I've often wondered how much more my mission would extend beyond the people I met and the time I will spend in the country, and one day I hope I'll be able to see all the effects of what I've done here. They say that no effort is wasted, but when you try to talk to someone and they don't even acknowledge that you exist you sometimes wonder if that effort was wasted, but God's ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts higher than ours, so you just gotta trust Him.
This week was shorter than others because two days were pretty thouroughly lost due to the fact that we were on a train the whole time, BUT what did happen was pretty good! Our english class suddenly got a boost of people in it, and we had a fairly interesting lesson that day, and afterwards we had a Book of Mormon reading, and four people stayed for that! (I don't know if people think that's a big number or not, but that's huge for us!) and in one day we gave out 10 copies of the book! Very nice.
Then we went to Warsaw where we spent the day with the APs, Elders Quackenbush and Cowley. They are some pretty fantastic missionaries! No wonder they're APs. Elder Quackenbush served with my trainer, Elder berlin, and we spent some good time reminiscing about how much of a missionary machine that man was, and trying to be like him. And during the day we did this finding activity with all the missionaries in Warsaw, which including us equaled to 14. That's so many. The most missionaries I've seen at once outside of the MTC is 30, when we all picked up the new load of trainees. Anyway, in most cities, we will do what we call 'finding activities' which are usually where we wright something on a whiteboard or have a table of free materials that people can take or have people playing music or something like that, but every Friday in Warsaw, all the missionaries go to this place that's called "the fish bowl" which is a place where the Metro, train station, and biggest mall in the city meet and basically force all traffic through this one spot, so there's huge crowds, and they take all the different types of finding activites and do them at once and it's a little bit like overkill, but also people know us and they'll talk to us because they know where to find us. Anyway, we did that, and it was great! Elder Hill was able to have a few really good conversations, and I had a good ol' flashback of working with Sister Demordaunt again! It was a good day all around. For never serving in Warsaw, I've been there a lot, and spent the night in 3 of the 4 elders' apartments!
And during our study, we listened to a talk by President Hinkley, He spoke with a naval officer from Asia who converted while in america, and the conversation went like this- “Your people are not Christians. What will happen when you return home a Christian, and, more particularly, a Mormon Christian?”
The officer’s face clouded, and he replied: “My family will be disappointed. … As for my future and my career, all opportunity may be foreclosed against me.”
President Hinckley asked, “Are you willing to pay so great a price for the gospel?”
With his dark eyes moistened by tears, he answered with a question: “It’s true, isn’t it?”
Ashamed at having asked the question, President Hinckley responded, “Yes, it is true.” To which the officer replied, “Then what else matters?”
I think we can all take from that naval officer's example, because sometimes we forget that it is the God of heaven and earth who is with us, and not some other artificial force such as money or armies. It's true.
This week we're going to Szczecin! WOO
Love you all!
Edler leighty
