Peter, Dreadlocks Guy, And A Security Guard

Hello family! Sorry about the lame email! This email was sacrificed to make our apartment spotless.

We had our people in church this week so that was great! Please keep praying for Peter--the guy we met last week.

Thanks Mom for the puzzle!

Met a guy on a tram this week who had been growing his dreadlocks out for 20 years. He had a lot of hair.

Sister Jensen tried to stop and talk to a security guard this week. He was well armed and said no because his coworker was filling up the ATM behind him. I was pretty proud of Sis Jensen.

We met a lady this week right down the street of the chapel. She said if she were to change religions, she would become a member of our church. She had talked to the missionaries 7 or 8 years ago. So we made sure she got a Book of Mormon and we are hoping to hear from her soon!

We get transfer calls in 3 days. I am kind of nervous. Whatever happens will be great, but the suspense is killing me.

Love,

Sister Eberting

Pictures:

1. Coffee shop right down the street from our chapel

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Great And Spacious Building Experience

Hello my peoples!

This week has been so packed with good stuff and classic missionary experiences.

1. We met a guy because we were singing Sound of Music. We were singing on the streets in between talking to people--we stopped singing right before trying to talk to him of course, and I am pretty sure that Julie Andrews did her magic for this guy. Also random thing: one time we were talking to people on the streets and I was hauling a small suitcase around, and people were so much more open than usual. Something about having a suitcase/singing made us appear more approachable to other people. My next idea is to find a puppy and take him with me everywhere.

2. We met a guy who told us about his philosophies in life. It sounded as though he were quoting 2 Nephi 28:7-9. Poor guy. I could tell he was trying so hard to pretend to be happy in this life, but he knew the things he was doing are fleeting. He didn't have real happiness in his eyes. If he experiences an awakening, he knows where to find us though.

3. We have met twice with a guy who we found when we went Christmas caroling a couple of weeks ago! He is super cool and has some great potential and a good foundation of faith.

4. I tried real European hot chocolate this week. It was so good. It was like eating melted chocolate.

5. We were walking home and talking to people on Thursday night. About 20 meters from our home we stopped and talked to a guy. He is 100% the person we were supposed to meet that day. We exchanged numbers and gave him a book.

And get this: when I messaged him the next day and asked him if he had read, he said he had put it under his pillow that night and woke up and read a few pages!

We invited him to church Saturday night and he came! So we are going to meet with him this week. I can tell this guy is prepared to accept the Gospel. Will you please pray for him? His name is Piotr (Peter)

Church yesterday was awesome and everyone who was there had a powerful spiritual experience and heard something God needed them to hear. We had a talk about Joseph Smith's first Vision and another talk about the power of the Book of Mormon. During Sunday School we talked about Lehi's dream.

6. Great and Spacious Building experience!!

Yay this one is fun. So here in Poland, we've been working a lot more on Facebook lately. On Friday night I wrote a post in a group for foreigners living in Poznań. The point of the group is to meet other people. So in the post I included some of thethings we believe and how our goal is to help people strengthen faith in Jesus Christ. I told everyone that ifthey want to learn more, to contact me.

For some reason, my belief in Jesus Christ and a living prophet offended some people so they wrote some disrespectful comments and basically started trolling (which I kind of expected, honestly). And we also got some people who were supportive. But it was really interesting to see how basically these anti-faith voices tried to drown out calmness and reasonableness. Eventually an administrator took down my post because it caused "religious incitement" and I'm blocked from posting in this group for a week. It's so fun to be in Facebook jail. This was maybe a little bit of a depressing experience, but as my wise dear former companion Sarah Harmon once explained to me, whenever we feel like bad is happening, that also means the good is happening because we know God's work is moving forward. And based on all the other stories I told y'all this week, a lot of good things are happening here in Poznań right now!

Love,

Sister Eberting 

God Prepares His People Through Speaking To His Prophets

Hello everybody! This week was pretty good. We didn't have a ton of meetings scheduled for this week, so we spent a good amount of time meeting new people on the streets. One lady told me I need to watch Polish TV, and another lady told us that extraterrestrial beings created us and watch our every move to see if we will be good and sometimes they reveal themselves to us. Apparently Mary was one of those extraterrestrial beings.

We also had quite a few "chance" run-ins with people we have been working with. I love it when that happens, because it is so easy to see how God orchestrates those encounters. For example, we hadn't been in contact with the family we met a few weeks ago, and I was really starting to stress out that we were going to completely lose contact, and we were trying to decide one evening between stopping by their apartment or spending time talking to people on the streets. Well, we went out on the streets that evening, and guess who we found!

During the middle of the week, I got a call from a guy who is applying to BYU Idaho and needs his ecclesiastical endorsement. So I told him to come to church on Sunday and talk to President Womack, and I assumed he was a member who was just here for a few weeks or something like that. But he came to church and apparently he's not a member??? So we are probably going to start teaching him soon!

Today we drove with the Womacks over to Łódź (about 2.5 hours away) because they were doing apartment checks, and we wanted to go spend time with the sisters! Sister Webber and Sister Anderson are the best. So it was really fun to spend time with the Łódź sisters and elders for a few hours. After they finished apartment checks, Elder Womack took us all out to the best restaurant on Earth a.k.a Manekin.

I got to give a talk during sacrament meeting yesterday, and I talked about prophets--how they held show us how to come closer to Jesus Christ. During last General Conference, our prophet President Nelson gave us some very specific counsel on how to prepare for the next General Conference. I have started following his counsel by reading Joseph Smith History again, and it is so good! I encourage you all to reread President Nelson's counsel and then follow it. God prepares his people through speaking to his prophets. "Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets." (Amos 3:7)

Siostra Eberting

Pictures:

1. Łódź

2. Łódź Manekin

3. 1st or 2nd Limo I've seen in Poland

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I Ate Flaki, Exchanges, And I Sang For A Catholic Mass

Hello family! Hope you had an awesome week just like I did!

A few highlights of the week:

For New Year's Eve, I bought a jar of flaki. Flaki is cow intestines. Polish people buy flaki and eat it regularly. A lot of people like flaki.

I do not.

But I am proud to say that on New Year's Eve, I ate half a jar of flaki.

It was a good lesson on setting goals.

We also got to go to Kraków for exchanges with the Sister Training Leaders there. I got to spend the day with Sister Lueck, who was inthe MTC with me. I love Sis Lueck to death. We had so much fun, and I learned a lot about finding people.

We were doing a finding activity about Family History, and she stood on the streets and basically sang and danced in between asking people ifthey wanted to do family history. So much fun.

Sister Jensen and I sang a duet for a Catholic mass on Three Kings Day yesterday. A couple of weeks ago, one of our friends cane to our church services, and she invited us to go with her to mass on the holiday yesterday.

So we walked with her to a BEAUTIFUL church (it used to be Lutheran, I think. Look up Kościół Wszystkich Świętych in Poznań). She brought us to her priest and introduced us to him  and he asked us "So what are you singing for us?"

"Ummmm....Silent Night??"

"Awesome. Go up these stairs. The organist will be up to practice with you in a moment."

So we practiced once with the organist and then sang for everyone during Mass. The acoustics of this church were beautiful.

It was so cool.

Sorry, I am ending prematurely because I am out of time, but I love you alland hope you have fantastic weeks!

Siostra Eberting