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.