Count Your Many Blessings...And Bug Bites!

First of all, Happy Birthday to my other kid-brother Nathan!  He's 17 today, so everyone should call him and say happy birthday :)

Second of all, wow...what a week.  WE HAD A BAPTISM!  I'm trying to remember if I've actually ever been to a convert baptism before, and I think that may have been my first one.  Let me tell you, it was SO amazing.  I really loved the Spirit that was there...I'll talk more about that at the end of the e-mail today...

 

I want to give you a bit of a feel of what people's reaction is to us as missionaries.  Every person is different, so of course we get a lot of different responses.  Everyone in Poland is taught in school as a young child that any religion that is not Catholic is a Sekta - a Sect - and that they are devil worshipers.  Which, of course, we are not.  So we often have to clear that up-- which with impatient people, and a busy world, some people will never know that we don't worship the devil because they don't take the time to find out.  One lady yesterday scoffed at us when we contacted her and said something like 'I can't believe two young girls like you would be out here doing something like this, I can't believe you're affiliated with this Sect!' and then she just walked away.  Another lady today said 'Mormoni!' and actually RAN away...haha...that was funny.  Some people answer the door and say 'I'm not interested' or 'I don't have time' or  'I have my own religion'  Some people can't get off the point that we believe in something besides the Bible.  Excuses, they're like armpits, they STINK, and everybody has them.  God GAVE you the time you have, so you have time for him! 

This week we did what's called a White Board - where you put up a white board in the middle of a busy street, write a question on it in Expo marker, and then you go contacting by yourself and ask them the question on the board and see if they have answers.  I really love it.  I don't have a companion hovering over me, no one is watching me, and I can just contact and say whatever.  It's so great, and I actually handed out two book of mormons on my own!  One was to this really cool guy named Krszystoff and I felt like I actually had a conversation with him.  Another set of guys I talked to had that excuse that they only believed in the Bible.  I didn't realize where I was going with my answer until the answer came all the way full circle and it was really cool that I could see God filling my mouth as I spoke.  I told them that God used to have Prophets, and they're argument 'that God can't change his mind' was such that I was like, well if he can't change his minde, then why do we not have Prophets?  They go, 'well we do have prophets!' and I said, well how do you know someone is a prophet?  'You take what they say and compare it to the Bible, if it agrees, you believe what they say.'  EXACTLY!  That's what the Book of Mormon is, more prophets that agree with the Bible.  It was just cool, to sort of get him to contradict himself... guess what, dude, the church is TRUE! :) 

Sister Folsom and I sometimes come upon a door where when you knock, an evil little dog starts barking and it's really not a good contact usually when people have dogs.  So she said, 'Satan gives people dogs...' Haha...now everything bad that happens we seem to put that saying infront of it, 'Satan gives people excuses...etc.'

There are a ton of people with dreds here, and chacos, and cool pants with the crotch all the way down to their ankles, some of them (not wearing those pants) ride bikes all around with backpacks - I wonder if they just camp all the time?...basically rad. - Sorry that was random.  I just really want one of them to join the church!

I haven't been falling asleep or getting as sleepy lately on lessons and it's been really great.  I feel like someone perhaps prayed for me specifically at home to not get tired, who was it?  Fess up - and THANK YOU!  It's so hard to stay awake here sometimes, when I'm not talking much and the Polish people never turn on their lights even if it's dark.  I am praying for myself to be more awake, and also just more brave to just speak up when I have something to say.

 

O.k. on to the subject line of this e-mail, count your many blessings...and bug bites!

Arsene was baptized this week in the waters of a beautiful lake here in Poznan, by Elder Sorn (Pronounced Sh-or-n).  Arsene is from Russia and Elder Sorn is from Germany actually!  Well it was beautiful, but the bugs were biting us the whole time and I was pretty freaked out.  Like in Provo, I know what's biting me, and if I'm in the middle of doing something I can even let a mosquito bite me and wait to kill it, but here in Poland I had no idea what was eating my flesh and they HURT, BAD!  Haha...so we sang this song for the musical number at the baptism and I'm trying to keep bugs off my legs while singing - it was pretty funny... I have about a dozen huge red marks from the bites and I still don't know what they were.  Besides that, the Spirit was really there at the baptism, it was right, good, and AMAZING.  The church just has to be true after you see something like that and it's so normal and so GOOD! (I also got to learn some POLISH SIGN LANGUAGE AND take off my shoes and play soccer barefoot in a skirt, but that's besides the point...:)

So we counted our bug bites, but we really need to count our blessings.  All of you need to count your blessings!  This week we taught a woman named Beata. She is having a really hard time finding anything good about her life… AT ALL… She doesn’t even consider it a blessing that she has a home! We tried to get her to name off some things she was grateful for and she said she has nothing to be grateful for!  My eyebrows go up at this point and I’m thinking, Beata, you have a home – so I said that to her.  She said, ‘well everyone in Poland has a home…’  It was just really interesting.  She’s not happy because she is not grateful.  At the same time, I don’t know the half of what she is feeling.  Her parents died when she was 18 and she is sick and has had diabetes problems and also eye problems.  She’s had a bunch of surgeries on her eyes.  She’s in her late 30’s, I think, and her life just isn’t full of good things, like I feel mine is.  The whole lesson I just felt like my heart was being ripped out and I felt so bad for her, I wanted to give her everything I had and let her see that life can be good and I felt guilty for having such a good life.  But then I realize, she CAN be happier, she’s just got to do the things we’re asking her to do!  Man…well the principle I learned from this is counting your blessings.  I must be super grateful, my entire life, because I don’t want to be miserable like Beata. 

The same goes for each of you.  This week I want you to take a half an hour and either pray about or write down the things you are grateful for.  Then I want you to really sit back and soak it all in. I had the chance to do that this week.  I can't believe how blessed I am, it's just so unreal.

 

Well, the church really IS true.  It's a done deal.  Nothing you or I can do to make it different, it's an eternal truth.  And every day I love it more! 

Keep reading your Book of Mormon.  I pray for you all, oh and Congrats Jon Cattron on getting your mission call to Chile! :) Way to go.

Talk to you next week

-Siostra Amber Allen