Monday, May 30, 2016

Happy Memorial Day

They may not celebrate the holiday in Poland but Elder Haskett remembers!

Memorial Day!

Man I miss Newport, haha. Making the decision between going to the beach and a pool day sounds a lot better than choosing between tracting and contacting haha. Even if there was a shark attack involved.
Also good to hear that Luke's doing well again. Being out of sports was always rough, I always remember people asking me when I'd be good to go again. I think after the first surgery I had a tournament before I got cleared and coach was gonna have me play oppo so I wouldn't have to pass, but Jared didn't come so I had to play libero anyways. That was an uncomfortable day.
Nice on Noah for beating HBC, that's always a good win, just for the name. How are they ranking-wise right now?
Yeah, the Salt Mines were really cool last week, fun to hit one of the more historical sites in Poland. I think our PDay this week is gonna be a little quieter, we're kinda exhausted from the last week. Probably naps and a haircut for me. I also have to get some new language study material, I might have to use the card today for some stuff!
Our PDays usually have good food on tap, but with the end of the month at hand, we're budgeting a little tighter, so it'll be some noodles for us today.
Our lessons this week went pretty well. The whole mission is kind of on a "find grind" right now. We've done a ton of contacting lately, and this week, we had a million good conversations, got phone numbers, but no one would set up with us. We led an exchange with the elders from Kraków last week, and were teaching them all this stuff and promising all these blessings if they'd just work a little harder, or ask for more referrals, and then nothing came through for us haha. Then at the end of the week, through nothing on our own part, this older dude shows up for church, and after the meeting promised to finish the Book of Mormon by the end of the week, get baptized after, and then never miss a Sunday for the rest of his life. While I have no idea how well he plans to stick with those promises, it was sweet to see the blessings from a hard week's work.
Church was insane this week. President was out of town, so we didn't have the keys for access to the sacrament stuff. We had to push back the meeting to the end, and had Sunday School first while one of the members went and bought a water bottle and those plastic shot glasses. Once we got around to Sacrament meeting, I had already been translating for 2 hours, and had to play the piano, and then I found out I had been assigned a talk. I killed it anyways. 
That being said, we've got another exchange coming up. Elder Blunt is coming from Wrocław, so it should be sweet. Then we've also got Zone Conference on Wednesday, so it should be a busy week.
We are still teaching English. We've got a club, but it's nowhere near as big as Wrocław's. We haven't had any time to advertise for it lately either. I'm hoping when things cool down we'll get around to it.
President Edgren hasn't made it to Kato yet. I think he'll probably be coming towards the end of his mission. We're all kinda anxious for the new president to get here. Everybody's speculating. I just hope that he has us go ham on language study and that we can watch Disney movies in Polish. Every Pole I've talked to said The Lion King is even better in Polish than English, and they say that never happens.
It is getting warmer here! I'm starting to sweat! TShirts are saving my life right now!
I think that's it for me though! Have an awesome week! Love you Mom!
Elder Haskett

Monday, May 23, 2016

May 22, 2016

Hey Mom!
Sorry not going to have a lot of time this week! We had a surprise trip with another city today. Guess what? We finally made it to the Salt Mines! It was awesome. I'll have to send some pictures. Add that to the fact that it was like 30C today, and you could say I had a good time.
Bummer we couldn't get the win against Oak Park! I we had a pretty good run though. If we get called up to the State tournament, that'd be awesome, so long as we didn't play a D1 team. You remember how those always turned out.
Sounds like your Vegas trip was pretty sweet, especially the MJ show. Whenever we walk into a store or a restaurant or something where a Michael song is playing, we always get really hyped. Still haven't heard Smooth Criminal in the country, but I think I've pretty much crossed off everything else.
This week was pretty crazy for us! We had a really relaxing PDay to start it off, but after that it went wild. Tuesday we went in to Warsaw for an exchange with the APs. The work in that city is wild. We had a ton of lessons, and got to meet a ton of cool people. Also there's a Dairy Queen there and I got a mint Oreo blizzard that blew my mind. OK maybe that's an exaggeration, but it was really good.
We finished that on Thursday, and had a lot of finding to do. Saturday especially was rough. We had 8 straight hours of contacting. The good thing is we met this guy who wants to meet with us on Wednesday and talk more about baptism! Sunday was fine, except I had to play the piano again. Didn't have as much time to practice, so it wasn't my best ever. Then today's crazy PDay, and now we're here!
Things as ZLs have kinda cooled down for us. We planned Zone Training, we went on exchanges with the APs, so now it's mostly just phone call type work. We have to keep track of numbers for the Zone, and kinda know how investigators are doing in each of the cities. Nothing too complicated. 
Elder Einfeldt is doing really well! We get along no problem, and we can always quote Nacho Libre, so there's that too. It's been a fun transfer so far. Crazy to think it's halfway over!
OK so I had a weird desire this week. Elder Einfeldt and I just suddenly wanted to get recorders. If I can't think of anything else, one of those crazy cheap recorders, like the ones you learn how to use in like 3rd grade, would be a pretty solid birthday present. And maybe one of those head scratcher thingies.
I think that's it though! Love you Mom!
Elder Haskett

Monday, May 16, 2016

Mother's Day FaceTime!

I forgot to post pics of our Mother's Day FaceTime last week! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Elder Haskett & Elder Einfeldt


May 15....Katowice!

Hey Mom!
I heard about Hunter's mission call! Haha I saw Salt Lake and thought the same thing. Hunter's gonna have more baptisms than me in his first transfer. But that's everyone from the squad! Kinda crazy, in the next couple months, everyone from back home is going to be emailing me mission stories of their own.
Also a bummer to hear that Luke actually is broken. I guess now he can say he's a true Haskett. Noah just has to hope that his doesn't happen during his sporting career. Or at all, if possible.
Keep rooting for West Ranch Volleyball for me! It'd be so cool if we got CIF this year. I wish I could be there for the games, but I can be a fan on the other side of the world too. I actually learned how to say "to root for someone/something" this week. It's got really weird verb governance (don't worry about what that means), but kibicuję Siatkówki Westa Rancha means I'm cheering for West Ranch! Or 'fanning' or 'encouraging' or something of the likes.
It's nice to hear that the Father's and Sons wasn't a wreck like it was last year. I almost forgot our incident with the sprinklers. That was fun. I just remember we tried to have all the YM quorums lead little activities and we did an egg toss. Well as you could expect from that, we got eggs thrown at us by excited CTR 5 kids. 
Your mention of the musical fast and testimony meeting reminded me, I am officially the Branch Pianist. It actually went surprisingly well, after minimal practice I was able to squeeze out Sweet Hour of Prayer and I Stand All Amazed to satisfy the members. Everyone here just assumes that because we're missionaries, we all know how to play. I didn't want to disappoint them, you know?
Both of our Zone Trainings went really well! It was a lot of fun, but Elder Einfeldt and I are both exhausted from such a busy week. I was just happy to get everything out of the way, and visit both of my old cities in the same week! I was tour guide Haskett for the rest of my district, no one else had ever been in either Kraków or Wrocław. Also as an added bonus, Elder Vance was at the one in the Krak, so I got to hang out with mission dad for a day haha.
Things in Kato are going pretty well! We're still teaching the Chinese dude, along with a Ukrainian and an old Polish guy we met last Wednesday on a referral! Pretty decent teaching pool by my standards! Then there's these other 2 former investigators that are interested in maybe coming to Church again, as well as a Russian dude that I talked to on the street for like 45 mins the other day (he was crazy hard to understand). The work moves forward in Poland!
I gave Elder Einfeldt a haircut yesterday that woulda made Becky proud!
By the way, the next couple songs I've decided to learn are going to be tricky, so be ready to be amazed when the next one comes around.
Love you Mom!
Elder Haskett

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

May 10th 2016

Hey Mom!
It was really great talking with you guys over Skype on Sunday, so good seeing everybody's (tired) faces! It's funny, as I was sharing my testimony with you guys in Polish, I felt a little different than usual. I think that's why it's so important to love the people you serve. It puts power into your words. I'm gonna try to be better at that in the future.
So as for the rest of the week that you haven't heard about so far, yesterday was Ogrodzieniec. What an amazing castle. Super fun. We also got to go climbing around on a bunch of rocks outside in the ruins. Felt like I was back home in the outdoors. I even got up on a wall and did a little Polish Samuel the Lamanite!
Then today we had Zone Training in Wrocław. Gotta say, it was good to be back. Like I already said, Elder Einfeldt and I were in charge. I think it went really well! We had a lot of fun with it. Be on the lookout, I think Sister Edgren must have taken at least 1000 pictures. Then on the way home, we realized we didn't have our train tickets. We were scrambling to print them off, and I talked to like 20 people in the most rushed Polish ever if there was something I could do. We found this one lady that sympathized with us and she helped us out. She knew we were in a hurry too, so she didn't make us pay for the cost of printing. We said thanks and literally jumped onto our train last second. Miracles! Now there's just one more training for us to run tomorrow in Kraków, and we'll be done with that.
As for bday stuff, I realize I pretty much left you with nothing after the Skype call, haha. Honestly, I'd pretty much be happy with anything. Like I said, don't worry too much about clothes, but maybe snacks and stuff. Some more Disney lapel pins would be really fun, maybe like Marvel or Star Wars this time. I guess just fun stuff like that from home is all I can really think of. I guess if it comes down to it, you could always just send like money or something for fun trips like our voyage to Ogrodzieniec!
That's pretty much it from me though! Once again, love you, so fun seeing you again!
Elder Haskett

Monday, May 2, 2016

May 1st!!!

Hey Mom!
Sounds like you guys had a pretty busy week! Lots of sports, I guess that was to be expected. Bummer we lost another one to Saugus, does that mean we'll be out of the running for league champs? That would be lame. Guess it's pretty true to form for West Ranch Volleyball though. Oh well. Good thing Luke didn't break his wrist too. He must have gotten a lot of jokes on Sunday, (oh another Haskett cast, haha).
I hadn't heard that Nelson was getting baptized! That's so cool! I always knew it would happen some time or another. Who knows, maybe he'll want to serve a mission too! I was actually thinking about that a couple days ago. It's really cool that we all went on missions. Our little priest's quorum group had a lot of nonmember friends. It's probably got to be such a good example for them. Maybe one day the missionaries will come knocking and they'll remember when their bros from high school were missionaries and let them in. Also, pretty wild that Emilee got called to Arkansas! Now I'm looking forward to the day when someone from SR heads off to Poland!
Congrats to Dad for the new position! That's pretty sweet! He definitely deserves it. Also that means that there won't be any excuses for us not to go to Disneyland as soon as I get back. I've actually been wanting to go in a white shirt and tie with dress shoes. It'd be easy, we walk all the time here. Do you think there'd be a problem if I wore my tag?
We're doing pretty great in Kato! Our week was crazy, but really fun. The city is pretty urban (fun fact, the BP here's name is President Urban) so it actually feels a little more like home than any city I've been in so far. President Edgren calls it the LA of Poland. Home sweet home!
As for my "calling", I translate our meetings into English. We had a family in town this week visitng with their daughter who just finished her mission, so I had a fun job this week. Fast and testimony meetings always have some interesting stories, so it was a good lang workout for me.
Continuing with Sunday, I had to give two blessings in one day. One in Polish and one in English. The Polish one is a pretty sad story. There's this guy in the branch, Zygmunt. He's really old, been a member for like 20 years, and he's real sick. Basically he's lonely and just kinda done. He asked if us and the BP's first counselor could bless him to make his last little bit of time comfortable. We pretty much promised him that we'd take him the Sacrament as long as he needs us to.
But enough of that! Miracle time! We were on our way back from a satellite city and this guy on the tram stopped us and said that he'd met with the missionaries 10 years ago. His wife took his Book of Mormon and tore it up and refused to let the missionaries to come back. He saw us and was like "She isn't around anymore, let's try again!" It was kinda grim, but we've got a new investigator!
So, Skype this week! Totally forgot, but yeah, it'll be in the morning again. 16:00 for me, so I think 7:00 for you? Not sure, I think the time difference is 9 hours. Same account, let me know if that works out!
Also, when we went to Warsaw for our Mission Leadership Conference, I finally got your Easter Package! Thanks so much for sending it!
Love you a ton Mom!
Elder Haskett