Cześć From Katowice!!!

Wowowowowow, soooooo many things have changed since last week, and it would take me a few hours to write about tchem all. So I'll just list off a few.

First off, we are no longer in the United States, and that is a really strange thought. Sometimes I still don't believe it, and I have to check outside to make sure. A lot of really little things are different here though. Everything from the light switches, to the toilets, to the 24-hour clock system, is slightly different. Also, everyone here speaks Polish, so I guess that's a difference too.

On Monday, we left!!!!! We had our flight from SLC to Amsterdam first. What was so nice about it was that it was only about a quarter full, so after takeoff, we each sprawled out over our own row and went to sleep. Meaning, Elder Olschewski slept, and the rest of us kind of tried to. At the Amsterdam airport, we gave 2 different people copies of the Book of Mormon, so we were all like "we're actually missionaries now."

On Tuesday, we met President Turek and went contacting with some of the soon-to-be-trainers. I was with Sister Godfrey, and we went tracting at an apartment building for part of that time. On one of the doors we knocked at, Sister Godfrey asked the old man who answered if he was religious. He got kind of angry and told us about how he used to be a Catholic priest, but then he retired. I also got a Virgin Mary necklace from a babcia on the street.

On Wednesday, we got assigned our cities and left. I'm in Katowice here, along with Elder Olschewski, who is from my group at the MTC, so that's fun. His companion is Elder Zabriskie, and my companion is the wonderful Sister Harmon from Nephi, UT! I'm excited to work with her. :)

So basically, a lot of the work we have done so far has to do with teaching English. Every time we're on the street, we hand out lotki (fliers) about our free English class. And a lot of the time, when we hand people our lotki, they will start speaking in English just to show off ;) But they can all definitely still improve haha. Which is why they should come to our English classes.

Some of the other things we did this week:

We made sandwiches for homeless people with some Catholic friends and passed tchem (sorry, autocorrect) out. Also, we passed out tea and coffee, which I kind of think we shouldn't do. But it sure made the homeless people happy. We also went to a (Catholic) soup kitchen and fed homeless people dinner. We're glad they let us serve in the Catholic soup kitchen, because Sister Harmon said that often the Catholic service organizations won't let us work with tchem since we're not Catholic.

As far as finding and contacting go, we're trying to talk with everyone. One thing that I've already found is super helpful is just talking about the Gospel whenever we're walking together or on a tram. Fun fact: Polish people don't like to talk (unless you ask for directions or unless they're a babcia) on trams, so if you start talking about the Gospel, everyone listens because they don't want to talk. So fun fact #2: they hear the Gospel whether they want to or not. I'm so sneaky.

Our branch is super good. We have about 10 active members, and they are all wonderful. Our branch president, Pres. Krzykowski, is really awesome, and we also have a member named Sandra, who comes from South Africa but is here for work, and she is rock solid in her testimony. We also have Jake and Hailey, from America. Jake is on the USA Olympic team and is training in Poland right now. He's really tall. They had us over for dinner on Friday, and it was soooo good. They are both wonderful, and I feel really famous now that I've eaten dinner with someone who I watched on TV. I'll try to get a picture with tchem :) We also have Bożyna, who is an old lady with a kind of grumpy outer shell, but a really sweet heart.

Also, fun fact, ice cream, yogurt, and bread here are really good.

I'm super excited to be here! People don't smile here, so when you smile at tchem, it really takes tchem aback. I smiled at this one older guy who kind of looked like Vernon Dursley as we were walking by, and his mouth dropped. His eyebrows popped up to heaven, and mustache fell off. Haha, entertainment for the day ;).

I'm so grateful for the Book of Mormon, and I feel even more grateful for it now that I'm in Poland. People just seem kind of sad here, and they turn to smoking and drinking to deal with whatever goes wrong in their lives. They need the peace the Gospel brings so much. I'm so grateful that I can be a missionary right now in Poland and invite people to come unto Christ.

Kocham was!!!

Siostra Eberting

Pictures: 

Taking the Front Runner to the SLC 

AirportAirport/plane pics

Flag

Mission Home

Sis. Harmon, me, Pres. and Sis. Turek

Looking out the apartment today

Our Apartment (We have a bit of cleaning up to do still today :)

Laundry Room

Kitchen

Main square of Katowice, they haven't taken all the Christmas decorations down yet!

A tram like the ones we take every day

Our chapel

Your Children Arrived Well

Dear parents of our newly arrived missionaries, 

I am happy to let you know that your children have arrived safely in Warsaw this noon. We were excited to pick them up from the airport and meet them in person, not just have  a picture of them on our transfer board. What a lovely group of missionaries! We are looking forward to serving with them and are sure they will be a wonderful source of truth for the Polish people. Your missionaries radiate with joy and are excited to share the gospel with their brothers and sisters here in Poland.

This afternoon, we took your children to a photographer to take pictures for legal work, they had an orientation in the mission office and each an interview with President Turek. They are now teamed up with the Warsaw missionaries and out on the streets proselyting. Tonight, we will have a dinner and a testimony meeting in the mission home before they'll retire to bed early. The trainers will come to Warsaw tomorrow, there will be a trainer-trainee-meeting in the chapel, where your children will be teamed up with their trainer and early afternoon they will be on their way to their first area. P-day will be next Monday, so you will have to be a little patient to receive the first email from them. 

Thank you very much for teaching and supporting your missionaries. We feel very blessed to have them in our mission.

 

Kind regards, 

Sister Adrienne Turek
Polska Warszawska Misja
Kościół Jezusa Chrystusa
Świętych w Dniach Ostatnich 

MTC Week 9: Flight Plans And Such

The biggest news of this week is that WE GOT OUR FLIGHT PLANS!!!!!! Finally, I have tangible evidence that we will actually leave the MTC at some point. It's not that I didn't enjoy my time here, it's just that I don't belong here anymore. We helped the new STLs and ZLs welcome new missionaries this Wednesday, and it was hard to empathize with them anymore because we are leaving so soon! I'm definitely going to miss being around so many missionaries and getting to be with my district and zone all day. But I'm so excited to go start serving the people of Poland!

During class, Elder Cheal and I often have yawn-offs. I swear I yawn three times as much as everyone else except for Elder Cheal. But on Saturday during class, Elder Cheal yawned a yawn so huge as he leaned over his desk, that drool fell out of his mouth and splashed on his notebook. But I was the only one who saw it. So I was laughing so hard, and no one else knew why.

Our mints got returned! The culprit was not the Russians. So we love them now.

The Danish district we welcomed last Wednesday has had quite a week. Yesterday morning they were supposed to take a flight from Salt Lake to an embassy to get visas. As their shuttle was driving on an overpass along I-15, it slipped on the ice and crashed into the barrier. And usually when you're in a crash, you're supposed to stay in the car, right? But when the highway patrolman got there, he told them all to get out, and a couple minutes later two more cars crashed into theirs. So God takes care of His missionaries, in this case by sending a highway patrolman with the inspiration/common sense that if one car slips on the ice of a bridge, more probably will too.

Today at the temple, the person I was endowed for was named Maria Blanca Adelaida von Joeden Koniecpolski. From  Grumsdorf, Bublitz, Pomerania, Prussia in 1833 (I just looked her up on FamilySearch). Which means that she is a Polish person. "Koniecpolski" literally means "end of Poland." So that was pretty fun, partly because I was able to say her name perfectly.

I know I've told you all the same thing for the last few weeks, but READ THE BOOK OF MORMON!!! It will change your life if you read it while searching for answers about life. I love reading the Book of Mormon and learning about what Christ has done for me. And since coming here, I have really started to understand how much power the Book of Mormon has. For example, yesterday I was memorizing 3 Nephi 11:11 (in Polish), which is what Christ first said to His people when He visited America soon after His resurrection. Christ's own words about His purpose are so powerful.:

"I am the light and the life of the world; and I have drunk out of that bitter cup which the Father hath given me, and have glorified the Father in taking upon me the sins of the world, in the which I have suffered the will of the Father in all things from the beginning. " 

Love you all! I'll talk to you in a couple of days :)

Love,

Siostra Eberting

Pictures:

The MTC before leaving

Weather at home

SLC Airport—Poland here we come!

Flight Plans

Arrived Well

MTC Week 8: Towers In The Air

It all started on Saturday.

Our mint tower has been growing rapidly for the past few weeks. Many parents, eager to encourage their missionary, sent lots of mint packs to the MTC over Christmas. Our last count, we were at 35 mint containers in our tower--at least 2 feet tall. Our pride and joy, it rested on our windowsill as a symbol of the hard work we were putting into the Polish language.

But then, Saturday happened. We arrived at T4 (our study building) at the normal time. As Sister Berrett and I were walking to our usual study spot, a shriek of horror and dismay echoed through the hall. Sprinting to the source of this unearthly wail, I stared at the windowsill and gave an equally unearthly wail. Sister Berrett fainted with shock. For lo and behold, half of our mint stack. Was. MISSING.

Many thoughts raced through my mind. It could have been an accident. A janitor coming through could have thrown away half (?) of our mint stack. After counseling together as a Polish district, we put a message up on a mini whiteboard and leaned it against the window: "Thou shalt not steal."

After lunch, we returned to find the rest of our tower missing. And a message on our whiteboard: "Nay."

We were all distraught, and that is not an exaggeration at all. Who would want to take our mints? We're so nice to everybody! We decided to leave another message: "To the missionaries who have our mint stack: It's okay. No hard feelings. It may sound dumb, but our little mint stack really meant a lot to us. We would still really appreciate it if you returned them, though. Love, the Poles." Our mint stack was not only our pride an joy, but it also reminded us of a Polish elder in the previous district. He started the mint stack, and he ended up having to come home after a couple weeks in Poland for health reasons. We're hoping he will be able to come back soon, but we built our mint stack to honor him.

Halfheartedly, we started eating mints again. A couple days later, we had a little stack of four. And then they took them away again. And they dumped out a half eaten container onto our desks so they could take it too. At this point, it's pretty funny to me, but it wasn't then. I guess someone has the immaturity that he would steal our mint containers just to spite us. And we have the immaturity to be angry about it. Not anymore, though. I'm over it. We are 95% sure it's some Russians, though, because some of them have had something against us for a while.

Like the tower of Babel, our mint stack had to fall. Maybe I'll be able to learn more Polish now. But we are still trying to rebuild it.

On Monday, we got to host for senior missionaries again! That was so much fun. And this week, we had the biggest group they've had in a few years: 150 senior missionaries. Including, as I found out later, the Reimschussels! And also, including a Poland-bound senior couple, the Womacks, who are from Vancouver, WA. They are SO nice, and I'm really hoping to get to serve with them at some point. Also, the group included Sister Marriott from the former YW presidency. We all sat by her during choir and tried to pretend we weren't in the presence of a celebrity.

Basically, this week has been wonderful because I've been able to meet a lot of people from high school, YSA ward, back home, or in some other way I've had a connection with them in the past. I really see that as God helping me out a bit, and helping me not feel too hungry for Poland before it's my time to go.

Keep reading that Book of Mormon! It's a really good book. If you read it with a question in mind and really ponder what you're thinking about, God will help you find answers to it.

Next P-day is my last before Poland! I get travel plans tomorrow. But I'm being a little more patient than I was last week ;)

Kocham was!

Siostra Eberting

Pics:

-MTC with Emily and Kent Reimschussel and Sherie and Jeff Warner (Sherie texted it to mom)

-Map pic

MTC Week 7: 3 Nephites

Hi family! This week has been wonderful. One of the coolest experiences we got this week was our first Skype TRC with members in Poland. Sis. Berret and I skyped a Polish man who was a service missionary. It basically felt like we were back to square one as far as language comprehension goes. Probably understood about 2% of everything. And he didn't have any facial expressions at all, which made it a little hard for us to share things from our hearts. But Sister Einfeldt said he has a lisp, which encouraged us a little bit  And she also said that he always has those facial expressions, so I feel good about it. :) It also felt really good to fulfill our purpose as missionaries just a little bit, even if we weren't actually communicating with each other. Just like with the other TRCs, I've learned that it's so much more important to focus on listening than to think about what I'm going to say.

Our Polish elders had a really cool experience with their Skype TRC. The sister they taught, Agata, hadn't been coming to church for a few weeks. It definitely takes up a few hours for her to get to and from church, but that ain't no excuse. Sis. Einfeldt had been praying for her. But guess what lesson the elders prepared? Yup: keeping the Sabbath day holy. And they just "happened" to sit down at the right computer that would connect a call to Agata. I know these weren't coincidences, but the Lord guiding the elders to know what to say and prepare.

Brother Nilsson came and talked to us again a few days ago. I'm 95% sure he's actually one of the three Nephites, because he works day in and day out to minister to everyone else. He's led many people to get baptized, and the stories he tells us about how he's followed the Holy Ghost are inspirational. He talked to us this time about how we can be successful in Poland. Basically, we can be successful by finding members who will minister to those around him.

Now that our district is in the same month we go to Poland, and we're all starting to get restless here. Don't get me wrong, the MTC is wonderful, and I'm going to miss a lot of things when we leave, but I also am feeling homesick for Poland. Even though I don't actually know Polish ;)

Keep reading the Book of Mormon! Don't stop just because Pres. Nelson's challenge ended. I love the peace I feel every day when I read it, and each of you can feel that peace too if you take the time to read the Book of Mormon and think about how it applies to your own life. God will bless you for reading His book.

Love,

Siostra Eberting

Pictures:

Snack time after class one day

All the holidays we've nee here for.  And queso.

We got sack breakfasts, but instead of hard boiled eggs, they were raw ones.

The 4 Lamanites