Dear
Family, This week seemed rather average...except for the fact
that...really it wasn't! Reasons why being on a mission is not 'normal'
or 'average' are as follows:
1.
It rained, I think at least once every day but Thursday. On Monday
night it rained so hard and we had no parasol that I was soaked to the
bone and was still cold going to sleep that night...
2. I'm in Kraków, Poland. That in and of itself is not average...
3. I am speaking a foreign language. I'm actually speaking it. And I understand conversations around me and I really don't think that's very average.
4. We ate at Długa 18 again.
5. We had 18 lessons this week!
6. I have the best family in the whole world.
7. I found out once again yesterday that the church is SO true, God answers prayers, and there's just no getting around it!
Enough with the list style, I think I'd better share some stories!
So,
Monday night we were set up with Magda, she's a Christian, but not a
Catholic, she is actually a missionary for her church too, but serves
among the polish gypsies. She's way cool. We were set up at a certain
time and then after that we were going to go deliver some baby food to
this organization we'd heard about through a man we met tracting. Well,
she moved her meeting back so we decided to go out to the baby food
party first. It took us a while to figure out how to get up there, and
we were already starting to get drenched, just not all the way through
yet... We finally found it, there it was, a club, for college kids, and
here we are, two drenched sister missionaries from the states, with baby
food and no time to stay....so that was sorta weird... Dropped off the
food, left some pass-along-cards with the guy's friends, and headed back
to our meeting. By the time we got back to the meeting, however, we
were intensely... how do I put this... marinated in RAIN. Met a
cool guy on the way back, though, on the bus. He was just super
gentelmanly and offered to help us get back to the chapel and made sure
we got off at the right stop. He's got a lucky girlfriend. He just was
so nice! I wish more men here and around the world were so nice like
he was. He also doesn't believe in God, though, and we had a good long
talk about that. I felt that something at least spiked his curiosity in
our conversation. He really liked the message we were sharing and I
felt like some sort of light went on in him. It reminded me of that
moment (because I've been reading in Romans and Acts recently, in the
New Testament) when the Roman man says to Paul, 'you almost convinced me
to be a Christian.' I feel like we get there a lot with people, they
are almost convinced but not quite. Maybe it's just not their time, their time will come. But we're going to testify anyways!
Well, the meeting with Magda went well
and we actually had the meeting barefoot in the chapel, because all of
us were wet and it just seemed better that way. We set up a meeting
with her tonight but not sure if it will go through, pray for it to go
through!
Tuesday
we had District Meeting. At district meeting, Elder Dodge goes, 'Hey
Sister Allen, I hear your uncle is moving from California to Utah...'
Uh... WHAT? How do you know my uncle Enos? 'Oh that's his real name? I
have secret connections' Haha... What secret connections? 'You know,
just secret ones.' But after I pushed him a bit more, I found out that
Enos was Elder Dodge's scout master/ deacon's quorum adviser when they
lived in the same ward in California! WHOA! Cool. Elder Dodge is
awesome. His family now lives in Utah too, I think.
Also,
Tuesday, after District Meeting, I was sick of cooking and taking 45
minutes to get home to eat and 45 minutes to get back out, so we went
out to eat. We went to our favorite Pizza place, called Długa 18, the
place where we'd hang out if we were teenagers here in Kraków. It's
super small, like about half the size of our Piano Room, if you can
picture that... or the size of the Play Room. And they've got a stove
and a loduwca... what is that in english... oh yeah, refridgerator. And
it's run by these two brothers in their 20's. It's fun. Last time we
were there, I saw that their sign they put outside that says their
prices was hand written and not super professional so I asked if I could
re-do it. Well, I got lots of awkward points and re-did their sign.
When we went back Tuesday, it was still there, just not outside in the
rain :) - Well when we get there, there's all these hoodlums in there
eating pizza and spread all over the two tables that they have in there,
so we just stand there awkwardly for like three minutes while they
realize we want to stay and eat, and move their stuff so we can sit at
the one table... I sat on a really low stool thing instead of a chair,
it was great fun... and then they began to interrogate us... well me,
rather, Sister Young sort of told me she didn't want to answer
questions, so it was just me and five guys firing questions! One guy
even had his smart phone out looking up our church on Wikipedia. We
taught a first, parts of a second, the word of wisdom, and about a
billion other things. Then invited them to listen to us pray as we
prayed over the pizza. You can count that as a lesson! Now we've got 5
cool polish guys who are our friends and know a ton about our church. I
hope it pays off some day... I had way too much fun with that
experience... Always have gotten along better with a bunch of guys,
maybe cause I have 6 brothers? dunno... but that was a blast. (Always
an added bonus when they find out you play soccer!)
We
also had a lesson on Tuesday with one of our investegators, I'll leave
her name out. Well we taught the Word of Wisdom and turns out she
breaks pretty much all of the parts of the Word of Wisdom... including
drugs... weird. I've never had contact with drugs before, really, if I
can remember. So that was new. She apparently buys muffins with
marijuana in them... great! It was a crazy awkward conversation, but we
assured her they were not good for her and she ought to stop, we'll see
where that one goes....
We
walked past the construction sight of the largest soccer arena in
Europe this week, it's like less than a mile away from where I live, you
should look it up, not sure what it's called, I want to see their
rendered pictures of what they say it'll look like when it's done. (at
least an Old guy told me that it's going to be the largest in Europe, so
I'm just going off of what he told me) There's a street built going by
it that they haven't built to go all the way through to the other main
street, so there were no cars on it, it was sort of a spooky ghost town
feeling, but everything was new, so it was just surreal, like we'd
stepped into Narnia! That was a beautiful walk, families on bikes or
walks, trees, big puffy clouds on a blue sky, ah man!
We
also had a lesson with someone this week thats going to need a lot of
prayers. I think I may have told you about her my first week here in
Kraków. We met her crying and maybe drunk at a tram stop and she was
just in peices. I can't believe we actually met with her, sober and
smiling and grateful that she'd met us. In her closing prayer she said
'thanks that I met these two wonderful girls to help me come closer to
Thee' - whoa! I'm so excited to meet with her more. She WILL be a
miracle story, already is. God has such amazing forgiving power! It's
so unbelievable sometimes, how much he loves, how deeply he loves.
There was a Liahona or Ensign article I read about the Atonement two
days ago, and it said that when we don't feel at peace in the Savior's
care, he feels injured. It's a commandment to 'Be still' and to 'know
that I am God' it is a commandment to 'let not your heart be troubled,'
and 'neither let it be afraid.' I never thought about it in this way
before. Reminds me agian of that statement in Preach My Gospel, 'God is
our loving Heavenly Father. He cries with us when we suffer and
rejoices with us when we do what is right.' He's feeling everything I'm
feeling right along with me. Including this weird thing we know as
TIME.
Sister
Young and I talked alot about TIME this week, and how it's really a
human thing, not at all a God thing. I, personally think I ought to
think about time a LOT less. I
also think I need to judge less, yes, STILL need to judge less.
Sometimes I automatically think people are being rude because they want
to hurt me or because they're out to get me or something. Then I respond
back a little snappy sometimes and I really ought not to do that.
Maybe they had a bad day? maybe I read them wrong? Really, Sister
Allen, calm down! :)
Maybe the last couple stories, about Torben from Germany and Sister Onken from England:
Well,
Saturday we had a really long day, walking a lot, not much success,
doors shut in our face while we were still speaking to the people behind
them... yeah, so we were praying hard for a tender mercy, and whalla.
This guy says, 'Nie mowię popolsku' - aka, 'I don't speak polish.' 'Oh
cool! Where are you from?' 'Germany' - and so the conversation
started. He asked how a person leaves our church... which is not a
common question... I told him they write a letter and their name is
removed from the list. I guess he'd heard some horror stories of other
churches that sort of followed their members around and stalked them...
bad idea. He also wanted to know how we treat people that left the
church. Great, here's a real check of our emergency brake system...
What do you actually do? Well I hope that I'm just kind, I
hope I'd still 'invite them to my birthday party' as he said it, haha...
he actually said that, 'would you still invite them to your birthday
party?' - yeah! Christ would do it, and so should we. In this way
ONLY, living what we believe, will we actually be disciples of christ,
will we ACTUALLY show what this church teaches, that God is no respecter
of persons. BUT that this church DOES have the authority of Christ in
it, and written all over it, and therefore it IS true and we SHOULD act
as if Christ was with us at all times. Torben, was his name, from
Germany, and he let us come over to his apartment and teach about the
Restoration. Awesome. It was so fun. And we were super grateful -
expecially sister young, that she could speak in english! :)
The
other bright spot in my week is always this one family, by the last
name of Onken. They are the CUTEST thing on planet EARTH and I want to
be just like them when i grow up. Brother Mitch Onken is a returned
missionary, music major (already got his degree in music from BYU) and
now studying medicine to be a doctor in POLAND... hmmm... and married to
the prettiest skinny British woman you'll ever meet. Sister Sarah
Onken is definitely a new role model for me, she is so sweet and so
strong. Her family lives the gospel and you can just see it shining out
her face whenever you see her. AND she invites us over to dinner
pretty much every Sunday, so that's an extra awesome! (I'm glad you
guys had the sisters over to your place to eat, it really is a fun
relief and good time to meet people and see their example for you!) We
went over to their place yesterday for dinner and had soup and bread
with butter. To top it all off, chocolate chip cookies with milk. And
there was a thunderstorm and little Spencer Onken - age 2.5 or 3 or
more... was nervous-talking the whole time about the storm... 'It's not
scawy' (his r's are w's :)) and 'that was a big wun!' and 'I wuv funder
stowms!' Oh it was so fun. He's so cute. And Felicity, just had her
appendics rupture a couple weeks ago but is back to her normal self now
and she's so cute too. Her and Sister Young had a fun time playing with
stuffed animals while I talked to Sister Onken for a minute. Sister
Onken is just the best. I love their family!
I know that God lives and LOVES YOU!
Stay strong, happy, and come what may and LOVE IT. That's the test of this life time! Let's do it together! :)
Love, Sister Amber Allen
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