Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Easter weekend

Hey Mom!
Crazy that it's already time for the lip sync! I was just thinking about that actually, I wonder if it's gonna be weird without us, especially for Spencer and Charlie. Actually, if it's possible, could you try to send me the old videos from the DVDs over email? It would be pretty fun to have, I could show companions and stuff.
I heard about the volleyball success! Pretty awesome! Glad we finally got a win from Valencia. I only got two of those during my career. To be honest, if I could only have one, I'd still choose the Valencia tournament, that was pretty much the best day ever, but it was always frustrating to come up second. Also pretty sweet that Noah got MVP again! He's gotta be pretty stoked, he might get some good time on varsity next year!
Super weird to think I'm not going to Carp this year. It's kinda sad, that's one of my favorites. It's probably gonna be worse when you go to Lake Powell. But while I think about it, it really doesn't seem that long ago that I was there. It's like the mission froze me in time, it feels like LP was like a month ago, just because it was the last thing I did!
The Brussels attacks were pretty intense here. We had Zone Conference like, literally the day after. Pretty crazy that the missionaries were affected. But, one thing we did pull out is that the situation could be a lot worse. And their testimonies and work has influenced a lot of people outside of the Church. The Holy Ghost keeps us out of trouble, I've already had it happen several times to me. Not going to go into detail there. But if God didn't expect them to be involved, they wouldn't have been involved. President and I both think that this is a chance for their missionary work to touch the whole world.
So as for us this week, obviously we had Zone Conference already. That was sweet, and where the pictures from Sister Edgren came from. Other than that, we've still been in contact with our investigators. Things are looking good.
One pretty unexpected change. President went through with the switch back this week after all. I'm back with Elder Torres. It was a bummer saying goodbye to Elder Park. We had a really good time. It's also going to be weird splitting our investigators for the next few weeks of the transfer. I hope things all work out.
That's it from me though! Love you Mom!
Elder Haskett

Monday, March 21, 2016

Is he trying to send me a secret message??????

Shorts.....really??????

Helix fossil church???????

Hey Mom!
Mexico City! Crazy it's finally here! I still remember telling myself in the MTC that by the time he got his call I'd be pretty much set in the mission. Weird how quick that flew by. And he's in my shadow group! That's when you're exactly one year behind. I'm in Elder Park's shadow group. Also it's a bonus that he's got Spanish! He got the hook-up there that I was looking for when I filled out my papers! Remember I said I was fluent in Spanish so I'd go foreign? Well look where that got me haha.
Holy moly marriage carriage took off this week. That's good Kade's girl passed family standards. Hasn't been on a Lake Powell trip yet though? Sketchy business. Then Tanner's gone and gotten engaged already? Crazy. Only one question: how tall is she?
Dang, William's already home, this email was packed with news. One thing I can tell you pretty confidently is that there won't be any problems for me coming back to English. All the missionaries speak English, and we have no native speakers serving right now, so that's never really a problem here. Only possibility is I might come home saying a lot of Polish slang, like "ekstra, masakra, and most of all, czyli".
Welp, Caleb's already done with lacrosse. Seems like just last week I was reading all about how much he was liking it haha. Good he's sticking with soccer though. And Noah swept out at Burroughs! That's sweet, nothing like winning a tournament. Also they finished over Eagle Rock, I remember they were our semi final game my sophomore year at the famous Grizzly Classic haha.
Pretty weird as well for us this week, as far as missionary work goes. Lots of busy work and stuff like that. We had to take care of a lot of stuff for the chapel, and on top of that, since Park’s the branch clerk, take care of finances. That was some pretty good lang study for me. Then on Friday, I went in to Warsaw for some legal work. I picked up my residency card, so now if I get arrested, I don't get deported. Yay me! Saturday was just weird. We helped one of the young men (to be transparent, the young man) get to this English contest. Turns out the location was moved and us and several other middle school prodigies had to march across town. Good news is, my dude won. The other contestants said it wasn't fair cause he had two native coaches.

We still had some lessons though. Everyone's doing fine. Olga got into some anti doctrine but like it's promised in the good old NT, the foolish shall not confound the wise, and I trashed all her questions. She said I was very intelligently. Hooray for bad grammar. Ola gave us a little scare this week. Halfway through we were scheduled for a meeting and she didn't show. Apparently she'd sent a text to cancel but it didn't go through, and then she got really sassy with us after the miscommunication. It was really out of character. Then she straight up said she didn't want to meet anymore. President's been telling us a lot lately to always be praying for miracles, so I went for it yesterday. And an hour later she called back, said sorry, and asked if we would still make time for her next week.

I told her I'd think about it.

So I've got a pretty good story for you this week, but it's gonna take some background explaining to understand. So I'm gonna copy a link to an article for you to read:

(I took out the article....it's like three pages! But it's basically a lot of Pokemon stuff and a group of people who "worship" this online game and call it the Helix fossil church)

So there you have it. Sorry it's so long, but it's pretty funny stuff.Well, during English last week, what are the odds a teen-ager happens to sarcastically belong to the helix fossil church? That's right, dead serious, she said that. Luckily I knew what she was even talking about from Twitter, and after a lot of joking around, she agreed to a lesson because, “the Mormons seemed cool now”.
Well, sorry for the long email, I was gonna take some out, but then I realized a long email kinda sounds like the opposite of a problem! Also, I just remembered my bday is coming up soon, and I had a couple of ideas this week. GOLDFISH. They have no substitute here. Also I'm in dire need of a flash drive. And my final request would be one of those head scratcher thingies. You know, the ones that have all the metal thingies and you move the handle up and down. For some reason,that's sounded bomb since the beginning of my mission.
But that's finally it for me this week! I love you Mom!
Elder Haskett

Monday, March 14, 2016

No transfer and a wedding!!!!!

Hey Mom!
Sounds like you had a busy house again with Kati, Dylan, and the missionaries this week! I'm curious, did you let Elder Phillips sit at the head of the table?
Anyways, sounds like Luke has been having some pretty good success lately in volleyball. 
Don't worry, I'll be praying for the Jeep, and probably Noah, too. Especially when Dad shows him how to drive offroad. I just realized that comes in like a month. Crazy stuff. Also, if he's worried about driving, just tell him that all he has to do is avoid getting a ticket for like, a month, and he's already got me beat.
It's funny that the Mission President and his wife spoke. I didn't realize that I'd never even thought about them until I got into the MTC. Everyone in Poland pretty much loves President and Sister Edgren. They're a huge deal. Whenever they go travel and visit a different branch for Sacrament Meeting, it's really special. Once I get home I'd like to meet the Mission President. Actually, I can't even think of what our mission boundaries are back home. Are we the San Fernando Mission?
To an extent, missionary work isn't work. But, we do have to do a lot of paperwork. And walk a lot. But it is true, the part when you're talking with people, or meeting with them, that's not work. That's just fun. And you feel really good doing it. 
So this week, as far as the missionary work went for us, it kinda felt like a funeral march. This was supposed to be my last week with Elder Park, before I switched back with Torres. That meant that I wouldn't meet with Ola or Olga anymore, not to mention move out of a sweet apartment. So we used that to squeeze in as many lessons as possible with both of them. That was cool I guess, but the whole time I was just kinda bummed. Both of them are progressing so well, we're so close, but I don't get to be there with them til the end. I had my last lesson with Ola on Friday, when we we're supposed to switch back, and as we walked home, President called. He's like "You know, you and Elder Park are pretty much getting work done right now, it wouldn't make sense to switch things now. You guys should stay together at least until the end of the transfer." I was so psyched! I called Ola and Olga, because I'd told them that I wasn't gonna meet with them anymore, and they were really happy too. Olga even said she was gonna cry. My miracle for the week.
Last thing. The sisters have investigators that live together, but aren't married. They really want to get baptized, so you know what that means... we're having a wedding! We got invited too. That might mean I have to make a trip to H&M and get a cheap suit though. It's black and white, and my black suit has been the one that I've had to wear to church and district meeting every week since I got here, so it's a little destroyed. I'm still bummed that my grey suit got a mystery hole in it like my third week in the country.
I think that's it though! Super excited about Braden and Spencer's calls! Keep me posted!
Love you Mom!
Elder Haskett

Monday, March 7, 2016

March 7th

Yep.....more snow

"Fight song" on a train!!

Hey mom,
Sounds like you guys had a really cool temple experience! I can't wait to go when I get home haha. I still remember the MTC patriarch making me promise to go in the first week when I get home. Also I think that really ties in to the story about Michelle. It is really sad, and it's horrible that she's so young, but it sounds like her parents are handling it really well. And we know that we can see our families again. 
I heard Braden's papers are in! That's awesome! I was talking to him last week about how crazy it'd be if he got called to Poland. I could train him. I guess it really doesn't matter where he goes, but when you guys watch on Skype when he opens his call, just remember my guess is Poland!
So this week has been pretty cool. Weather has been crazy. On Monday and Tuesday, we got like 6 inches of snow. Then it was freezing til Thursday, when it got warm. Now it's like 40 everyday.
Still haven't met Ola in a while. She went to the doctor this week and found out she has tonsillitis. Honestly what are the odds? She had them work on her throat for a while, and the doctor cleared her for activity on Tuesday, so we've actually got a meeting scheduled for that day!
That's not the only good news! We found a new girl on Thursday. Her name is, wait for it... Olga. Don't let the name fool you, she's not a lunch lady. She's awesome. She's Ukrainian actually, and that means we get to introduce her to the Ukrainian family in the branch. We've had a meeting with her every day since we saw her. When we met her, we were actually English contacting, and she asked if we could talk about Jesus in our English class. We said no and that it's just English, and she was all dang, "Oh darn. I really want to talk about Jesus. I need to make a change in my life." So I said I knew a guy. She's preparing for baptism early next month, but we might even be able to move it up. She even came to church this week!
Anyways, other than that, we've really been cranking it up as far as our English class goes. We've gotten some new young students, and more plan on coming this week, so we've upped the ante. Last week was awesome. We played this game where each person gets a definition of a word. No one is supposed to know the words, so we chose really tough slang, and then we write a word on the board and everyone has to convince the others that they have the real definition. It's really fun, but the older people didn't get it. At the beginning of the game, this lady, Laura, was all like "I'm sorry, I do not understand how to play, what is turnt?" Another one was really confused when we told her that 'ham' was not a lunch meat, but in fact, a state of being, and that when you 'go ham' you go wild. The college students were dying. I love English class.
Fun story. After English, we were riding a bus home and Elder Park and I started singing Fight Song. There was this girl our age near us on the phone, and she was like "Oh gosh these 2 guys next to me are wearing church nametags and they're singing weird religious songs. What's wrong with these people?" She thought we couldn't understand cause it was in Polish. So I changed the lyrics and said something really simple, like, "This is not a religious song" to the same tune, and the girl just went red. She got so embarrassed haha. We told her that it was cool, but we were just dying. So the next day, when I was inviting people to English class, I asked this group of like 4 girls if they new "Fight Song" and they were all like, "If you sing it for us we might recognize it." Basically all Polish people assume that Americans are great singers. So I sang a little bit. And they totally freaked out. "Oh my gosh, you are just like Ed Sheeran!" and other stuff like that. They're coming to English class this week haha.
Well I think that's it for me! Good luck with Kati's blog inspection this week! Love you!
Elder Haskett