Weekly Email - May 27th

Firstly, Happy Anniversary! Wszystkiego Najlepszego z Tej Okazji!!! Have fun at camp, I forgot that was this week.

(Note from Mom: today is Alan's and mine 24th wedding anniversary... and he remembered. I'm impressed. It is also the first day of girls camp and I'm going since I'm the camp director. Happy Anniversary to us!)

On Monday, the district had a good time, we were all out of money so we just decided to stay in and play music. Elder Mikolyski taught me how to play a few chord sets on the piano. We had a good time. We have been able to teach a few cool people this week. We got a referral from the office, some guy named M. I called M and he was a young guy who had just gotten a flyer from one of us on the street one day and wanted to know what we were all about. I asked if we could meet in the following week and he said he did not have much time, but that he could meet that afternoon. I told him that would be great and we set up. That afternoon we were at the chapel for our 18:30 meeting and sure enough, at 18:31 he called and said he was on the street looking for our chapel entrance. We found him and brought him up and sat down for a talk. He was a way cool lad of about 20-25 years. He was raised Catholic but did not really agree with a lot of their beliefs like written prayers and paying priests for repentance and the such. He was really open with us too. He said it was the first time he had ever heard of Mormons and he was curious as to what differences there were. We told him of the restoration of the gospel. We told him that in 1820 Joseph Smith was called to be a prophet and restored the priesthood which was lost after Christ and his original apostles were killed. We talked about how the Book of Mormon was found and translated and that it is proof that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, how he could read and pray and find out that what we were saying was true through the Holy Ghost. He was very open and willing to try. We even asked him to pray at the end of the lesson, he had never just prayed without reciting a written prayer so it was a little different, but he did it. We also set up to talk with him again this week. 

Our recently baptized S is doing great, she just takes everything this gospel has to offer and roles with it. She has been called to be the branch pianist and is just doing generally amazing. We told her that it would be a good experience for her to get a nice notebook and write a journal of things she learned and felt before and after baptism. Two days later she came in with a new journal and showed us all she had written, of course it was in Chinese.

The other highlight of the week was just yesterday. We were out tracting for the last 3.5 hours of the day. It was cold and a little gloomy, it has been a cold rainy week all week so we were acclimated to this already. We tracted out 10 buildings, that is around 100 or so doors. Then we got to the 11th building. The first call let us in. There was an older man named L. L had all of his family there because to our surprise it was mother's day in Poland. He did have a spare minute to talk with us though. He began by telling us just how Catholic he is. He said he is friends with many high bishops in the Catholic church and that he has been a strong, practicing Catholic his whole life. Then we shared that all we wanted to share was about the importance of eternal families, that we have the information about God's plan for us and how we can live with our families forever. He immediately opened up and began relating us a story of when his father died and his son was very close to his grandpa. He took it very hard. Then his mother (the son's grandma) became ill shortly after. They all were hoping that she would pull through, but she went to join his father a short time later. He took his son to see some very good priests who tried to help him with the grieving. He told us this story with tears in his eyes. We were able to teach him a little bit about our message and how it could help him and his son, how they could find peace and knowledge about God's plan. He was very kind and said he would have invited us in if it wasn't mother's day. 

There were a couple more nice people on our way through the building and then we hit door number 3. A younger (mid-late 20's) man opened. He immediately recognized that we were from another church and he let us right in. He was very curious about what we had to say. He was very Catholic and had just come from church and he told us from the start that he would not change, but he wanted to learn more about us. His wife and baby girl were there so we got to speak with the whole family present. At first his wife was very stand-offish telling us that her husband was the only one who was interested and she didn't want to hear it really. Within minutes we were having a great discussion with both of them about our beliefs. They asked a lot of great questions which gave us a chance to testify. They gave us some fruit tea and cake that they had and said if we were there 20 minutes earlier they would have fed us dinner. They were extremely hospitable and we had a great discussion. At the end we prayed with them, they told us they would pray on one condition. They would pray the way Catholics pray and then we could pray the way Mormons pray. We agreed and we had a few words of prayer. It was a nice meeting with a wonderful family. As we left, they told us that they did not want us to leave them with anything like flyers or brochures or a Book of Mormon. They said they would never change, but they would gladly have us back again. They were some of the nicest people. I hope that someday their hearts can be softened and that they will be more receptive to the gospel.

All else is going well, I have come up with new methods of spreading the gospel using snail power (see the pictures). I am going to get MSF soon so we will once again be able to eat all of the delicious food which has been tempting me so. I hope all is well with everyone at home. I have a few more people to write, but I love you all and can't wait to hear from you again next week.

Elder Godwin

Here is a picture of an angel holding a wreath and standing in a boat that you can't see in the picture. It has the date of December 1970 on it. I don't know what it represents but I thought it was cool.