Edgren.
Here's their picture.  I still remember how I felt that day we arrived.  It's not pretty!

He said they requested to come to Poland so they could possibly do some family history also.  They will be going to Wroclaw (where we started out)

Tuesday after they left, I decided to call the church to see if they could help me find my missing missionaries.  I talked to Germany first and he didn't understand, so he said he would call the missionary department for me and see if they would call and help me.  They did call and I guess I've done a "first".  They couldn't figure out what to do, so they said they would call me back in a couple of days.  I hope they don't have to put everything in from scratch, because I will feel really bad.  But I've learned not to press the delete button.  It means just that - DELETE!!!!!

We had a wonderful English class.  We read the talk by Wirthlin when he told about his football experiences  and how he had to face a huge player on the opposing team.  And when the quarterback threw the ball to him, he could hear this big kid barreling down on him and he took his eyes off the ball.  Everyone enjoyed the lesson and talked about it for the rest of class.  

If you get a chance go on to lds.org and look under the Country and Area Page, then click on Europe and then Polska.  In the archive section there is a picture of some of our missionaries singing in a Catholic Church and Elder Vernon being able to play the huge organ of the church.  It was really neat.

Well, HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY everyone.  We hope you have a wonderful day, free from stress and the cares of the world.  We love you and miss you.