Weekly Email - March 3rd

Hello,

This week has been crazy cool. I’ll start from the beginning. On Monday after we did our emails we had to figure out where to go shopping and all of that since we had no idea where to go. We had to walk all the way to Galaxy Mall where there is a grocery store. We bought food for 2 weeks. It was expensive. Then we went to FHE at the chapel.  The branch holds FHE together every week. It was a lot of fun. This branch is really young.

We’ve done a lot of contacting and tracting to find people to teach. On Tuesday we had district Meeting. We all had assigned topics to talk about. I talked about the role of the Holy Ghost and the authority we have as missionaries. How we have to work in order to be able to teach with power. We also met a really cool guy that we talked to for a while. We got his number and we are going to meet up with him again. We also named a lady by the name of N. She is really nice and she let us in and we taught her a lesson and gave her a Book of Mormon. We also have a return appointment with her. We also met another man while tracting that set up an appointment with us that we are going back to.

Wednesday, we did a white board. Szczecin is not very big, but we went to the center of Szczecin right off the side of the mall. There are always a lot of people there and we set up there and asked people what gives them happiness. We gave away a lot of Book of Mormon’s and we got a lot of phone numbers of people we need to contact. Elder K was really good at that. We also had English class. We have a lot of students, they are all pretty young.  We take turns teaching English because we only have one class. So the other Elders taught this lesson and we are teaching next week. It’s going to be really cool.

Thursday, we talked to a lot of people. Then we went and printed flyers to advertise our English class. On Friday we each handed out 150 flyers each. It was nice to be able to do that. We also had weekly planning day. And then we went tracting.

On Saturday we did another whiteboard it wasn’t quite as good as the first one. Elder K is really good at getting people’s phone numbers. We also went and cleaned the chapel and had a correlation meeting with the branch mission leader. He is really nice. After that we had dinner with the branch mission leader.  They had some interesting pizza like food that was really good. I would definitely go back there.

Today we had church and it was testimony meeting. There aren’t that many members there so everyone bears their testimonies. It is interesting in a small branch. Then we had lunch, tracted and then had dinner.

We are working really hard on finding people to teach. Things were pretty quiet when we got here so we are really working it. We do a lot of contacting and tracting. I really enjoy it and I’m learning a lot. I found the best Pierogi restaurant I have been to in Poland so far. I also am finding other really good places to eat at. I found a place that do “Swedish Pancakes” I bought ½ a dessert one that was stuffed full of Nutella and Strawberries. It was amazing. I haven’t found any cheap grocery stores yet. I’m only finding the expensive ones.

The members here went on a temple trip this past week. They traveled for a total of 27 hours to get to Frankfurt to go do baptisms for the dead. They met Elder C’s grandfather at the temple. He works at the temple and they were able to talk to him. Our branch is really cool. They all speak English in different degrees. They never do though because they are all trying to help us with our Polish. I really appreciate that. This is a really small branch the smallest one I have been to so far. They are all really neat people here though. There are a lot of young people that have really good energy.

The weather here is beautiful (relatively). Clear skies all week, haven't seen that since leaving phoenix. The day temps are warm enough for just a windbreaker, but the afternoons remind you that winter may not be entirely over. Szczecin is windy, but the city is gorgeous. I would dare say that Szczecin as a whole is as pretty as Krakow, it is just missing the rynek in the center.

I love you all and hope all is going well at home. I look forward to your emails. I hope you received my package. I can't wait to zone conference so that I can see Elder C.

Here are some pictures from Szczecin.

 This is the view from the apartment.

 Here is another angle with a view from the apartment.

 This is Godzilla over Szczecin. Looks interesting.