31 Oct 2016

Final pictures of Bydgoszcz

Goodbye Elder Hill, hello Krakow!

Here's some of the Rynek (town square)

Kraków is really great! Don't know if I said this last week, but Kraków hasn't had a baptism for the last two years. The Catholic influence here is BIG. Huge, one could say. For example, the people here who have heard of the Mormon church, know it as "the cancer of the Catholic church" and in the last week we've (our district) has gotten at least two calls to repentance from other people. Granted, this is making it sound quite harsh, but it's really not that bad. Most people just don't see a point in there being anything other than the Catholic church because of Papal authority and whatnot. Most people even accept that there's been a general apostasy as well, but still go to the Catholic church because there just can't be any other thing. It just boggles my mind! 

But speaking of hard-core Catholics, does anyone here remember Jan? He was someone I taught while I was in Szczecin for the second time. He was the one who was studying to become a Priest, decided not to, i tak dalej... (and so on) and with him I learned a TON and my entire view on the way things work and how to go about understanding the people changed. I learned to be a lot more loving and accepting of people of other faiths. Also, he's like one of my best friends now. ANYWAY, he's been meeting with missionaries for the last 8 months, but for the last 4 or so, he's not really been putting effort into anything and we pretty much lost hope there, BUT THEN in the last couple of weeks, he's come back and something opened his eyes, he stopped smoking and drinking, and he's decided to get baptized!!!! If all goes to plan, then it will be happening on the 13 of November! Pray for him PLEASE

Elder Curtis and I get along pretty well.  He and I are working on our teaching, it doesn't flow quite well, and we have a hard time building off of each others' ideas because we've both got our own plans running in our heads - pretty normal when you have different teaching styles and we've only been together for a week!. But we've both noticed it and are working on working in better unity.

We exercise, but not together 😬 I just REALLY don't want to go jogging. Anything but that

There's one other set of Elders here- Elder McPherson (four months left) and Elder Pettit, who's in the same group as Elder Curtis. There's also a senior couple here named the Daltons, they're awesome! Sister Dalton was very grateful that I could play the piano (there it is again, mom, there's been a total of 3 or 4 sacrament meetings that I've been a part in where I didn't play the piano) so we're going to switch off every week. I am district leader again, and I've been given the assignment from President Turek to figure out how the missionaries can better work with the ward leaders... any ideas?

The dynamics of this branch are so odd. Kraków certainly has a ton of tourists (I've already been stopped by two american members) and every Sunday there will be anywhere from 3-20 people from out of town. This last week there were two Poles, only one of which didn't speak English, 4 members who live here but are Americans, 6 missionaries from America, and 15 people from out of town. All from America. So instead of the meetings being held in Polish, and translated to English, it was the other way around, and it was WEIRD. Sacrament meeting in English is not something that I am used to, and listening to the speakers in English was weird, and hearing american english accents was weird AND THEN they asked me and Elder McPherson to bear our testimonies because we are new here, and it was in English! That was the first time in over a year that I've done that in sacrament meeting in english, and it just felt strange. I was free- I could say whatever I wanted! I had no limited vocabulary, no stumbling over grammar principles, no nothing! Going home is going to be weird.

weird.

I love you all and thank you for your prayers and support!

Love,

Elder Liechty

31 Oct 2016

Final pictures of Bydgoszcz

Goodbye Elder Hill, hello Krakow!

Here's some of the Rynek (town square)

Kraków is really great! Don't know if I said this last week, but Kraków hasn't had a baptism for the last two years. The Catholic influence here is BIG. Huge, one could say. For example, the people here who have heard of the Mormon church, know it as "the cancer of the Catholic church" and in the last week we've (our district) has gotten at least two calls to repentance from other people. Granted, this is making it sound quite harsh, but it's really not that bad. Most people just don't see a point in there being anything other than the Catholic church because of Papal authority and whatnot. Most people even accept that there's been a general apostasy as well, but still go to the Catholic church because there just can't be any other thing. It just boggles my mind! 

But speaking of hard-core Catholics, does anyone here remember Jan? He was someone I taught while I was in Szczecin for the second time. He was the one who was studying to become a Priest, decided not to, i tak dalej... (and so on) and with him I learned a TON and my entire view on the way things work and how to go about understanding the people changed. I learned to be a lot more loving and accepting of people of other faiths. Also, he's like one of my best friends now. ANYWAY, he's been meeting with missionaries for the last 8 months, but for the last 4 or so, he's not really been putting effort into anything and we pretty much lost hope there, BUT THEN in the last couple of weeks, he's come back and something opened his eyes, he stopped smoking and drinking, and he's decided to get baptized!!!! If all goes to plan, then it will be happening on the 13 of November! Pray for him PLEASE

Elder Curtis and I get along pretty well.  He and I are working on our teaching, it doesn't flow quite well, and we have a hard time building off of each others' ideas because we've both got our own plans running in our heads - pretty normal when you have different teaching styles and we've only been together for a week!. But we've both noticed it and are working on working in better unity.

We exercise, but not together 😬 I just REALLY don't want to go jogging. Anything but that

There's one other set of Elders here- Elder McPherson (four months left) and Elder Pettit, who's in the same group as Elder Curtis. There's also a senior couple here named the Daltons, they're awesome! Sister Dalton was very grateful that I could play the piano (there it is again, mom, there's been a total of 3 or 4 sacrament meetings that I've been a part in where I didn't play the piano) so we're going to switch off every week. I am district leader again, and I've been given the assignment from President Turek to figure out how the missionaries can better work with the ward leaders... any ideas?

The dynamics of this branch are so odd. Kraków certainly has a ton of tourists (I've already been stopped by two american members) and every Sunday there will be anywhere from 3-20 people from out of town. This last week there were two Poles, only one of which didn't speak English, 4 members who live here but are Americans, 6 missionaries from America, and 15 people from out of town. All from America. So instead of the meetings being held in Polish, and translated to English, it was the other way around, and it was WEIRD. Sacrament meeting in English is not something that I am used to, and listening to the speakers in English was weird, and hearing american english accents was weird AND THEN they asked me and Elder McPherson to bear our testimonies because we are new here, and it was in English! That was the first time in over a year that I've done that in sacrament meeting in english, and it just felt strange. I was free- I could say whatever I wanted! I had no limited vocabulary, no stumbling over grammar principles, no nothing! Going home is going to be weird.

weird.

I love you all and thank you for your prayers and support!

Love,

Elder Liechty

25/10/16 - Transfer to Krakow

OK

No one expected this one. I have indeed been moved from Bydgoszcz, but instead of ruling the northern half of Poland like i thought I would, I got sent all the way to the very south to... KRAKÓW! 

say it with me now "crack-oov" NOT "crack-ow"

My companion's name is Elder Curtis, and he's in Elder Hill's group, so he's been in Poland for just over 10 weeks now. He's quiet, tall, and already REALLY good at Polish. I'm very impressed. Also, he's from Hurricane, Utah.

Kraków is probably the Catholic center of all Catholics. Just a couple of months ago, the Pope came and addressed all the youth of Poland. He does this every other year, and the missionaries are supposed to leave the city for the day because there's just nothing that can be done. It's also beautiful! Way bigger that Bydgoszcz, and has tons of legends and stories and pretty buildings! It also used to be the Capitol of Poland. Don't know what happened... We're able to go to three really amzazing places here for P-day- The Salt Mine; Zakopana, which has a bunch of beautiful hikes, and you're able to cross the Slovakian border; and Auschwitz. I hope that I'll be able to go to all of them.

The train ride down was 7 hours long. And started at 5:30 AM. No one sat next to me, either...

That train was so long I don't think I can ride in vehicles for more that 30 minutes for the next couple of years. Ugh.... But your road trip sounds like it was fun! Have you gone through all there is to do in Utah now, and you're moving on to other states? There's so much of the US that I have no idea about. Like, what even is in Nebraska!? Oh wait... But everyone talks about Oregon, and I want to go there.

The last week with Elder Hill was pretty good, too. It started out with a big trial - at the start, we had had some amazing lessons with people, and they promised to meet with us again and seemed like they had great potential, so the week started out really well. But then Tuesday happened. All our meetings flaked us, one investigator told us how we were just not really important to him, another just turned out to have a huge crush on one of the sister missionaries, and at the end of the night, the people we had talked to earlier either stopped answering their phone, or blocked our numbers. Now, this has happened to me numerous times, so I'm used to it, but this was Elder Hill's first time going through the gauntlet, and I could see just how hard it was and there was nothing I could do about it. That was the hardest part, and as a side note, I have a much better understanding of how parenting goes and how God feels when we're going through trials. But the next day we were able to move on and finish the week strong!

It's a much different feeling every major time mark now that i've passed the year mark. Like, all the fractions are getting smaller now instead of rising. Time's running out and I can feel it! Don't quite know what to feel about that...

Have a great week!!

Elder Liecht

10 October 2016

(What made you choose to be healthier?) All my companions have been way healthier eaters than me, and I realized that each of my companions had, up to the point where they were with me, worked out every morning. Then I came into their lives, and they stopped, and then we split up, and they started to work out again. Then I went on exchanges to Szczecin, and I saw what a huge change that Elder Garrison had made in his habits, and finally I decided that something needed to change. So i did. I don't feel like throwing up every time I eat oatmeal now, too, so things are really looking up! We excercise in the same room at the same time, but we're not doing anything together. I'm jump-roping a lot, too, so now I can be one of those cool people who do the jump-roping shows and stuff.

(Are you working more with members since investigators are so few?) I feel like something like that happening to us would be just what we need. With every person I've talked to through emails in other missions, they say that the members are usually real stubborn like the ones here, but they just have a mission culture of working at it a bit harder than we do. We need to follow through a bit more and work harder with them.

None of the appointments really turned into new investigators, but one person just wansn't home, so there's still a glimmer of hope there. But overall, we have 3 progressing investigators right now which is really good. Michał, Roman, and Greg. None of them want to go to church, though. We haven't been able to bring an investigator to church for the last two months, and I don't know how we can help the people understand how important it is!

President Turek came to Bydgoszcz yesterday, and he interviewed Elder Hill and me, which came at a really good time. Granted, every interview with the President is really good and inspiring. We're going to be getting a new branch president here, as well, and they interviewd all the possible presidentes, but we don't know when the change will actually be happening.

I'll take a bunch of pictures of the city today. It's a very small city, so when it feels like there should be more to it, there's not.

What kind of trees are you replaceing the old ones with? I miss fixing sprinklers. I've found out that I just really like taking things apart and putting them back together again. It's just fun. But I also break a lot of things. Until I get some self control, I'm not going to be able to buy anything nice for myself

Elder Hill and I get along well, the biggest thing we connect on is that we're representatives of Jesus Christ together. And it's actually pretty amazing how much that unites a pair of people! It's like that triangle of Jesus Christ you and another person (friend, wife, companion, nieghbor) where as the two of you draw closer to Christ, you draw closer together simply by the way geometry works! And I am more comfortable training now, and it has a big chance of ending in two weeks! The transfer is over on the 24th, and no one knows what will happen at that point

Elder Hill's sister sent us some sweet socks and shirts from a store here, they're awesome!

Hope you all have a great week!

Elder liechty

3 October 2016

1000 piece puzzle I did that ended up missing 2 pieces...

Showing off the cards he received from our primary kids! In his words, here's a 

cute one instead of the one below:)

This picture is on top of a big structure that people used in a city called 

Ciochecina to evaporate water to get the salt and minerals from it.

Pictures from Ciochecino

YAY CONFERENCE!!!

But before we get into that, let me talk real fast about the Word of Wisdom. You might be thinking i'm going to talk about alcohol or tobacco, but not quite. As the smart people in the textbooks would say, the Word of Wisdom is comprised of both negative and positive commandments, or in layman's terms, commandments that say "don't" or "no" and commandments that meant "do" or "yes". And we think and we focus a ton on the don't's of the word of wisdom, but not very often on the do's, and as I have recently passed through a time in my life where I ate macaroni and cheese for every meal for a couple of days, I'm going to bring up the do's. For the last two weeks (get ready, mom, cuz this I'm about to describe a person other than the Elder Liechty you dropped off a year ago) I've been eating so much healthy food! Like, oatmeal, fruits and veggies, whole grains, and hardly any sugar. That doesn't sound like much nor is it that intense of a diet, but compared to the diet I used to have, that's leaps and bounds better. And I feel fantastic because of it! Like, just cleaner and better all around. Now I have way more energy, and I don't even want to eat chocolate that much anymore. It's crazy.

But like, me... eating OATMEAL!? No one saw that coming.

Anyway, conference. I don't remember the exact words of anything I heard, either, but I do remember from Sister Reeve's talk, how when the children were asked about repentace, the answer that hit me the hardest was the one where they said something like "It will help Jesus feel like the Atonement was worth it". And I love that so much! Usually when I think of sinning and repentace, I think of how whenever I sinned I was personally the cause of some of the suffering that Jesus experienced while in the garden, but that's all I thought about. I never thought about the gratitude he must have when someone decides to actually benefit from his gift. There's two sides to it- the pain that he once had, and the joy that he has yet to have, waiting for us to use his atonement! I haven't quite figured out how to word everything I want to say concerning that, but I hope you get the gist of it

We were able to watch all the sessions except Sunday afternoon, so we'll watch that either later today or tomorrow, but yesterday we watched Saturday morning at 10, ate food that the Tufts brought to the chapel, watched Saturday afternoon at 13, then watched the Priesthood session at 16, with a nice talk with a homeless man about how the heavens are opened once again, and that revelation has not stopped with the ancient prophets, then watched the Sunday morning session live at 18!

This week we had a very interesting lesson with a less active member, who was wanting to come back and repent. He actually belongs to anpther branch, so they're now taking over helping him back to the church. He was also blind, and I was the one who was walking him around helping him find doorways and the like, which was very interesting to be needed in such an immediate and literal way. It opened up a whole new door to ways of feeling needed to me...

Also, earlier in this week, we'd been tracting- as missionaries do- and while we were on the bus, and heading towards our destination, I was prompted to go to the next stop, instead of the first one, and when the bus stopped at the first stop, I was prompted to wait again, so we did. And in the area that we've started tracting, we've already set up two return appointments with people that we've met! Two in one week! That's more than some entire two-month transfer blocks that I've had! Nice! The Lord is leading his work, and everything according to his time-table, so I don't know what will become of those lessons, but regardless, it's a huge blessing!

Have a great week!

Elder Liechty