16 Nov 2015

Polish Kebabs, man, gotta get these in America!

HELLO

Yeah, every night before planning, Elder Berlin and I do a think where we think back on the day and write down a time where we saw the hand of the lord in our life "Ręka Pana" 

I actually adjusted to the tiny branch really quickly! This week we had as many nonmembers as we did members in sacrament meeting, and as many missionaries as the Poles, but it didn't really seem strange to me. Sacrament meeting is still an hour long, and then we have sunday school for another hour. And then it ends, so church is two hours, and we have institute, and mututal on thursday and wednesday respectively. We have about five strong members- Dagmara, she's been a member for three years, and is endowed and is pretty great. Jan, who has been a member for about a year, and seriously has more faith than anyone I have ever seen in my life. And twins- Nick and Alex (we call her Ola, though) and their mom, Joanna. They're from Florida, actualy, but their Joanna and their dad are Polish, so they know both languages realy well. And they're all pretty recent converts, maybe six months for the kids, and about three for the mom. maybe less. And we're working with their dad. 

I'm still loving it, but honestly it's getting harder. It's taking much more effort to be upbeat every day. But the few little moments when I am able to see the Lord's hand in the work are making it possible. I try to serve, but maybe not as much as I should. There's definitely things I could be doing more.

You know, often I thought of myself as laying down this great foundation for the work to begin here in Poland, and that is how I would comfort myself knowing that I wouldn't be getting a baptism every week. BUT I realized that's incredibly selfish of me. Because this mission has been open for like twenty fife years! There are missionaries that served here that are over fourty years old now! They layed that great foundation. Granted, we're not going to be putting on the the top or whatever the finishing part of that metaphor is supposed to be, but there's so much work done before us that I have been giving no credit to. 

In other news, we got a crazy cool and accepting new investigator yesterday!!

AND WE WERE TRACTING! That's supposed to never work! But we were going around, tracting this nice looking neighborhood, and we met this lady who was from the US, and she gave us cookies, but also was very Catholic, so no success there, BUT THEN we met this guy who has met missionaries before and had a Księga Mormona, and had a relationship with the senior couple who was here before the Cuttings, and he said he would come to family home evening tonight! AND THEN we rang the bell on this one house and the guy let us in and we were able to meet with him right there and talk about the restoration of the gospel and we got a date that we could meet again! Needless to say, it was a good night!

Being the pianist is tough. I do get to choose the songs, but I don't have time to practice, so I can only play the songs with the top hand. But it's getting better! One of the sister missionaries- Sister Sloan- leads the music. But she has no musical background, so everything is a little rough. Yesterday we had three members, and three nonmembers. So... nice? I guess? I don't know if it's good to say that we had as many nonmembers as we did members in Sacrament meeting. Also, after sacrament, another investigator came in (Mikołausz), making nonmembers outnumber the members. But then a different investiator (Mateusz). I haven't really met with any of the people, so it was a little awkward. But oh well. Thus is missionary work. 

It was a little rainy this week, but it was never a problem. We were always inside wehn it was worst, and we have umbrellas if it gets really bad. Also, I'm buying gloves and other things today, so it's not a problem. I'm dry AND warm! Go team!

We do have an english class, but there are only two people who come to it, but we did get to snag onto one lady who kind of wants to hear the gospel. The other guy has no interest. Just wants to learn American slang and stuff. But three of our members did become members because of that english class, so we keep doing it! And we hold it in the Chapel, so we have to tell people that it's not a trap, and that we won't force religion on them if they come. 

We haven't been able to talk with young Piotr... He says he's busy, but will have time when the winter holidays come up. But he said he didn't get an answer to his prayer. I'm not sure how hard he tried, or with how much sincerity, but we need to get to him that he can't give up! Old Piotr is still as scared for the future as always. We're meeting with him on Friday. We don't do a lot of seeking out inactives. Some people are inactive just because they live expensively far away from the chapel, so I don't really know what to do about that... And a lot of others just want nothing to do with the church. But I think there's a lot more we can do with them, and we're just scared because inactive members are tougher to bring back.

That dinner was probably the best food I've had for the last three months! It was with the Pakoras - Alex/Ola, Nick, and Joanna- the ones that came out of English- and it was really good. And we were able to teach them a lesson! I think the missionaries here are looking for immediate results, like that with a single, perfect lesson we can get someone to accept the whole gospel just like we do. But not so much. All the lesson is supposed to do it bring the people close to Christ. And setting up another lesson is helpful, too.

Polish comes very slowly. I can speak, I can testify, and I gave a talk in it yesterday (which went not terribly!) But I still can't understand Polish people. It's rough. 

There is this one store, called Safari, where we have two guys who are kind of interested, but kind of not. They work there, and they're both from Egypt. And muslim. They're names are Amr and Muhammad. They're the coolest people in Poland, though. And they make the best Kebabs! They're just having the hardest time believing that 1. Christ is the actual son of God, 2. Joseph Smith and everyone else are real prophets of God, and 3. That the Kuran isn't in the accepted canon of scripture. So it's hard getting past those walls.

And life is actually much harder than I thought it would be! But don't let that scare the people who are planning on going on missions! Just be expecting that it will be TOUGH! But Christ went through everything. Literally everything. And then some. He knows how you're feeling, because he lived through it. And thanks to that, he knows exactly what it is that will help you get through that. You just have to ask for help. And if you do that, it comes. You just have to work a little more than you thought you would have.

Więc, I dont have much more to say now, BUT I LOVE YOU! loads. OH! and speaking of loads, in Szczecin, instead of saying the word that means "socks" they say the word that means "toast" So some people say "you stink, put your toast in the washer"

And that is what makes this place great.

Starszy Liechty

Me trying to understand my first call on the phone

Good polish food

you were right, mom. I should have listend. I should have practiced.

I'm the branch piano player now.

That scripture was really what I needed. Right then. Thank you. Because just earlier this week it hit me just quite how long two years is. And how difficult it is to work all day straight. For two years. Just thinking about two years ago and how much stuff has happened since then! It's a little frightening... But yeah, I've been reading a lot of those "Be of good cheer" scriptures lately, but I didn't see that one yet.

And fun Polish fact! Word order means literally nothing! you could have a sentence that would read "dar psmu dał Kot" And it would translate to "gift dog gave cat" But because of how Polish works, it would mean "The cat gave a gift to the dog". I was trying to figure out how word order worked here for so long. Now I know why I could never find it.

My address is

 Ul. Piotra Skargi 5A/4

71-422 Szczecin

Polska

PLEASE WRITE TO HIM:)

At least, that's whats written on Elder Berlin's letters. So it should work.

And Elder Berlin's a really good example. Like, probably a perfect person, and has been since he was born. No sins come from this guy. And he's been out a year and two months, so he;s got ten months.And the Cuttings are fantastic! Elder Cutting is a very silly man, but also knows what he's doing. And can get very spiritual.  Sister Cutting, too, is super sweet, and last week, she bore her testimony with some Polish lines that she memorized, and it was just amazing!

The apartment actually is a lot bigger than I thought it would have been. There's more closet space than in the MTC, and the beds are comfier. And I usually get to bed before he does, so I haven't had to deal with snoring quite yet. Excpet for the man sitting across from me at this library. He's snoring. And yeah, it's just us two. BUT Poland is a very dusty place. We swept up this week, and there was just a ton of dust on the ground. No one knows where it comes from.

Elder Berlin likes to cook, so he'll do most of it. But he's not a super fancy cook. Or one who knows specific recipies, or how spices are supposed to work together. And, granted, niether am I, so basically, we'll make some sort of meat thing, and throw spices in and try it with different veggies or other things. There's actually quite a bit of produce here in Poland, and I know how to say pasta (makaron), so don't worry about me! We haven't eaten at a members home yet, but we do have something planned on wednesday, and Christmas. We did eat at the Cuttings for fast sunday, though, and are planning on it again for thanksgiving. No wierd polish food, but good Polish food, yes! I'm glad that these people don't make as much gros food as I thought.

Yeah, counting the six missionaries, only 13 poeple. And yesterday, we had nine right up until sacrament, when three more came in. We have two youth, so we meet with them once a week for "mutual" and churhc is only two hours long. We have a lot of inactives, too, but no one really seems to want to work with them. I don't konw what's up, but there are few days where we have set up meetings with investigators or members, so most of the day is spent tracting, or contacting on the streets. Also, I'm not sure if I said this in the last email, but we went tracting on Halloween, and it was great! But yeah. Szczecin is a little, little branch... We're gonna fix that, though!

We have one member, who's name is Jan Trukszen (maybe) and he has more faith than anyone I've ever seen in my life. It's incredible! Elder Berlin was sick, so he gave him a blessing, and Elder Berlin was healed right there. Straight up. Also, sometimes in the scriptures it talkes about how people quake when they feel the Spirit. I always thought that that was talking about shivers down the spine or something, but during that blessing, I quaked. And then, on Sunday, he was sick, pretty badly sick, too, and Elder Berlin gave him a blessing, and right after it, Jan was totally fine. Miracles IRL.

And we got our first real investigator! His name is Piotr. He's a diadist, but was really interested as to why we were so converted as to go on missions for two years for our church. We set up a lesson with him in a coffee shop, and talked more, and really felt the spirit during it. I really like him, too. He's about 23. Also, there's another Piotr, but he's very old, and also an investigator, and also a professor at a university. But he also thinks that Poland is doomed. He talks with Elder Cutting a ton about how "blood will run in the streets of Szczecin within the year", and that there's no chance for Poland's future. He's very scared. BUT THE GOSPEL. Families, and loving one another, that's whats it's all about. If only we were able to get that message out to the people, then everything would be fine! With time. Poland is just about to break into acceptance. I can feel it.

And for Christmas, Little games I could play in my free time, OH! Also, my rubix cubes! Whichever ones you're wiling to send, but not too many, because I'll need to taqke them home. But yeah.

LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!!

Elder Liechty

2 Nov 2015 - "looks really, REALLY hurt sometimes"

Are y'alls ready? Cuz Poland is SUPRISINGLY NOT THAT DIFFERENT FROM AMERICA!

It's just that everyone speaks the most confusing language in existance.

Ok, so we got on the plane in Chicago, and we sat next to a guy who was a memeber, so we didn't have to feel bad about not teaching a lesson. Just studied and stuff. When we landed in Munich, no one really knew what to do, but one of the guys in our district- Elder Einfeldt- took four years of German in school, so he could understand everything, just not speak it, because Polish had won over his mind. So we were able to find our way to the gate where we took a bus to get to the plane where we flew to Poland. Also, no lessons were taught on that plane. German is too silly a language to learn. We landed in Warsaw, which actually had a good amound of smog, where we could see a single smokestack sticking above the cloud... When we landed down, we got lost in the airport until we found the place where luggage should have been, and couldn't find our luggage. Then we tried to ask someone in Polish where our luggage was, but that didn't help because there's so much we didn't learn, but then eventually found it. We then waited for a while seeing if President Edgren would should up at the baggage claim, but he didn't, so we went outside ready to brave the Polish world alone, and found him standing right there for about thirty minutes. Nice. We drove to a mall to get some pictures done for some legal stuff, then to the mission home for food, and recovery, and that night we also went out to teach a little bit! The group I was with went trackting, and I now understand why few people do it anymore. Then we slept.

The next morning, we did some more legal stuff, became residents of Poland, and went to the Warsaw chapel where we would meet our trainers! My companions name is Elder Berlin. He's from Orem, Utah, and is very great! I feel like he's kind of caught the sads that accompany a European mission, especially the Polish one, so I've been trying to put some of the new missionary fire into him. I think it's working pretty well so far, so we'll see what happens. After we met, we had to leave right away, becasue the city I'm in is a city called Szczecin, which is the longest to get to from Warsaw, so I wasn't even able to have a real goodbye with everyone from the MTC. It was a little sad, but I was excited so I didn't care. On the train, we sat next to each other, so there wasn't much chance to talk with people, but we were able to talk with someone. She was nice, but nothing came out of it. We got home, I unpacked, and we went to bed.

The next day, we had district meeting, where I met the four other missionaries in Szczecin, Elder and Sister Cutting, Sister Pierson, and Sister Sloan. They're all fantastic! Sometimes we see each other outside while contacting, and it's really cool! And then, we went out tracking. And let met tell you- looks really, REALLY hurt sometimes. Like, people hate us. WHAT!? I think they all think we're J-dubs. But sometimes we'd try to talk to someone, and then they like, go halfway across the road and give us the nastiest looks i've ever seen. But we continue. The next day, we had Institue, and at one time near the end, I gave a coment (in polish) about the topic, and when I looked around, everyone was looking at me in shock. Apparently, my Polish is REALLY good for how long I've been learning it. But- I can't understand a lick of whatever anyone else is saying, even the missionaries... It's reallly bad. Kind of frustrating, too. Like, I know how to answer these peoples' problems, but I just kant figure out what those problems are! 

The next days, we went contacting, and we're getting a lot more lessons on the streets than we used to have, and more poeple are giving us theyre numbers. Maybe we;re breaking through the outer shell of the baguette that is Poland. But the branch itslef is actually stuggling a little bit. My very first lesson was with a less active named jerzy, who (remember I can't understand people speaking Polish) even the Polish people can't understand. He's also a very poetic person, so he'll be off saying things like "let the dead bury the dead" and stuff like that that makes absolutely no sense even If you have the contekts. Context. Maybe. Sorry, Polish is a very phonetic language, so I can't really spell anymore. We also taught another less active named zbyszek, who when we entered his home, lived in really poor conditions, and I realized how tough a lot of the people here have it. 

On Sunday, there were 13 people in attendance. Which is about two less than our average. There's only three really strong members that I know of- Jan, Łukasz, and Dagmara (I think that's how you spell it), They're all amazing people, but everyone else is tough... Something needs to change here, and I hope it happens fast. The main goal of the mission president is simply to make Szczecin have a solid foundation in it's branch, and then we can move on to biggering it.

Also, in Polish, instead of saying "Potrzebuję używać łażękę" Which directly means "I need to use the bathroom", you say "Musię korzystać z łażęki" Which means "I must take advantage of the bathroom" So that's neat! Also, when saying "God", you can say "Bóg" or "Boże" The first one is the normal noun, God, but the second one is the adjective version of the word, or "Goddy" Doesn't exist in english, but it's a thing here. AND I went to a real life Milk Bar today! And milk bar "Bar mlescy" literally means "milky bar" As in the adjective! Even Moses has an adjective! EVERYTHING GETS AN ADJECTIVE! Samuelny, Bethi, Maxi, Zachy, Caity, (Sorry, yours is already an adjective), Kenti, and Kaity (sorry, yours, too) AND IT WOULD MAKE SENSE TO THEM! (If it ends in a y or i, its an adjective.) But in the milk bar I had pierogi (Plural, not adjective) And it was amazing. Lets bring that back to America!

Ok, this is how Polish people say goodbye- CZEŚĆ! DO WIDZENIA! NA RASZE! DO ZOBACZENIA! CZEŚĆ! and so on. They take a very long time to say goodbye.

LOVE ALL THE WAY FROM POLAND!!

Starszy Liechty

They have this holiday called All Saints Day where people put candles on the graves for their ancestors in Purgatory. Very nice.

22 October 2015

This is our teacher Siostra Blake. Yesterday was our last day with her, because she didn't think she could handle all the stress of working at the MTC. She made a big deal of the fact that it wasn't us, just the schedule. But yeah, she's awesome, and if you, Max, or Caity see her, tell her that she's one of the best people in the world. Because she is.

The mission home address, where you can send packages or letters until we know how well the mail system works is:

Elder Sam Liechty

Kościół Jezusa Chrystusa

ul. Wiertnicza 135, I piętro

02-952 Warszawa

Poland

Four days.

When we talked with the Polish people (which we did again yesterday), the first time it was pretty easy to understand her, she spoke slowly and clearly for us, and it was pretty easy to rozmawiać (converse) with them. But the second time, it was really bad connection, and his voice was really quiet, but we were still able to teach some stuff with him, also he had an accent that was tough to understand, and he spoke pretty quickly. But it was still amazing. I get butterflies in my stomach everytime I think about going there, and it's just going to be great!

Hopefully I'll be able to find some long lost family members in Poland and show them the gospel. What an amazing story that would be! But who knows, it might not. Whatever the Lord's will is. And I bought a calling card from here, which gives me about seven hours of calling time, so I think I'm pretty set. Will everyone be home? I'll be able to call sometime around 4-5:30 Chicago time. I can call Zach and Katie, too, if they can. Hopefully you'll see this and we can figure something out real quick. And I already have the set of books from Max,  so I'm set on the 14 hour plane ride. O jej... (Oh, dear). And snacks I'm fine with, too. Everyone's giving away everything so their suit cases aren't heavy.

AND MICE!? Ew. Destroy them all. Sometimes we have spiders, but they don't stand a chance against 20 intuitive missionaries.

I'm just so excited to be in Poland and actually start teaching real people!! It's gonna be crazy scary, but who cares. It's gonna be awesome! And I've already received proof that Polish people can at least understand me, so that's going to be fine. I just want to be there right now and not wait these days. Monday can't come soon enough. I'm going to take so many pictures there, you don't even know! There's so little to take here because every building is the same drab color of off yellow. But Poland is better than that.

I'm going to be sending letters to y'all today, but I don't know where everyone lives, so I'll just send them to you, mom, and you can figure it out from there. :D

Things are going to get rough, but we have God on our side. The most powerful being in existence, who can do literally everything, is at our side pushing us along. I don't think that we can fail.

Next time I send an email, I'll be in Poland.

Starszy Liechty

15 October 2015 - (Current address) OCT27 POL-WAR, 2005 N. 900 E. Unit 17, Provo, UT 84602

What the heck is Brother Iverson doing is trees! Adults get mad when I'm in trees! And I'm bendy
and not breakable! But of course, I'll pray for him.

And what's more than just seeing videos of people from Poland, yesterday, instead of doing the
usual TRC thing, which is just teaching people who know how to speak Polish here (usually RMs) 
we got to skype someone who lived in WARSAW!! Right before the skype call started, I got this 
feeling like "wait. This isreal. This person is like the people that I'll be teaching in two weeks" And 
I became CRAZY nervous and excited. And then she answered and it was like explosions and the most"WHOWOAHOWHAHAHHAUGHG
UGHGAHAH!" Kind of feeling that you can get. It was awesome. I need to
 be there right now Real fast- sometimes in class, when our teachers are doing something like 
teaching us how to plan our day or week, they'll do role plays, and bring up different people and 
they'll be like "Oh, I think that Susie's doing really good right now" and Susie is a pretty normal 
name, right? But then they say "Oh yeah, but Agnieszka is having some problems" And it's great 
because Polish names range from susie to agnieszka. AND DURING TRC WE TAUGHT AN 
AGNIESZKA!! It was perfect. What a good name.

And I do want the Harry Potter scarf . The coat is fantastic. Everyone in my zone is jealous
of how attractive I can now be. I can't wait for it to get really cold!! 

I'm actually only reading the BoM in english, Polish, too, but I'm not trying to finish it at the
MTC, that would be incredibly difficult. Where I am, I can only get through about one chapter 
a day. It turns out that our zone president lives in like, the fourth ward! So he was able to tell 
me about the presidency. His name is Wiseman,so, I don't know... do what you want with 
that information. And Brother Clark met the second councilor in my zone, President Redding. 
So neat.

And we're able to hear the BYU games from the MTC, and are usually able to tell how the
score is coming based on the cheers, which is nice.

We've had Elder Oaks come to speak with us, and he's been the only member of the 12. We
get a lot of the Seventy, and we've gotten the Presiding Bishop, and General Primary President, 
I think. But sometimes it's just someone like the general director of the MTC. The week has been 
a pretty normal one, we did get new people in our zone, but not many. I did realize, however, 
today while in the temple, just how many people are praying for the missionaries. My family, 
my friends, general authorities, my friends families (if I was close with them) and the thousands 
or millions of others that include missionaries in they're prayers. Like, everything I succeed at is 
because of those prayers. It's so hard to believe just how much help I'm getting right now.
So much.

No epiphanies yet, but I'll be praying for some. And we always do our service in the same
building, but we get to switch up what we do each time, but it's all pretty easy and boring.

11 days!!!!

LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH!!

Starszy Liechty

WAIT

One more thing- because Polish is an inflected language (meaning that the endings of words
change according to their relationship with other words in the sentence) You can write my name 
seven different ways. Usually. But because "Liechty" ends with a "Y" our last name is techniaclly 
and adjective, meaning that I can choose if I want to decline it like a noun or an adjective, so I can 
write my name 13 or so different ways in Polish!

Liechty

Liechtego

Liechte

Liechtemu

Liechtowi

Liechtem

Liechtym

Liechce

and a couple others that use accents that I can't write on this computer. But it's great!

 Show original message

8 OCT 2015 - (Current Address) OCT27 POL-WAR, 2005 N. 900 E. Unit 17, Provo, UT 84602

HELLO!

My English, Polish is ruining. That's how we'd say it.

WE'RE GOING TO BE IN POLAND IN 19 DAYS!!!

POLAND

That's just crazy.

It certainly has gone fast. They have a saying that's been going around the MTC forever and it goes "Days are weeks and weeks are days". And that's very, very accurate. And I'm so excited. I don't even care if I can't understand a word of the language, but I just want to get out there! And I did get dad's package; we had a fiesta in our room. Anyway, in that other package, my other shoes would be really nice, because I just found out that the shoes I brought are much more worn out that I thought. The ones I'm thinking of are a darker blue, and are adidas, so they've got those three white stripes down the side. Max had a pair that were the exact same style, just a lighter blue. And as many scarves as you can spare. Because scarves are my favorite thing. I also might need another tube of that cortozone cream. However you spell it. No snacks, really, we have our fair share of food in our room. I don't think I need any other clothes.

OH! I just remembered. That whole US draft signing up deal. I didn't do it, I think. Also signing up to vote. All patriotic things that I neglected to do. Maybe. What do we do about that? And it's spelled "starszy" there's no "k" in it. Everyone needs to learn this because no one can do it yet. Please. (Obviously he is not making the Starsky and Hutch connection:)

I just really want to leave at this point. We saw some video that one of our teachers took while she was in Poland, talking to some converts, and I just fell in love with them as soon as I saw them. So basically Heavenly Father is helping me love the people I need to serve already, and It's great. I want to go to Poland. We're all going a little crazy, but we got some new people in our zone this last Wednesday, so now we can release some of that energy on them. It'll be fun.

All of us just watched all the sessions in the big building on campus where we watch all of our devotionals. No one actually said that we would've been singing during conference, so it was just a hope. A hope dashed by the cruel realities of this world. But the choir actually sounds really good, so all of us have stayed in it to sing and experience it. Also, after conference was over, the choir dropped about four hundred people, so I think they were also thinking they would sing in conference. It was a good conference, and the first one where I actually took notes, so it was probably the best conference for me so far. 

And I hope you had a really good time at the reunion. How many people were there? Were most of your friends there, or did you not recognize a lot of them? Also, what were they're responses if/when they found out you were Mormon? Because I imagine people would be a little weirded out by it. 

This week wasn't too exciting, but I did decide that I want to read the whole Księga Mormona (po angelsku) before I leave, so basically I need to read about 25 pages a day, and I need to use pretty much all of my free time to do it. But it feels really good, and what I once considered a chore is not even kind of a chore. It's awesome!

Adrian and Ola are just our teachers pretending to be real investigators from Poland. But they're hard on us. Ola, actually is pretty easy, but I imagine that she'll have trouble when we start teaching about the law of chastity or word of wisdom, but we've already commited her to baptism, which is always an amazing feeling, whereas Adrian is crazy tough to get through, but finally our companionship was able to have a lesson that was pretty much 100% inspired by the spirit, and he said he would be baptized. It was probably one of the most intense experiences ever, that lesson. But now he's asking us about harder, more realistic questions like "what do I need to do if I have problems in my family" or other things that adults have a hard time answering. But I guess he's just preparing us for everything that will come. 

We do have to pay at the temple (for breakfast), but it's all really cheap. I get huge breakfasts usually for less that 3 or 4 dollars. 

And the thing I'm most nervous about Poland probably is how will I be able to work as hard as I can always? Like, what if I slack off one day, and that would have been the day where we meet a person that would eventually become converted? Then that would be on my head, and that is not something that I want. So I guess I'll just always work hard, doesn't seem too difficult.

And what I really loved about Pres. Monson's testimony, wasn't so much the idea of millions of people on the edge of their seats, praying for a miracle (which, of course, is amazing), but more so the fact that President Monson was going to bear his testimony to the world no matter what. No matter what problems he had, or thing he had to push through, he would sacrifice anything and everything he had at that podium to tell the world what he knew was true, and what he knew everyone needed to hear. And that that should be an example to us all to bear testimony of Christ no matter what the circumstances should be, and that there is nothing more important than this gospel.

(This next part is from Kent's letter) "Conference was great! We all watched it in a big building where the gym usually is, and it probably was the most spiritual conference I've ever had. Probably because I was paying attention the whole time. And it's so impressive to me that you watched it when you were alone! I'm not sure if I would've had the willpower to watch it all. But at least everyone who could be was together on Sunday. I really liked one of the talks in the first session on Saturday, the one who's main message was the "What lack I yet?" thing we need to ask all the time. And to myself I also realized that when we ask that question, we need to realize that- since it's something that we're not already doing- we won't really want to do that thing. So when we want to figure out what it is that will make us better, we need to ask in total faith and humility and willingness to do what is asked. I liked it. And the one about moms was Elder Holland, and the one about women was President Neilson, I think. And those were fantastic ones, too. I love mom, and I hope you love her like nothing else, dad!"

I love you all SO MUCH

Especially you, mom. Can't wait for you to watch that talk. A good one for sure. Very good. Watch it. Holland. Now. Go. It's good.

-Starszy Liechty.

And you know that Polish is tough when the official translation of the missionary purpose has some words misspelled. (But really, most people born in Poland aren't fluent until they're 18 years old.)

Also, Sweater day Saturday is now a thing, and it's awesome. But I forgot that we were going to take a picture, so...

30 Sept 2015 - (Current address) OCT27 POL-WAR, 2005 N. 900 E. Unit 17, Provo, UT 84602

Hi family,

I really like Mr. Fox. He's cute.

And it turns out that if missionaries are singing in conference, It won't be any of us. Or they'll suprise us tomorrow, but that probs won't happen.

A typical day for me would start with screaming some sounds while the alarm wakes us all up, and then showering and wondering why it takes forever for everyone else to get ready. Then we go to breakfast which is usually pretty disappointing, so I just usually get a bagel or something, and then we go to class. Class in the morning will usually start with learning polish or teaching our "investigators" which are just our teachers. Currently we have two zainteserowanie (investigators) whose names are Adrian and Ola. Ola is crazy nice and really receptive to everything we teach, so we don't worry too much about her. But Adrian is tough. He doesn't really accept what we say, and he'll ask "why?" to literally everything we say. Which I suppose is good so we'll know how to answer questions in the field, but It's pretty frustrating now. 

And after we have classroom instruction, we go to eat lunch, check the mail, and go back to class for personal study. After personal study, we have companionship study, and after that, we have language study. That's when everyone messes around the most, but it's callmed down since the beginning. After all those studies, we go to the gym for an hour, then dinner, then check mail again because everyone doesn't know how to control their desires, and then go back for some more classroom instruction. And we study more language, and do CMS, which stands for Coaching Missionary Study. And that's where the teachers will meet with us individually, as companionships, or everyone at once to discuss whatever it is we need discussing on. Then we head back to our residencies and mess around, do awesome things like drink from the water fountain upside down, or have nerf battles, or dress up as star wars characters and have lightsaber fights, and then go to bed after fifteen minutes of quiet time, which are rarely actually quiet, which kind of bothers me. Then it starts over! for nine weeks.

P-days start with us going to temple, then we eat breakfast in the temple because it's a million times better than in the MTC, and after that we go to do laundry and emailing which is happening right now. after that we'll go to the gym for a good amount of time. Our whole district usually plays volleyball with some of the other people in our zone, and we're getting pretty good at it! Then if we have time, we'll take a nap, and then eat dinner, and then P-day ends, and we go back to class. Usually during this class on P-day, we'll do this thing called TRC, where returned missionaries or other people who know the language will come and we give them a lesson, but since no one knows polish, we only sometimes get people to teach. And after that, we go to bed.

I get along well with everyone in my district now, which is nice, but Starszy Haskett is pretty great. He's really funny, and we share the same sense of humor, and he's actually got a good spirit with him, which is nice. Starszy Mcmaster is also really awesome, and a very spiritual person, and those two are companions, so It's like the power companionship.

AND

you know how the guy at the bank was saying the the word for "to be" was pronounced like the B word? it is. completely. No accents to it or anything. Straight up saying the B word is how we say "to be" or just "be" it's wild. AND there's seven cases in polish which change the endings of words depending on how they're used, but that doesn't matter. What does matter is that one of them is used when you rename somehting with a noun, and you can tell it's being used when a form of "to be" is being used, so the way we are told to remember is shown in the picture. Just remember what "to be" sounds like in polish-

I can't think of any really crazy experiences, but what I did come to realize, is that we always worry about feeling the Spirit in our decisions, which is a good goal, but sometimes we think that a huge, obvious prompting from the spirit is the only voice we can trust, which isn't true. If we all keep the commandments, and remember and keep our covenants we've made with God, then the Spirit will be with us always, even when we don't notice it, and to trust ourselves really is actually trusting the Spirit. And that has definitely helped me here when doing all the things I need to do.

LOVE Y'ALL SO SO MUCH!!!!

Starszy Liechty

Look at this. The Polish flag is reflected in the tag. That's what I call art. (also, starszy McMaster took this one, so props to him)