Christmas package info

Hello! We received an email from Ambers mission president concerning sending Christmas packages, so if any of you are planning to send her a package please send it to the mission home! Thanks for your prayers and support! Have a great day!
Love the Allens

Please send packages to the Mission Office address in Warsaw. 

(Name of Missionary)

Kosciol Jezusa Chrystusa Swietych w Dniach Ostatnich

Ul Wiertnicza 135

02-952 Warszawa

POLSKA

"Where will ye leave your glory?"

November is almost OVER!?  Crazy... and I see that we have a new Christmas Tree?  Awesome, but there wasn't much snow up there this year, eh?  Gid has glasses!?  Since when?  And Enos came down for Thanksgiving?!  Aaah!!! Oh man I love you guys!  I need an address for them, I want to send them a letter.  And grandma and grandpa back in the picture, yay!  Katherine, nice baby bump – you always look so cute!  Rachel…what is it with you and your tongue?  Girl, keep your tongue in your mouth! Haha… : )  Nice moose! OH I LOVE THESE PICTURES!!! YAY!  Oh my gosh, Tasha doesn’t even look pregnant yet… Aaah!  LIFE!  I also need Tavia's address... need to send that girl a postcard.

Well...that was a bit of gibberish...I don’t really know where to start… Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  I hope you had a great one!  We didn’t eat any turkey here, didn’t really celebrate Thanksgiving at all, but I’m still so grateful!  We did end up having a really fun meeting with a family just outside of Poznań on Thanksgiving night along with Elder and Sister Reed.  The father of the family is an older man from America and his wife is Polish.  They have two young kids, a girl and boy.  I really think that Ola, the wife, feels the Spirit really easily and loves the gospel, I’m excited to teach them more!  We got to help clean up their house for like an hour before our meeting and it was just SO MUCH FUN!  I love SERVICE!  And Ola was so grateful for it.  That was a good feeling.  Like yesterday morning, there was a father and his daughter Maria and they looked really poor, we told them we wanted to share the gospel with them and he told us about their destitute situation and that they really were poor. Well I asked the little girl what her favorite food was, her dad said 'candy' or maybe 'chocolate' - can't remember which one, anyways I remembered I had some chocolate in my bag that I really didn't want, so I bent down and un-zipped my back-pack and gave her a bag of chocolate covered nut things, she was pretty happy.  And I was maybe even more happy!!!   Another time this week we saw an older woman carrying groceries and she had a limp, we asked if we could help.  We were supposed to be at the chapel for a meeting but helped her anyways and she was also so grateful - you could just see it in her eyes.  The meeting at the chapel didn't end up happening, so it was alright that we were a little later than we were supposed to be.  Man...God just takes care of you!  Like with Daniel in the Old Testament - we read about him in Young Women's yesterday and how he stood up for what he believed in even though he could have been killed!  But he didn't get eaten by the lions, and he got promotions and all sorts of cool stuff...  - Matthew 10 talks about fearing not those that can take your life, but fear Satan instead, because he can take your Spiritual life.  We need to be more BRAVE in our lives, like that, and just do what God asks of us, because it will all work out - Trust god, and he'll make it all work out.

O.k. got 25 more minutes, I really want to read your stuff and then write back, but I guess I will just type and see where it takes me.  So this week we had some crazy fun things happen, we didn't reach our goals quite all the way this week, but it was still really fun and awesome!  We had a lesson with a woman named Irena who I personally think will end up getting baptized.  She's super spunky and has bright red lipstick and is way nice.  She's got two grown up kids and is divorced but is a fun business type woman with a super full, bright living room where we sat and taught a lesson with Sister Reed.  I loved how Irena described the Holy Ghost - that it's like a wind at her back, kind of softly telling her where to go, what to do.  She recently had a business trip and had some difficulties with a train being late or something and she was in charge of this thing and got really worried at first but then just felt like she should take a certain bus or something and that she wouldn't be more than 10 minutes late.  Sure enough, she walked in only 10 minutes late.  So cool.  I like her a lot.

We have three women with baptismal dates right now, Danka, Izabela, and Bogusia.  Thing is, none of them are really progressing right now, and I think we're going to have to push back their dates.  Danka was the one we met in a restaurant - she contacted us really - and she is kind of a cute old drama queen.  She calls my companion Sister Bet, and it's really funny.  She also diminutizes Grzegorz's name so she calls him 'Grzeszu' and it's hillarious.  It's like calling dad 'Benny' or something - oh man, gotta love Danka.  I think Sister Bezdjian wrote more about her, you should check out her blog too, it's sistersarabez.blogspot.com.  She probably has some fun stories on there that I haven't told...  Yeah, so we're really praying for these women.

I may have also told you about our friend Kamila - she's so cute! and awesome!  She came to church on Sunday for the first time!  AND Marcin gave a talk in church Sunday - he's the Elder's investegator who will be getting baptized on December 8th if all goes well and he stops smoking - I'm praying hard for him, I think he's the coolest thing since sliced cheese - seriously, he's the BOMB!  These young people in Poznań really get me excited, if we could just get a group of young college kids to join the church in Poznań, things would really have a solid basis.  Another young girl we met with is named Iwona - she's musical and studying languages, she's way awesome, and I want her to date one of the elder's investigators, Maciej, they'd be soooo cool together... um then just get them baptized and married in the temple and...and... !!!  O.k. I get carried away sometimes, but it's worth dreaming about!

A fun thing, a crazy thing, and then a spiritual thing, and then I got to attatch some pictures! and maybe a sound recording from sister B.'s recorder :)

Fun thing: We went ICE SKATING LAST WEEK ON MONDAY - and I had LEGS! I haven't worn jeans in a good five months and so that was crazy, and so much fun, I actually felt like I learned a bit this time I went skating, one foot in front of the other as you turn - I'm still really clumsy but I got better at it!  It was cool cuz we had the rink all to ourselves for like the first half an hour, and it was just five Mormon missionaries hanging out on an ice skating rink in POLAND and it just felt so GOOD.  I felt a little guilty for singing a long with Adele a couple of times, aaah!  Music!  Weird...

Crazy thing: We were coming out of an appointment with our investigator and we walked down the street, I contacted this lady and she started talking to me like she knew me from birth...Uh... I didn't really know how to handle the situation because sometimes I DO meet people a second time that I just don't remember, but I didn't know this woman from Adam and...well... haha so I just played along and said can we get your number and set up sometime and I think by the end of the conversation she realized she didn't know me but we just awkwardly parted cuz she said she had something she had to go do... so here comes the crazy part - this guy comes up to us, he's probably like 60 years old - and he says something like, 'what are you handing out little angels?' and Sister B. goes, 'well we have a message about Christ.' and he's like, 'what's this you have?' 'A flier with more knowledge about Christ's gospel,' and she hands it to him, well once he has it in his hand he goes 'WE HAVE OUR OWN RELIGION!' and he rips up the flier, crumples it up and throws it at the ground and sort of yells some other things at us as he walks away.  Sister B. said 'have a good day' and I picked up the ulotka to throw it away and... well...it was funny...but sort of shocking - that people are so...closed minded...so hard...

Spiritual thing:  As I read in 2nd Nephi this week, I've been reading a lot of Isaiah - I love how Nephi says that he loves the words of Isaiah - I think I'm loving them too.  They have so much imagery!  But I want you to look at 2 Nephi chapter 20 vs. 3 - there are three questions there that I want you to answer, expecially the last one - 'Where will ye leave your glory?' - When something good happens in life, who are you giving the credit to?  When you accomplish something great, where are you leaving your glory?  Let's work on giving it back to God - he's the giver of every good gift and we ought to remember that with a sincere heart!

I know the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the ONLY true church on the earth today - it's a pretty bold statement we have to declare to the world, but it's TRUE, and we stand by it, whether there be lions...scary old men... or anything else.  Stay strong, I love you all!

- Lots of Love from Poznań

- Siostra Amber Allen

Snow White and the 7 Dwarves

So... I just wrote like a whole paragraph of good stuff but part of
this computer's brain isn't working, so I hope this ends up working
today!  Aaah!

First of all, JENNY IS GOING ON A MISSION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I
LOVE YOU SO MUCH!  So cool, sista!  And to the Dominican Republic, my
cousin Shannon went there... if I'm not mistaken - you should ask her
about it!

Second of all, I have a NEW COUSIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Bridger?  Awesome!
Man, Goldie may be feeling a little lonely right now, tell her that I
felt her pain, but that boys are the BEST!  And she should be happy!

 Aaaah.... life, it comes at you SO FAST.  I can't
believe how fast time is flying, like seriously, this is crazy.  It
doesn't even feel like MONDAY yet, and yet here I am sitting at a
computer e-mailing again... crazy.

This week was AMAZING.  We achieved some really high goals and it was
only because we had the faith to set them.  I can't tell you how much
setting goals and just BELIEVING in them makes SUCH a huge difference.
You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.  Sister Bezdjian (have I
told you how to pronounce that yet?  - Bez Jen - like the beginning of
Jenny's name) is so good at this setting goals stuff and just SHOOTING
for it.  She also gets really excited and stoked to meet the goals and
that's half the fun.

When you can get motivated and excited about the work then things like
THIS happen:
I felt like we should go talk to the lady who runs the parking lot
around the corner from our chapel.  We go over there and chat with
her, her name is Basia (said BASHA) and she took a book of mormon,
agreed to read and pray about it, and as she flipped through it right
there with us she told us that her DAUGHTER's name is ALMA!  There are
NO coincidences, my friends!  LOVE IT!

Then Sister Bezdjian felt like we should drop in on a mom who has five
kids and just hasn't had time to meet yet, but was contacted like a
year ago for the first time.  We dropped in, she was HOME! set up and
asked for a referral - we ALWAYS are supposed to ask for referrals
from EVERYONE... and she said to go upstairs and talk with the people
right above her... well we do, and we get ANOTHER family, with three
kids.  The one little boy said to me, 'Jaki pani ma włosy?' - or
something like that, which meant like, 'do you have hair?' or 'what
does your hair look like?' - because I had a hat on over my bun... I
realized what he was saying and took off my hat, then he goes 'Oh!
Jaki włos!' which is like, 'wow nice hair!'  I had a braid in front
and a cool bun in back, it was just a fun conversation with a 9 year
old, I shouldn't be that excited about it, but it was fun.  We asked
his little sister how old she was, and she goes 'cztery!' - she's
four... so cute!  They're all super chubby kids and awe man, so
excited to teach them.

Then we had to have four recent convert or less active members by the
end of Sunday evening, but Sunday morning came around and we only had
ONE... so we had to get 3 in one day...so I was praying hard and
thinking hard and we got one right after church with a girl Agnieszka
who I wasn't thinking would make it to church, but did, and we got to
meet with her right after the block of meetings... THEN we went to
Bożena's house and she wasn't answering her phone OR domophone...but
we kept ringing and kept waiting and finally she answered and let us
up!  Two down... one left... and we had about used up all our options
- don't have many here... so we decided to drop in on this guy we've
never met who was baptized like 6 years ago and we hadn't heard
anything about him, just had his address - was close to our house.  So
we walk over there and ring in and he ANSWERS!  My jaw about fell to
the floor...man, we were SO blessed.  So we got to have a lesson with
Przemysław and that was SWEET, told him to come to church, man... God
totally blessed us this week, we did NOT accomplish our goals through
our own power, of that I can surely testify.

We also had some really powerful lessons this week, lessons where I
felt like my face was hot because I was concentrating so hard and
hoping so much that the people would accept and act on our message.
Especially Kamila - she's our age, and is such an AWESOME young lady
with SO much potential, I sure hope she'll come to church soon.

Also, so sometimes when Izabela - who has a baptismal date on December
8th, answers her phone, she goes 'Hey-Hey, Ho-Ho' and it's just so
cute and funny so I said back, 'hey-hey, ho-ho' and she laughed, and
then I laughed and then we chatted for a while and such... Later that
night we had a lesson with her, I think it was on tithing - which she
ACCEPTED to pay!!!  - and after the lesson she walked with us to our
tramwaj stop and sister B. asked her why she says 'hey-hey, ho-ho' and
she was all like, well haven't you ever heard of the fairytale about
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves?  Well we don't know the word for
Snow White or Seven Dwarves in POLISH so we're like, 'NO!  Tell us!'
and haha she starts in on this story, she's linked arms with Sister B.
and I'm just walking along side listening to this cute little
middle-aged polish woman tell us a Fairy tale about a princess!?!  And
we're walking down a beautiful street in Poznan!?!  It was one of
those times where I was just full of joy about to burst and giggling
at the fact that we actually knew what story it was after about 30
seconds and, oh man.  Life is good, isn't it?  I love it!  So much to
be thankful for, especially right now, I feel so, so, so blessed.

The other night we were so hungry and yet neither of us seem to cook
quite up to par...so we ate like broccili and popcorn for dinner, that
was fun... Are you college kids getting enough to eat?  We should make
a pact to eat better, eh?  Haha, so fun.
Another time this week, we were walking over to go tracting when we
saw some people unloading furniture, it looked way too big to unload
but Sister B. asked if we could help - she's so cool, and ALWAYS
looking for ways to help, and she's SO good with people!  Man, I'm
learning so SO much from my companions, it's just crazy.

Other than this all, I want to say a bit to each of my siblings, but I
only have 7 minutes and still have to copy and paste some stuff
because the computer wasn't working earlier - OH I HAVE SO MUCH STILL
TO SAY!...oh well...

O.k. well, I just love you all SO MUCH! 
AAAh!  The church is so true, love you all!
- Siostra Amber Allen

Potatoes and Carrot Cake

Dear Family,

       Well, I’m no longer chora (aka SICK) – and I’m SO GRATEFUL!  It really stinks to be sick.  I don’t know if I was being a wimp or if it was really just that nasty but I felt so, so gross.  I would drift in and out of sleep and had the worst fever ever… haha but at least it was funny!  Sister Bezdjian had a good time with it.  One time she tried to feed me some bread and I like fell asleep while she was putting it in my mouth and then… oh yeah she was complaining about how she thinks someone destroyed some records that we should have in our apartment of members – their teaching records from before they were baptized, we don’t have some of them – and so I tried to quote Star Wars – you know when they destroy the records and Obi Wan is trying to find the Bounty Hunter and can’t find that planet… He comes and asks Yoda and Yoda asks the younglings and they say, ‘well somebody destroyed the records.’  - Yeah, tried to explain that part while I was deathly ill… was pretty funny I guess, I got some laughs out of it anyways…

        Yeah, but besides that, after a blessing from the Elders, and telling my MOTHER that I was sick (thanks for the prayers mom, I wished I could have told you earlier that I was sick so I could get some mama prayers, those always work 200% of the time!) – I got all better and now we’re working hard as ever.

 

So: Some funny/ awkward stories:

          This week we taught a lady named Jagoda – which means blueberry, I think, in Polish.  Well she’s got a 2 year old, maybe 3… and randomly during the lesson she started breast feeding him in front of us.  Yuck.  He’s WAY too old for that, my good woman…

          Haha, then this guy came into the chapel and asked if he could use the bathroom…’Sure’ – so he goes in there, and doesn’t shut the door.  Then Sister Reed walks by and shuts the door for him, and makes this face, -- you know the ‘Oh my chicken what is he doing!?’ kind of look – haha, yeah.

What else… oh yeah, not so funny – we just double scheduled ourselves this week and forgot to buy stuff and it was sort of stressful…but we made it through and now we’re back on schedule and we learned from our mistake and we’re going to do better.

 

We ate at a cool pizzeria and watched the guys making pizza throw the dough up in the air and swing it around and make the big crusts – super fun, and delicious. 

 

We watched The Restoration video in Polish with some neighborhood kids and their big brother Bartek, ate popcorn, cookies and sok (juice).  By the end, there was popcorn all over the floor, the kids were stealing cookies to take home, and they also didn’t want to leave.  But we gave them a book of mormon – the picture book version – and that was super fun.  We had our member, Natalie, there with us and it was good for her to be an older sister for the night.  I wonder if she ever babysits… she’s an only child.

         Speaking of Natalie – So I was wondering if the Young Women in our ward, preferably the beehives – but really whoever wanted to – I was wondering if you could send a picture of yourselves with your testimony to Natalie and then maybe I could get her to send her picture and testimony to you guys.  If you want to, you could write it and then try to translate it on-line, or I could just try to translate it here…or both… I just think it’d be cool.  She’s always saying how she wants more young women her age to be in church with her and so we can have activities.  I feel so bad for her, I was SO LUCKY to have such a big group of girls my age with the same belief system I had.  I was SO BLESSED to have friends in High School who I could go do baptisms for the dead with, or attend a early morning fireside with!  YOU ARE SO BLESSED!

 

A few things I’ve learned lately:

From Marlena, our sweet recent convert, who is currently sick and probably at home in bed.  We visited Marlena last night and our lesson was on Baptism and Confirmation.  As we talked with her she told us about how before her baptism she was sort of shy and always felt lonely and sad.  After her baptism and activity in the church, she said she was more confident, that now she could talk to anyone – Even OBAMA, she said! Haha, I thought it was pretty funny that out of anyone she chose Obama to be brave in front of.  Cute.  And she says that even though she lives alone, she now never feels alone.  I wonder sometimes, what it would have been like if I hadn’t had the gospel.  I wonder, and know that it would have just been harder.  There really IS SOMETHING THAT HAPPENS to people after they are baptized.  The Holy Ghost is REAL.  It’s not something we just talk about!

 

Speaking of the Holy Ghost, I had a really cool experience this week when as we walked home from an appointment and we were about to turn down the street to walk home when I felt like we should keep walking.  Sister Bezdjian later told me she had felt the same way so when I suggested it out loud, she agreed whole heartedly.  So we keep walking and the first people we see are this young guy and girl standing out on the door step smoking and chatting.  I felt like my stomach kind of leaped or something and sort of felt pulled towards them.  Immediately we walked up to them and started a conversation.  I remember that the way I contacted was really weird.  It wasn't super interesting and didn't say anything fancy, may have just said, 'hey I'm Sister Allen, what's your name?  What are you guys up to?'  Anyways, it turned into a full on conversation and we were able to give sort of a whole Restoration lesson there on their front porch!  We gave a book of mormon to the girl and she said maybe we could chat later.  This whole experience was just AWESOME and I KNOW I saw the hand of the Lord in our lives that day.  The Principle I learned was this:  ALWAYS listen to the Spirit, ALWAYS!

 

 Also, last night we had a lesson with an older member of our branch, named Bożena.  She’s upset with an investigator in our branch who she feels has offended her.  It’s pretty ugly.  Thing is, I don’t think this offending stuff has really been happening as much as she thinks – a lot of it is just built up from months and months of callouses of the mind!  You know, when you think about something long enough it starts to make it’s ugly head bigger… So we suggested she talk to this investigator about it and work things out. Well, she’ll have none of that, she said, no sir.  It just made me sad.  Are you going to let imagination get in the way of friendship?  What if things really aren’t all that bad and all you have to do is talk about it?  Really, people, COMMUNICATION!  Sister Bezdjian read me something this morning about how Moroni was a man of great understanding, then she looked up synonyms for understanding and somewhere found communication.  So Moroni, yeah that guy who shook Hell and if every man (or woman) were like unto him, the very powers of Hell would be shaken forever, yeah that guy – he’s a man of great communication.  You better believe it.  We really need to talk things over with people, in a kind and gentle way, but really just be open and HONEST.  If this world were just more honest with itself! 

Want to hear some MORE cudowny things?  Miraculous, that is?  We had like 30 people at church this week!  THIRTY!  Okay there was more like 28 or 29, but still, THAT’S A TON!  I was STOKED!!!

We woke up Sunday morning and all we did was peel potatoes and make carrot cake and Jesus Bread for like 2 hours.  Man… we had so much to bring – but the OBIAD (Lunch/Meal) after church was delicious!!!  We also had these things called Rogale, they’re special to Poznań and it was a holiday celebrating this guy who came in on a horse and usually gave money to the poor, didn’t have money at the time, but his horse lost his shoe and the peasants sold the horse shoe and had enough money to live, so now they make these super yummy pasteries in the shape of a horse shoe and they’ve got almonds on them and almond flavored filling and they’re seriously DELICIOUS!

Yep, what else…

We are really trying hard to get to bed on time!  We seem to have so much to do at night time recently.  Filling out teaching records, etc.  At the same time, it's so AWESOME that we have so many teaching records to fill out!!!  I also want to just make sure we're taking things at a pace in which the Spirit can keep up with.  If we're moving too fast to feel the Spirit, that's besides the point!  I also am working on saying nothing negative.  It's hard!  Not because I say negative things all the time, but I've realized I do say them more than I thought...in small ways. 

 Basically, my companion and I are doing SO great.  Especially now that I'm feeling completely back to normal health and we're just ripping it up again in Poznań.  We heard about Sister Ostler going home because of sickness, and we're not sure how to handle that, super sad!  I hope you are okay, girlie!  Also, Sister Folsom, I've got a present for her from Pani łucja and I'll try to send it if I get the chance, just don't know where to send it.

Thanks, everyone, for your prayers and smiles.  I can feel them even over here in Poland!  I love you all SO VERY MUCH!  I read something this morning in Preach My Gospel that said, we are helpless without the Atonement of Jesus Christ - and it's true.  Remember as you're being THANKFUL this week, that Christ suffered and died for you.  But I know he lives!  And loves us! 

Much love,

- Siostra Amber Allen

Poland's Day of the Dead

Hey everyone!  Sorry I'm writing so late today!  But I'm glad I get to write still.  

This week has been pretty crazy.  In Poland, they don't celebrate Halloween, but they do celebrate 'All Saint's Day' or Day of the Dead.  So as a branch we celebrated Halloween and had a super fun party and carved pumpkins but later this week we went to the graves and celebrated All Saints Day with Natalie.  Natalie is the 12 year old in our branch that got baptized with out her parents getting baptized.  She comes to church all by herself!  She's so cool.  So on All Saints Day they put candles and lanterns all over the graves and everyone comes and visits the graves of their ancestors.  It's really quite beautiful.  On our way back home from the graves we were on a tramwaj - the long bus-like things that run on rails - and this hooligan pulled the emergency alarm break in the back of the tramwaj.  Then the two men got off the tramwaj and walked quickly away.  That was an adventure.  

We have three baptismal dates in Poznan!  Hold your thumbs that they'll all go through!  (Instead of crossing your fingers in Poland, you hold your thumbs).

Anyways, this week has been so good.  One of my favorite parts was visiting this little girl, Izabela, at the hospital.  We walked part way and rode a bus most of the way, with Izabela's little sisters, and an older sibling and her husband I think... the little girls, Marcela and Martyna are twins and they're the cutest things ever.  We got to the hospital room and were able to sing a couple hymns in polish to them.  We also got them singing with us at one point.  It was just super fun.  On the way home we taught the twins how to play this hand-slap game and they just ate it up.  It was so fun to play on the bus, then they wanted to keep doing it as we walked back to the chapel.  They live right across the street from the chapel, and I may have talked about them before.  Kids are the best, and they have so much potential!  If you have any influence on little kids, just love them, alright?!

I got a letter from the Tonja and Jason Henderson family today!  That was fun!  Thanks guys!  And thanks Rishi for all the letters you have sent.  You're so amazing!

I bought new boots this week, and gloves and a hat!  I'm excited to use them soon.  Sorry I haven't said much about the weather... but fall has basically come and gone and there are not many pretty leaves on the trees anymore, looks like winter!   It did snow a little bit a while ago, but not enough to stay on the ground.  Fall was beautiful here!  And I loved the time change cuz I got an extra hour of sleep.

Well the past few days I've been feeling pretty sick.  I'm thinking I have the stomach flu, I've got a pretty nasty fever.  But I got a blessing this morning and I'm so grateful for blessings and the priesthood!  I'm also grateful for little miracles.  Yesterday my fever broke for long enough that I felt like I could go to church.  I was so grateful for that. 

I know that God is looking out for me and that His Son knows exactly what I'm feeling.  Christ is so amazing.  I can't imagine being sick all the time like some people are, or being like  Wojtek and having MS, or like Bozena who has to get dialysis every other day.  I'm grateful for my usual great health and I'm grateful for the Savior who knows how to comfort me.  He comforts me with family, like the other night when I couldn't sleep i got up and read some letters from family and could get my mind off of my body.  He comforts me with a great companion who knows how to serve me and stay positive.  And with worthy awesome elders who could give me a blessing this morning.  I'm so grateful for our Elders - Elder Tiner and Elder Stockford.  Such awesome young men.  

The church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day saints is TRUE.  Stay healthy, remember the Savior, and find someone to comfort who isn't feeling well.  

Love you all so, so much,

- Siostra Amber Allen