Tuesday, July 25, 2017

July 23rd

Hey Mom!
First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! Haha as per usual, I sang a song. Elders Kriser and Wood were good sports and jumped in with me. That's part of the reason why we all busted up laughing towards the end, but hey, we weren't called to be in MoTab. Haha Elder Kriser would be proud of you for getting your country on though, he's a big time country boy haha. I'm glad to hear you celebrated in style though, it sounded like a good time. 
It also sounds like you guys have a pretty crazy week coming up haha! I'm excited to hear how it all goes. Have fun with the fam!
We had another pretty crazy week. It's been fun to be so busy so often haha, it's something I'm not used to! We're learning some new time management skills haha, that chapter of Preach My Gospel is finally coming in handy! Kidding, it's always been good, but prioritizing meetings is a new one for us all haha.
I guess to start it off, Elder Kriser took off for the north zone conference on Monday. We were missing him for a couple days while we were on exchange. In the meantime, we started meeting with an investigator on the Stop Smoking Program. Addictions are really hard, but it's so cool to help people work through problems that they've been struggling with their whole lives. Christ really can break those chains. Monday night we met this really cool guy that also happens to be really good at basketball. To make a long story short, I destroyed him in a game of 21, and now we're playing together this Saturday in a FIBA basketball tournament. 
That's not the end of our sports contacting for the week! On Tuesday, Elder Wood and I entered into a 5k! Haha we ran in our white shirts and ties, which obviously attracted a lot of attention. We wrote the Church website on our backs, and handed out pass-along-cards along the way! Haha we finished pretty well, but I was definitely out of shape! Still some of the most fun I've had on the mission though. I almost forgot how nice the cross-country crowd is! Everyone was willing to talk to us after the race! We also got interviewed by a news crew! Haha there were professional photographers taking pics of us and everything! Crazy! We're looking to do the exact same thing on Saturday, but we're hoping to actually win in basketball!
Elder Kriser came back on Wednesday, and Elder Wood took off for the south (and I was a little jealous haha). Elder Kriser and I had quite a few meetings. One of our investigators is doing really well. He's actually been around ever since I came to Warsaw. He's pretty much a homie, but lately, he's gotten serious about changing his life. We're going over the lessons again, and he's just getting everything. It's pretty cool to be a part of. 
We had our own zone conference on Thursday, that was a solid one. Sister Hansen made us some M&M cookies, which pretty much made the meeting hahaha.
On Friday we met with a really, really cool couple. They took us out for ice cream (get it, cool? I'm kidding, that was terrible), and we talked about their experience with the Church. She's done quite a bit of research, and actually listens to General Conference talks every morning. That's not something you hear every day haha, we were pretty blown away. He's not as familiar with the Church, but they're both super interested, and they are so excited for more meetings.
Saturday was kind of an interesting day. Some of the other elders were meant to have a baptism scheduled, but it got postponed that day. We were all pretty bummed, but used the time as an opportunity to meet with all the investigators in the city and talk about the Restoration. We watched the video, answered questions, and pretty much just got real with them. It turned out to be a pretty cool day. We had sports with them after, and I taught them all how to shoot a basketball. Form here is pretty poor, but we're making progress haha.
All in all a pretty good week. We're excited to see what happens next week, especially with that bball tournament!
Love you Mom, hope you had an awesome day yesterday!
Elder Haskett

Monday, July 17, 2017

July 17th

Hey Mom!
Haha I bet you and Caleb are gonna have a pretty fun week all by yourselves! I'm sure he's got nothing against Hurricane Harbor and McD's every day. Is he still as crazy about McNuggets as he was when I left? I guess we all were at some point, but Noah and Luke had definitely gotten out of it. Either way, get a Reese's McFlurry for me!
That's super cool to hear that Josh's mom has taken some interest in the Church! It's interesting to think of all the missionary commitments from the perspective of a missionary. I remember them always asking us to do our member missionary work, and I never really thought about how that would all actually work. It's so different from full-time missionary work, but it's also so much more effective. President Turek described it as the difference between fishing with a huge net, and with a fishing rod. The full-time missionaries are fishing with a net, we have to be a little more active, and we don't really even have to think about who to talk to. But member missionaries can be patient, and look in places where they know people will one day be ready. It's more effective, more personal, just better. I hope you guys have some opportunities to talk to someone about the Church!
Weird to think about WR Volleyball without Nate. Who's the new coach? Have you guys heard anything yet?
On our side of things, the work has taken off! Last week we had a baptism for our investigator! It was awesome. She was just so ready, and the ordinance was so important to her. She told us it was a scary step, and that she was nervous coming into it, but so happy she finally made the decision! The service itself was awesome. There were quite a few investigators there, which is really, really cool. I read a statistic that said 85% of investigators that attend a baptismal service are one day baptized themselves. So you'd better believe we invited everyone haha! Seeing it for themselves really helped to understand what we really mean when we talk about baptism. It's pretty laid back, not too scary, but people are really changed by the whole thing. 
Some other investigators are getting serious about the decision as well. One goal we've got in Warsaw to keep the ball rolling is to have a baptism a week. The mission has been maintaining that goal for 2 months now, which is huge, but we want to step up our game. With all the miracles we've been seeing lately, it's definitely possible. 
We had two more exchanges last week, and both went well. We met a few new investigators, visited some referrals, all that jazz. Two cool things that happened: so we got a referral from Cali, apparently some guy visited the Temple Visitor's Center and requested a visit from us. We drove way out to this guy's address, only to find that it was wrong. So we started asking around on the street to see if anyone knew this guy. We knocked on a door to ask, and this younger guy was like, "What the heck" haha, he was really confused as to why 3 young guys in suits showed up at his door. He had his whole fam come check us out, they took selfies with us, and even called some of their friends to see us. We were like celebrities visiting a town in the middle of nowhere. Anyways, one of these guys that showed up was like, "Wait a second, that name sounds familiar", and gave some guy a call. Well, this guy calls some other guy, who calls some other guy, and so on and so forth until some older guy shows up to this house and is like, "You guys looking for me?" He had the same name as our referral, but it was just a total coincidence! Haha, he had no clue what we were talking about! But in the meantime, we had gotten so tight with all these other people that showed up, that we're set up to go back and visit. We're gonna do a little sermon on the Book of Mormon for the whole town!
Another little miracle. We were playing ball with this cool kid from France last week, and he left his ball behind. We knew the general whereabouts of where he lived, so we wanted to see if we could find him and get him his ball back. We got to the area of town where he was, and saw him out playing ball on the first basketball court we walked by! Haha we actually played with him for a while (I ripped a hole in the seat of my pants about 6 inches wide), and then were able to give him a Book of Mormon in French! It was super cool.
It's been a good week, I'm really impressed by how this transfer has started. We're waiting for the miracles to get bigger and better!
Love you Mom!
Elder Haskett

Monday, July 10, 2017

July 10th

Our week was honestly nuts. It's hard for me to believe that it's only been a week since transfers started, so much has happened. I'll break it up by day.
To start us off, Tuesday, the Fourth of July! We had a really solid day, and got to listen to quite a bit of American classics along the way. We had one last meeting with an investigator that'll be in the Ukraine for the summer. He committed to go to church every week while he's gone, and really plan on getting baptized when he gets back. We'll see what happens, we're gonna keep contact through email! Later that day we found a sweet library to study at. There's a huge rooftop library that was just really chill. To end the night we had a real patriotic celebration that consisted of grilling burgers, wings, fries, milkshakes, and strawberry lemonade. We yelled freedom off the balcony to go out with a bang hahaha.
Wednesday was a little more toned down. We had a meeting with President to start planning for MLC, and then after that English class. That was fun, we sang for the class again. Most of the students actually stayed behind for our religion course! We started a new program this transfer, with each class based off of one of the Articles of Faith. It's cool, because spending about 30-45 mins on each one covers pretty much every aspect of the gospel and missionary discussions. Perfect!
Thursday was my last MLC:) Haha we did well, and ate a lot of pizza, no complaints there. The elders from Katowice stayed with us for an exchange that night. Elders Sommerfeldt and Huffman, they're good guys so we had a good time. 
Friday was nuts. We had 5 meetings, so it was good that we had so many elders in the apartment, we were on splits the whole time. A couple with members, and then a couple with investigators. One member took us to a vegan bar to meet a friend of his. It was really cool, his friend and her boyfriend want to see us again! The vegan food wasn't so cool... That night Elder Huffman and I had a really awesome meeting with an old friend. He's working on changing his life, and we want to help him out haha. He's looking for better work, and wants to get baptized too. We're gonna meet once or twice a week to hook him up. 
Saturday was even crazier than Friday. We had a meeting with the brother of that other guy that went to Ukraine in the morning. We're hoping that he and his bro work together on being baptized! We'll see what happens when he gets back! Then I jumped in with Elder Mandla and we met with a family that we met in Katowice. They're the super nice people that took us out for a PDay trip that one time! It was awesome, they're super cool, and they got us food again! It was nice to see them. We met another lady on the street who invited us in to her home. She had a homeless man living in the other room, and she wanted us to try to help him to believe in Jesus again. He was completely closed off to us, but she was really open! We're going over tonight to do service for her! Then at the end of the night this girl from Germany met with us and Bart. She had met with the missionaries a year ago, and is ready to go now! She'll be baptized this Saturday! I can't believe it haha, it was a total miracle!
Really cool week, and we're hoping to keep the fire burning! It's been sweet, pray for all the people we're working with, there's honestly a ton now!
Love you Mom!
Elder Haskett 




July 3rd

Hey Mom!
That's way awesome Noah did so well at his basketball tournament! Haha it's good to hear that he's getting a lot of playing time, and that he's still breaking ankles at point haha. I'm excited to see his games. I gotta say though, it's weird to think that when I come home him, and probably even Luke are gonna whoop up on me in basketball. I've been trying to at least sorta keep my jump shot up here in Poland, but it's rough. They're gonna be a ways ahead of me haha.
Sounds like you guys have a sweet Fourth of July party planned! I'm a little jealous! We're gonna do our best to make the 4th as American as possible. We're gonna grill burgers out on our balcony, eat some watermelon, make some lemonade, the works! No fireworks, but we're still gonna get in the spirit!
Good luck with the BoM challenge. Haha I'll jump in on it with you over here. Gotta get in one more time before the end of the mission!
Things in Warsaw are going well! For one, we had transfers this week! What we had planned earlier stuck, I'll be in Warsaw with Elder Kriser again as AP. We're gonna be a trio again, this transfer Elder Wood will be joining the fun haha. He's from Idaho, and we're ready to have a good time. There is one small surprise: since Elders Einfeldt and Alvarez are going home a bit earlier than us, President is probably going to send me to a little city called Kielce for my last two weeks. It's not set in stone, and kinda top secret, but that's what I'm expecting. I think I'm gonna leave my suitcases here in Warsaw and just take a little duffel full of clothes haha. Do you think I could buy a duffel bag some time in the next month?
Our last week was pretty sweet. We did get fed again haha, Elder Jeffs came back to Poland with his family, and they took us out. It was really nice of them, and we ate well haha. I actually just put to use the Reeses that I got from the DeMordaunts a couple days ago to make a Reeses peanut butter milkshake. It was so good haha, I was dying. To keep the magic going, I got the package you sent! I started opening it, but I saw all of the wrapping paper and remembered that it was probably a Bday package, so I'm gonna wait till next week! Thank you so much though!
The work is going really well lately. We were pretty busy last week with transfers and everything, but we still had some time for a few cool meetings. One of our most solid investigators finally talked to his family about us. I don't think that we're gonna have a giant family baptism any time soon, but they weren't against it and he still wants to be baptized. We fasted with him and President Turek yesterday, which was way cool. I don't think I've ever been so wiped out on a fast Sunday, but it was a really spiritual experience. We broke the fast at the same time and I gave him a call to see how things went. He said that he felt the Spirit very strongly during the day, and thinks that he is ready to get serious about a date!
We've got an English class still, and it's going well. We're still finding people to teach through it, although I've been slacking on my English class stories lately haha. I'll use a funny one from last transfer. There's this old guy in our class who is a total riot. He barely speaks English, but we love him haha. He walks up to Elder Bebel at the very beginning of class and kinda just awkwardly was like, "Shut up?" And then he said it again and again. Bebel was so confused, and Elder Einfeldt and I were dying. English class doesn't disappoint. Last week our class gave us a bunch of food and treats and stuff, I guess they love us haha.
The branch here all leaves for the summer, too. It's a bummer, but we're still doing pretty well. We're still finding people to teach, so we've got no problems haha. We're taking Elder Andersen's advice to get creative to heart. Elder Kriser and I love basketball, so we'll go out sometimes and just ball with random people at the park. Just last Saturday we had a really good game with a group of people, some from the States, some from Poland, and one from China. It was fun, and I totally broke the Chinese guy's ankles. Then we just got to talk after about why we're here, we got their numbers, and they'll be coming to our English class and stuff in the future! It's a pretty cool way to meet big groups of people all at once, and they're always way more open to talk. After our game the other day, I got invited to play on some international team with a couple of the guys haha. Season doesn't start until September, too late:(
I'm excited for the rooming situation, thanks for taking care of all that! Also, I saw my flight plans in the office the other day. I don't know when you guys were expecting me, but I'll be landing at like 3:50 on the 28th. I was thinking it would be the 29th? I guess that means we have a whole day at home! Disneyland?
We're having a lot of fun lately, and I'm excited for my last transfer. I can't believe it's the last one! I'm sad, but excited. It's kinda like senior year sports, it's time to shine haha. We're gonna make it rock. Also, this being the last couple months, it's high time to start buying souvenirs. What have you heard about in Poland that you would want me to check out? I know a lot of people like the Polish pottery, the amber stuff, what should I keep my eyes open for?
Love you tons Mom, we're doing well over here. Have a happy 4th of July!
Elder Haskett