Sweet September!

As my mission president said today in his e-mail to the whole mission, "If this were a 'walk in the park,' you would go home and miss out on one of the important parts of what the 'stroll through life' is all about - forgetting yourself and serving others."  Life is hard sometimes, and hearing about the Lambs this week, having their son pass away, that is made all the more clear to me.  Life is so hard.  But it was meant to be that way, for a reason.  Amazing things is, that we KNOW that reason, and we have something to fall back on in hard times.  That's the gospel of Christ, and that's the Atonement of Christ.  We know that all things that aren't fair in this life will be made fair.  I may have mentioned this before, but I feel like God always prepares me to be happy before I write home on Mondays... it's like He knows that people at home need my happiness more than I need to be happy... if that makes any sense.  It's not like I'm super depressed during the week, but I have my hard times for sure.  I just always feel the love of God and it brings me back around.  So if any of you are feeling like you're having a hard time, just hang in there, because here's a promise from a 21 year old girl out here in Eastern Europe trying to learn one of the hardest languages on planet earth... I promise you that everything will be okay in the end, if it's not okay, it's not the end, so HOLD ON.  Keep moving forward, it WILL be okay.

 

A few quick fun things:  I ate this really long french bread looking thing with a mushroom spread and some salad stuff and sauce and meat and it was DELICIOUS.  Also, you think people in America use the word 'LIKE' too much, haha, here in Poland they have a TON of filler words that they use all the time and I'm trying to learn them all... What else, oh so this lady fed us tea this week and we told her we could only drink fruit tea and she said it was fruit tea but Sister F. said it wasn't so we just didn't drink it and this was an older lady so luckily she just talked alot and didn't notice!  Aaah!  Haha and one of the chocolates she gave us was filled with liquor!  I didn't eat it... good thing I don't like chocolate! :) - haha sister Folsom took a bite and then realized what it was and put it in her bag...oh the ADVENTURE of being a MISSIONARY!  I love it!

 

Well this week we met with Ewa again, except this time we called her ahead of time to tell her we were fasting Saturday night as Sunday was Fast Sunday.  This was like an added bonus to Fast Sunday because we were then able to share with her our views on fasting and why we fast.  But that wasn’t the point of the lesson, really, we also got to talk to her about what she is thinking in regards to baptism.  It was a crazy lesson… she started out by telling us how she’d turned on the T.V. to find a Mormon Fundamentalist show on and it was all about polygamy and it was horrible.  She tried to show us this YouTube video on it and the music was creepy and they had clips from our General Conference.  It was all just super eerie and the spirit left right away.  I was really sad and just felt like throwing up.  But then Sister Folsom, thank heavens for my amazing companion, was able to side step that punch and with her amazing un-phased testimony just brought it back to the scriptures and how the scriptures say that polygamy is not for us at this time and that we need to study the scriptures.  We then talked about how the WORD is the seed which we should plant to see if it will grow.  So we talked about the Book of Mormon and Ewa began to tell us about her favorite parts of the Book of Mormon.  The first “favorite” scripture she read was about baptism!!!  Thing is, I don’t think she realized it herself that it was all centered on THAT!  But God is SO telling this woman to get baptized and we’re praying SO hard.  So the Spirit came back, Ewa got to feel it, and then we asked her to pray to know God’s will for her in getting baptized.  It actually took two prayers for her to actually ask the Lord in front of us, but she DID!  And it was so amazing!  I pray for her to really get a super strong un-deniable answer that this is the path she should choose.  If she gets baptized, there is going to be some Hell-Shaking going on here in Poznań!!!

 

Well, then I was having a really hard time Saturday night, things just weren't well in my mind and I wasn't very happy, sort of angry really.  It only took a few hours into Sunday, though, before God just started dumping random blessings on me.  Henry, a man from Ghana who is English speaking in our ward here in Poznań (going to medical school here in Poland) was one of those blessings.  He was so kind to me and just came and sat by me and asked about my life.  I got to try to interpret for him and it was a horrible translation but I got to serve and it took my mind off of my problem for a minute.  Then we went over to the Reed’s for lunch and on the way I got the courage up to talk to the guy sitting behind me on the tramwaj.  He had long curly brown hair and green eyes and he looked like he could be scary, but he was super SUPER nice!  And we got to talking and ended up giving him a pamphlet about the Restoration!  Then lunch at the Reeds was AMAZING!  Can I tell you just how much I love the Reeds for a second?  They are just GREAT!  They’re like my parents away from home and I’m seriously very grateful for them!  They fed us chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, some deep fried vegetables, salad, and then apple crisp with vanilla ice cream.  After fasting, that was like HEAVEN!  And then we went contacting in one of my favorite places in Poznań around Malta Lake and there were TONS of people and we got TWO park bench lessons which hasn’t happened in forever!  The second lesson was this really nice lady, probably mom’s age, who at first thought we were Jehovah’s Witnesses and didn’t want to talk to us.  Sister Folsom told her we were not Jehovah’s Witnesses and who we were and a little about us.  She warmed up to us and let us sit down.  Turns out, one of her sons is DEAF!  Yeah!  And so I got excited and told her I knew sign language because of my sister and stuff, it was cool to weave that kind of thing into the story of the restoration, how the Atonement can fix our bodies and I know Rachel will have a normal mind and body some day!  Towards the end, her son came by on his bike and stopped!  We shook his hand and, he reads lips, doesn’t know a ton of sign, but was really nice.  Then for the closing prayer I asked if I could pray in SIGN LANGUAGE!  Sister Folsom said it was so beautiful – I’m not sure if I did it all right, haven’t practiced in so long, but it was so FUN!  I loved it, and I felt like I could love these people better because I had that skill and I’d met deaf people before and had those experiences.  Haha, then Sister Folsom had me teach her some sign because she was so excited about it.  I’m so grateful for my companion!  She’s so awesome!

 

Yes, and that's that!  I know that God answers prayers.  He answered mine TODAY.  I can say that with out a doubt, that my prayers have been answered in the past two hours as I've read e-mails from friends, family, and my mission president.  God knows you, personally, he knows me personally, and he'll make everything alright.

Keep up the good work!- Sister Amber Allen