Christmas call part II

Best Christmas present ever!!!

Christmas call!

1st Transfer!!

Hey Mom!

Sorry about yesterday, I didn't realize how crazy transfer days are, we don't have PDays until Tuesdays usually. But yeah I did get transferred. It was kind of a bummer at first, Kraków was awesome. It was a little sad to leave and say bye to everyone, the ping pong table included. I did get to take part in a lot of mission traditions though. When you leave a city you buy a scarf for the city soccer team. I'm reppin Wisła now. Hopefully when I come home I'll have a bunch of those. Also you trade ties with your companion. Now I've got a classic Elder Vance tie. I'm gonna miss him, Vance was really cool. We had a great transfer. When President called he was like, "Now I've heard you're doing great down in Kraków, we don't want you getting too comfortable down there, so you're headed to Wrocław!"

So yeah I'm in Wrocław now. First things first, it is pronounced Vrots-wav, not Rowclaw. But it's a beautiful city. It's much cleaner here, but the buildings aren't quite as huge. People are saying that President has me on the "Pretty City" track. If that's true I'll be in Kraków, Wrocław, and Gdańsk, which would be sweet. Who knows.

Anyways, my new companion is Elder Torres. He seems like a pretty cool guy. He's been out for about 20 months now. He's from Phoenix. From what President told me, this transfer is gonna push me a lot.

So you've already heard a lot about this last week, not much has happened since the Skype call. We basically got our transfer calls the next day and spent the next couple days packing and saying goodbye to all the members. That was a little sad, but it's cool. Elder Vance is leaving too, he's headed to Poznań. Then Sister Gammon is headed to Warsaw, so it's just Sister Allowitz staying. You talked to her. The rest of us all had to say goodbye.

Mission Miracle! While I was on the train, the sisters were babysitting Elder Vance before he had to leave and they all ran into Tomasz! He was bummed to hear we were leaving, but he wants to meet the new missionaries! He's recommitted to baptism and he's gonna "Try to start fresh"! Woohoo!

Anyways, that's it for this week. Love you tons!

Na razie,

Elder Haskett

This is a good text!!:)

Oh Christmas Tree......

Hey Mom!

I gotta say, I'm a little jealous you're in Newport! I really do miss the beach, and the Shake Shack sounds pretty nice right about now. They don't do milkshakes here. Or peanut butter, but I already knew that was coming. 

This week has been pretty busy .We're still caroling up a storm, and it's starting to work better since it's closer to Christmas now. The other day some really old guy invited us in to sing, so we walked in to a table of like 12 old dudes eating dinner. They were all psyched and started singing with us, and then they just ended up singing to us. It was really funny. People still try to give us money all the time. Some people are actually kind of aggressive and will forcefully put money in our pockets. We usually just throw it back in the door right before it closes or put it in their mailbox with a little note attatched. It's funny stuff.

This week has been a little crazy with investigators. WIth the holidays, everybody's out of town. We've mostly been meeting with members. We did have a miracle meeting with Marcin this morning. His flight got delayed a half a day, so he gave us a call. It was a pretty good lesson too, so we think there was some divine intervention involved with that plane. Tomasz is still MIA. He texts every once in a while and tenatively sets up a lesson, but he's flaked us every time for a few weeks now. It's kind of a bummer, but stuff like that happens. We'll get him eventually. Companionship's going well, as is ping pong!

Pictures are on the way!

Love you, see you Friday!

Elder Haskett

Not sure what they are doing.....admiring some chalk art??

Christmas in Poland

Hey Mom!

Good week here in Kraków! We're still going strong on the Christmas approach. Our caroling is getting much better, now that we actually know the songs. So good in fact, that the sisters set us up to sing by ourselves in the Christmas program in Church on Sunday. Woo.

We've been pretty crazy busy, as usual, but we've also been able to have a lot of fun this week! We were giving out free hot chocolate and showing people the new Church Christmas video the other day on the street and ran into some really cool people. We met a young dude named Adrian there and he's awesome. We're supposed to start meeting with him soon. Unfortunately I also met some very drunk people that day too. I've learned that they are very good practice targets for my Polish though. I can pretty much say whatever I want to them and it won't have any effect, so I get a lot of practice with them. 

We also had kind of an interesting day last Saturday; we went ice skating! A less-active called us and invited us so we asked President and he said it was cool, so we invited a lot of members and headed over. No need to fear, I am still a boss at ice-skating. Then that night the branch threw a surprise bday party for one of the sisters, so we got to eat some pretty delicious cake.

Today was rough not gonna lie. We visited Auschwitz. It was pretty heavy stuff. Kind of eye-opening. I can't say I'd recommend it, but it does have an impact on you.

I've got some bad news. Tomasz disappeared. We haven't met or contacted him in like 2 weeks. We're still trying, but it's disappointing. The good thing is that Marcin is going strong and we've got Adrian and another guy named Łukasz now. Keep Tomasz in your prayers!

I still don't really know all the plans for Christmas, we'll be on Skype but that's all I know. Hopefully next week we'll have times and everything down. I haven't opened the Christmas boxes yet, I'll do that tonight. Oh and transfers here are usually 9 weeks. Next one is an exception, we're going for seven.

Love you tons! Hang in there this last week of school and everything, then enjoy winter break!

Love,

Elder Haskett

Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving dinner in Poland!! They don't really do turkey so Rotisserie Chicken it is!!:)

I spy a new coat!!

New coat and scarf!! And a Christmas tree!! It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas:)

December is here!!!!!

We did have Zone Conference this past week. It was on December 1st, so it was all about getting us into our Christmas gear. It's really fun actually. We start out tracting by caroling now, which is way more fun. People try to offer us money all the time though, which sometimes it's hard to say no. Some guy tried to give us like 40zł the other day! Then regular street contacting is all about the birth of Christ, which people are much more receptive to. I think that's because it starts out all about Mary, but hey, whatever works works. I wear a Santa hat when we do both of those.

Our investigators are doing pretty well. Unfortunately we didn't get to meet with Tomasz this week, he was really busy, but we had a meeting with Marcin. He's doing better. Here's his problem. He doesn't believe in praying about the Book of Mormon. 

Well now what? Haha, that's our whole game as missionaries.

He says there's nothing in the Bible about praying to know truth. So we showed him James 1:5, which is said is translated incorrectly. Then we showed him John 7, and like 5 different scriptures where Jesus talks about praying for anything during the Sermon on the Mount. Nothing worked. We've just gotta be really patient with him. He's keeping commitments, he's meeting with us, it'll happen eventually, but it'll take time.

I got the first 2 packages! The Mary pictures were a nice touch, you have to do that here or your things will get stolen! How'd you figure out that trick?

We're staying warm, it was a little warmer this week. We're doing well over all! I'll let you know if I need anything!

Love you tons!

Na razie,

Elder Haskett

Pic of All Saints day

AMAZING!!!

Thanksgiving week!!

Hey Mom!

Glad Thanksgiving at home turned out alright! Sounds a little different than usual. We did okay over here though! We got an extra hour from President, so we went and got a rotisserie chicken! Not turkey, but it was way more food than usual, so I was happy. Then, the senior couple and the American members here threw a Thanksgiving party on Saturday. It was awesome. We had turkey and mashed potatoes! And we only had to cook one of those things! Not gonna lie, my mashed potatoes were pretty incredible, but it's hard to go wrong when you stick 3 sticks of butter in. I really did miss your rolls though, that was for sure. No one makes them quite the same.

That's cool you ran into the guys! At least the guys in the country that is! Oh and the picture with all the candles is from a Polish holiday called Dzień Wszystkich Świętych (All Saint's Day). They put candles and stuff on people's graves, so the graveyards look really cool. It's November 1, so it's kinda like Poland's Halloween.We did hear about the Amazing Race thing, but unfortunately we did not see anyone. We are planning on going to the Salt Mines soon though. I think maybe in like 2 PDays or so.

Yeah our day ends at 330. Soon it'll be earlier. We try to street contact as much as possible before, and then plan meetings and go tracting after dark. It's starting to get really cold too. It snowed last PDay and it has a few more times since. We're hanging in at about a -5C to 5C range right now. I've been told to expect a cold Christmas. Considering when we first got here it was already colder than it ever gets in Cali, that was already part of the plan.

Our missionary work is going really well right now! Marcin and Tomasz are doing really well. We have a few more people meeting with us besides that, no one too regularly, but enough to keep us busy. And the language is coming along much better. I try to the members as often as possible to learn from them. For example, Silvia taught me a couple days ago that "dać komuś koszę" (give someone the basket) means to flake someone. Unfortunately that was learned at the expense of getting flaked. 

Anyways, love you all tons! Keep writing!

Love,

Elder Haskett 

The Krak

Hey Everybody! 

Everythings still going well down in the Krak. Quite the nickname yeah?

We've had a lot of fun this week. We had a lazy PDay last week, but I got to take a nap, so it was cool. Since then we've had a few more lessons with our investigators. Tomasz and Marcin are still doing well. They're both just really cool guys. We met with Marcin yesterday after church, and he was hungry so we went to a bakery. He asked why we didn't get anything for lunch and we told him about the whole Sabbath Day thing, so he got us some cake and then said he'd try not to shop on Sunday's anymore. 

I also had my first exchange. We do one with the Zone Leaders once a transfer. Elder Blunt came down to Kraków and Elder Vance went up to Wrocław. We spent the weekend together. Blunt is a really cool guy. Also, since I was the longest standing Elder in the city, I was temporary Senior Comp. Not gonna lie, I pretty much crushed it. We didn't get lost once. Also I took him out for the best kebab in the city. Basically a pro already.

Anyways, we did a finding activity the other day, and some really interesting things happened. A really drunk guy started bothering us, and we could not get him out of there. He was scaring away contacts, and we were just getting really frustrating. Since Elder Vance wasn't there, I had to be the one to tell him we were aliens. I invited him to church and said we'd be heading to Mars for the service (I learned the names of the planets that morning, inspired huh?) and he finally left us alone. Then like 2 minutes later, we tried to give a guy a card, and he said no, then comes back a minute later and asks to trade a card for a letter. So we were like ok sure and he hands us this folded up piece of paper. I open it up and on the inside it reads: "Hi Brothers, I'd love to recommend a book for you, it's called: How to Escape Cult Mind-Control." He didn't really speak English so the note barely made any sense at all, but it was just stuff like "Have the courage to question everything you know" and stuff like that. It was honestly the funniest thing that's happened all transfer.

Anyways as missionaries we're obviously a little entertainment deprived, so we've started watching old Mormon Messages on PDays, and we've found some good ones. I'd like to recommend "The Phone Call" and "The Schoolbus". Good stuff.

Anyways I'm glad everything's going well back home. Sounds like sports are starting to calm down again. 

Hope you feel better Mom! WIth the foot and the sickness, that's kind of a double whammy! Wszystkiego Najlepszego!

Love you guys!

Na razie,

Elder Haskett

My sister Becky got this from her friend!! The friends aunt and uncle are also serving in Poland and are in Kraków with Logan!

Small world indeed:)

Happy notes:):):)

Kraków!!!

Hey Mom!

I've got a little more time this week, so that's awesome.

We've been really busy this week. Lately we've been meeting with like 7 people, which is crazy, Elder Vance says it's never this busy. Usually we're out doing missionary work for like 6 hours a day, but now we've actually got meetings to break things up. Right now we're still meeting regularly with Marcin and Tomasz, the same guys from last week. Then we've got a few more random people and groups. Marcin is doing really well, but he's had a lot of great experiences in the Catholic Church. That's Poland.

Tomasz is a freakin rockstar. We met with him on Monday, and he was like, "Next meeting I have something you need to throw away, no questions asked." On Thursday we met again and showed him the baptismal interview questions, and he straight up committed to everything in one go. We taught the Word of Wisdom, Law of Chastity, and Law of Tithing in 20 minutes, and he accepted them all. He quit smoking. Then he hands Elder Vance this crumpled up wrapper and asked him to throw it away. So he does and after, Tomasz was like, "Those were my earrings, I heard you can't wear them in your Church." What the heck. It's not supposed to be this easy right? It's crazy, he's the perfect example of someone who has been prepared.

Yesterday he asked, "Do they only let Mormons from the States serve missions?" So we told him no and I kinda jokingly asked, "You ready to serve a mission already?" And he was just like, "Well not today, but later yeah why not?" He's honestly not even a golden investigator, he's like diamond, or platinum or something. 

Kraków's doing well. Weather's getting really chilly, and it's rainy all the time now, which is a bummer because I lent my umbrella to a sister in the area and she still hasn't given it back. The ward is pretty awesome! There's only like 30 people there on a good day, and we meet in this tiny apartment building. But the members who are active are pretty amazing. We had a testimony meeting on our first week, and I went up first, but after that it got quiet. Turns out they have slow starts in Poland too, because after that pretty much everyone shared. They've all got strong testimonies.

I'm glad I left a legacy in the MTC. Hopefully the new MTC group lives up to it haha. That's cool you heard from Sister Yokim! I hope she's doing well. Tell her to look behind the Polish Only sign in the class, I left a little drawing there too. I hope it's still there. I'm glad Caleb's baptism went well! Not only is it fun because it's a special day, but the whole family comes out too, and that's always wild.

I'm sorry to hear about your foot, that's such a bummer! I guess you're right, how could anyone tell it was the Haskett family without a cast. Hope you heal up quicker than me and Dad.

Love you! Thanks for all the recipes! Till next week!

Dozo,

Elder Haskett

Week 2!!!

Hey Mom!

First thing, we don't have a lot of time this week. We headed south to Zakopane and climbed Mt. Rysy and kinda got stuck in some weather so we got home a little later than expected. It was still super fun though. 

This week was pretty wild! First thing we did after PDay ended last week was meet with a new guy I stopped named Marcin. He was pretty cool, and he seemed to be pretty interested. Then at the end of the meeting, we left him with a baptismal date and he accepted! January 16th.Hoping things work out. We've also been meeting with an older lady named Marta in the park. She's super nice, but it's tough to really teach when you can't sit down. We we're cleaning the chapel the other day, and we found a note slid under the door. It was from a guy named Tomasz. He had met with the missionaries about a year ago and then disappeared. He tried to call to make contact but his phone's broken. We ended up finding him (a small miracle) and set up a meeting. We read the Book of Mormon with him and after, we asked him a few questions, and he interrupted us. He was like, you haven't asked me if this is true. So we were kinda like OK do you think it's true? He was like, I have this weird way of knowing if something is true. If it makes me sleepy then it's true. This Book made me sleepy. I know it has to be true. 

We're gonna work on that.

But at the end of the lesson, he accepted a baptismal date as well! Same day as Marcin! Exciting stuff!

I'm having a really good time here. It's not easy; I'm exhausted every day. I've learned how to fall asleep standing up when the bus is empty. But I'm having a good time. The language is actually coming along! We have to do an hour of language study a day here until the day we leave. People who are fluent in Polish and stop practicing lose it in a few days. But I'm slowly figuring more and more things out. I can solo contact now (slowly), but it's still really fun. People are always impressed when they say I'm from the States and that I'm learning Polish. Then I tell them it's only been 2 weeks here and they're like oaohaooaoahooaohoahoahoah how is that possible American's can't learn our language blah blah blah. Elder Vance has only been out a year and he's pretty fluent, so I have high hopes. He's from Colorado by the way.

I'm glad sports at home are still raging! And I almost forgot Caleb has his baptism on Saturday that's awesome!

Thanks for sending those packages! I can't wait! Our address in Kraków is Łokietka 5/100, but I don't think that you can send packages directly to me, I don't have a way to pick them up.

Love you guys! I'll keep working hard here if you do the same back home!

Na rasze,

Elder Haskett

Landed and arrived safely:)

The mission home!  They made it:)

SLC airport!!! Poland here they come!

Almost ready for Poland!

Austin caught him on his last week in the MTC!

1st week in Poland 🇵🇱✔️

Hey Mom!

This is officially the first letter from Poland! Pretty fun stuff! We've had a fun week, with finally leaving the MTC and the airport and Europe and everything, so it might me hard for me to get my thoughts all together. 

So first things first: Kraków! I got pretty dang lucky with probably the most famous city in Poland. It's really pretty here, and not quite as cold as it was in Warsaw that first day. We got there and there was ice. Contacting the first day was so freakin cold I was dying. Apparently it only gets worse from here. We did have a lot of fun though. I gave someone a Book of Mormon and set up a lunch appointment for the AP missionaries there, which is pretty lucky; apparently that never happens here. The funniest thing is it happened at the first house we knocked. 

That brings me to the next thing: the mission here is HARD. Like crazy hard. My training companion, Elder Vance has been here a year, and he's only even extended a baptismal invitation one time. And that dude flaked. That's not because he's not a good missionary either. He's awesome, and probably one of the best in Poland. Apparently a lot of the missionaries figure out a few things to say and then just give up because Polish is so hard. I can't say I blame them. I can barely understand anyone here. Church on the first week was hilarious. I got up and bore my testimony, and I did a pretty good job. All the members were really impressed because I'd been speaking for like 5 days here, and the Bishop asked if I had Polish family. Basically from that point on I understood about half of what was said for the rest of the 3 hours. Welp.

I am having a good time though. It's fun being here. The food's pretty good too, at least so far. We're pretty much super poor, so we barely eat at home (yesterday I ate some french fries for dinner), but a return missionary who's visiting bought us dinner the other night and we ate with the senior couple once too. That was a good meal. She made white chili soup kinda like you do and it tasted awesome. We won't be eating at the member's houses, and definitely not at nonmembers. They just can't really afford it. Apparently we sometimes will feed the members. Starszy Vance has had 2 meals with nonmembers in a year.

Vance is a pretty cool guy. Like I said, he's a boss at the language, and he's pretty dang patient too. He says that I came out of the MTC way ahead, so he thinks I can walk out of this transfer one transfer ahead. So that's my goal. It's also really nice having our own space in the apartment. It's pretty nasty, but it's big, so we have a ton of room to put our stuff. Apparently I got the worst bed in the mission, it's pretty much a mat. But somehow I come home every night and it's the most comfortable thing in the world. That's even more true in the mornings. In training, we have to wake up at 530.

We've got a lesson tonight, it'll be my first one. We should've had 3 more, but they all flaked. One of them actually showed up drunk, so that was neat. We probably wont be calling him again. I'm pretty excited for this one though. I actually contacted this guy. If we get him, he's mine. Wish me luck!

I can't think of much else new. One thing I do need though is stuff thats easy to cook! We eat the same stuff all the time! If you have any good recipies, like stuff for pancakes or cookies, send them please!

Love you guys so much! Alls well over in Kraków!

Na rasze,

Starszy Haskett

MTC pics

They are uping their game!!!!

MTC pics

FLIGHT PLANS!!!!!!!!!!

MTC pics

The district!!

Final pics in MTC

Careful how you behave in seminary.....your teacher may follow you to the MTC!!

Last email from the MTC!!!!!

This is it! Last Pday in the MTC! It's honestly so crazy. This week really flew, which I'm happy about, but it's also kinda sad. It feels a little bit like graduation or saying goodbye again. This time we don't have to go to the MTC though, Europe's a lot better of a destination to head to. We're honestly so psyched. 

I'm glad Caleb's Bday went well. It's so cool he's getting baptized. I know for sure that I had no clue how important it was when I was his age, but now that I've been teaching about it for months I'm really excited for him. I was talking to our choir director the other day because he's a really cool guy and I just wanted to introduce myself and he had brought his daughter who's getting baptized this week. She reminded me a lot of Caleb, it was funny.

Tell Noah and Luke not to worry about volleyball tournaments, they're so much more relaxed and laid back than basketball or soccer games. Hopefully some of that volleyball spirit rubs off on Noah and he doesn't stress for games too much anymore.

We got our flight plans last Friday! We celebrated by buying all the chips and dip in the MTC store and having a fiesta. We fly out on Monday. I think the first flight takes off at 12:30. We go through Chicago, then a 14 hour flight to Munich! From there it's pretty short to Warsaw, but with layovers and everything we have almost exactly 24 hours of travel time. I'm not sure whether or not we'll be able to email right before we go, but we do get to call! 

Anyways, this week has been pretty cool. First of all, I forgot to tell you last week that I got called to be District Leader. Whoops. It's been pretty fun though, I just have to go to a lot more meetings. Also we had our Departure Interviews the other day. During the interview, Brother Redding asked whether or not my Patriarchal Blessing said anything about me serving as a leader in the Church. I said yeah, and he said he got a strong feeling that it was going to happen. He said I have to just keep doing what I'm doing and serve my mission with honor and that when the call came I wouldn't be too overwhelmed. It was pretty cool, but at the same time, I was kinda like, Yikes. Oh well, Brother Redding promised me I'd figure it out, and I trust him. He's a good guy.

Also we discovered that Poland doesn't have a Halloween. Needless to say, I was pretty bummed.

Anyways, love you guys tons, and I'm looking forward to the phone call on Monday! 

Na rasze,

Elder Haskett

Sweater Saturday part II

Week 7!!! MTC almost complete!

Hey Mom!

I can definitely relate to falling into routine. I pretty much never know what day it is until we get to PDay Eve. I'm glad the games this weekend went well. I told Caleb to score 2 goals in the last letter, so he held up well. Maybe I should tell him to score 3 and be nice to his brothers!

It's so insane that Kai is going so soon. Our group of friends is going global. We're everywhere. I'm not sure if you heard but Val is going to Costa Rica next summer for a service trip! We're gonna be so multicultural in a couple years.

I'm glad to hear about the Polish baptism! We've been Skyping Polish people here (which is the coolest thing ever) and they are so crazy awesome. We've been talking to a lady named Ewa (like Ava). She's honestly so awesome. In our first lesson she pretty much taught our entire Joseph Smith lesson for us, so we had to transition to prayer. I've heard that the members there are super special. I honestly can't wait to go.

Our other lessons are going pretty well too. We've gotten really far with some of our "investigators" so we're getting into teaching like Word of Wisdom, Law of Chastity, Tithing. You know, the fun stuff.

So I got my first mission chop job. The famous butchers of the MTC got to me. My hair is so short now it's crazy. I should have just waited to get a Euro haircut.

The music you sent was really good. I feel like such a geek but some arrangements of hymns just sound so good to me now. I guess if I can't listen to other stuff I gotta take the best I can get. BTW, found a really good song by MoTab. It's called The Prayer. You should look it up.

Anyways, in language news, we've found basically the best thing in Polish. "Groovy" and "Holy" are practically the same word. One of our teachers has been saying "The Groovy Ghost" for 3 years now. Also, apparently the polish word for "member" is slang for something really bad. One of the other companionships asked their Skype buddy how long they'd been a member of the church. Oops.

I love you guys tons! It's so fun writing every week! Talk to you later!

Logan

Surprise!!!!

Your Elders are so happy.  I am a senior missionary going to France Lyon mission

We were surprised by a Monday email from a sweet Senior missionary!!! I guess this is what he means by walking around and "meeting new people"!! I wonder if he invited her to play volleyball with them???

It's just so good to hear from him........

Hey Mom!

6 weeks down, that means we're 2 thirds of the way there! So freakin close it's crazy. We get our flight plans next week.

We're getting pretty bored as a district so we started talking to a bunch of new people to kind of spice things up. We found some elders on our floor that are going to Iceland! They're the only 2, and their language sounds crazy. They say sentences like we say questions, so the end of the sentence kind of lilts up a bit. Their questions are the opposite; completely flat.  We play volleyball with all the people we've met, and our group just keeps getting bigger.

A lot of guys in our zone left this week. It was pretty sad, I had gotten close with a few. But we did get newbies this week! We're finally not the babies in our zone. 

Conference was awesome! That was my first time watching all of it, and may have even been my first 2 Saturday sessions. There are Utah kids here that wouldn't play sports on Conference Saturdays, so they were pretty surprised to hear I'd never even seen one. It was so good though. I don't know if you heard Holland's talk, but it kinda made me feel like an inadequate son. Love you Mom. Also Nelson's talk had my favorite quote. "Are you done crying? Then get up and get back to work." You know me, I'm not emotional or anything, so if I'm ever complaining about the mission, I wanna hear that. Don't forget that. There was also a talk that was perfect for one of my investigators. He's been struggling with getting an answer of whether or not he should be baptized, so we shared Brother Bennet's talk from Priesthood Session. During our lesson with him I felt prompted to promise him he would receive an answer this time he asked. Ask soon as I said it, I was like, "What the heck are you saying?" but it was too late. So if he didn't get an answer before our next lesson we were pretty much toast. We put it in the Lord's hands, and when we asked him to be baptized again yesterday, he said yes. He felt the answer to his prayer, which was awesome. I know it's all role play stuff, but the Spirit was so strong. It was probably my worst lesson as far as fluency went, which was weird because it's been really good for the last few days, but the Spirit was the most obvious it's ever been. After the lesson, our teacher came in and told us we rocked the lesson.

The night after Conference, we had Vocal Point come to our devotional. They sang a bunch of stuff, but the coolest was an arrangement of Nearer My God to Thee, and had one guy singing in English and the rest sang Latin in the background. It was awesome.

Love you all a million, I'm so grateful for all of your prayers.

Do cwartku,

Logan

Week 5 at MTC down!!!

Czesc Mama!

Thanks so much for updating the iPod! 12 hours should be just enough to get me through the flight! I think we should actually be getting our flight plans soon! We took our LSAs (Language Study Assessments) and I did pretty well! They go on a scale from 1 to 7, 7 being native, and I got all 5s. I'm pretty sure Brat Jensen was being nice but he said my grammar and pronunciation is really good. He's having me do extra exercises now to get a little head start. Fun stuff.

It's cool that the family is visiting this week. It's always fun to have visitors. Every once in a while I look at our family pictures, and we really are blessed to have such a tight family.

Everybody here is so excited for Conference! It's like it's the Super Bowl or something. With all the testifying we do in lessons about the prophets it's a really blessing to get to hear from them and of their testimonies. The new apostles should be really cool to. I don't have any guesses, but we heard from Brother Costa from Brazil on Tuesday and he's the oldest member of the First Quorum of the Seventy. His English isn't great, but he was one of the best speakers I've ever heard. His testimony was so powerful. He told us that as missionaries, we had to be worthy to be superheroes. He also had a great mission quote. He said that you can't count the seeds in an apple until you cut it open. And even then, you will never know how many apples can come from each seed. Going on your mission is cutting open the apple. And the seeds are our investigators, but we don't know what could possible come from each investigators for 2 or 3 generations. So if Brother Costa got called, that would be super awesome, because he is a superhero.

I love you guys so much, and your letters mean a lot! Talk to you next week!

Na rasze,

Logan

Who you gonna call????

When there's something strange

In your neighborhood

Who you gonna call?

ME

One month down!!!!

Coś nowiego!

First things first, I totally called the BYU game. Not that that was much of a surprise. 

This week has been really cool, lots of Polish and spiritual stuff. The usual. We're still working on cases and how to implement transition words and stuff like that. So we're all a little brain dead, but I'm impressed every day by how much we're learning. We learned the First Vision yesterday, and I didn't even know that in English. "Ujrzałem słup światła dokłdnie nad głową..." Really cool to hear the whole district recite that. 

We also heard from Brother Carden of the Seventy on Tuesday. He was the one who told us that Elder Scott had passed. It was really sad, but all the sudden, I could just feel his spirit in the room. I felt like he was happy, and that he and all the other saints that had gone on were behind the missionary force too. Then in our testimony meeting, President Wiseman said he felt the exact same thing. It was really special.

I also think I officially figured out how the Spirit feels to me this week. It's always so hard to describe, but for me, it is the exact opposite of fear. Not courage, but just not fear. And that just makes sense to me, if the Adversary is behind all of our fears, then it would make sense that Christ would be behind it's opposite. When I feel the Spirit now, I feel like the power of God is with me, and as long as I'm worthy and doing his work, I can't fail. And I know that's true.

I'm glad to hear everything is going well back at home. Sports sounds like fun right now. Glad soccer is going well, and Luke, you can definitely count that goal. I never doubted we'd have success in basketball and volleyball, so keep up the good work. Good luck this weekend in the Triathlon, someone better bring home a medal for Stevenson Ranch.

I do get to see Blake a lot around here. We talk a bit every meal. I think he doesn't leave until a week before me, because the Filipino missionaries usually spend a week in the Philippines MTC before going into the field. I'm not sure if that's the case for the Cebuano guys though.

Anyways, once again, I'm glad everything at home is going well! Love you guys tons!

Na rasze,

Elder Haskett

One month down!

Pics from week 3

Looking chill, maybe it's the 9 hours of language training a day😬😬

Sweater Saturday with the district! He knows his mom loves a good theme👍🏼

Week 3!!!!!!!

Cześć Everybody,

Another good week this week.  We're finally going into cases, which is terrible. I don't get why other languages need multiple words for nouns. My name sometimes conjugates to Starszego Logana Hasketta. Why? Because the Polish people love chaos. Anyways the language is still coming pretty easy though. We're all pretty fast learners in District 51F.

Blake got here yesterday. I've gotten to talk to him a few times, no pictures yet, but I'm imparting my MTC veteran wisdom on him. It's funny talking to the English speakers who complain about the food and being here forever and then were like "Oh yeah, this is our 23rd day. And we've got 40 more." 

Also I got my patriarchal blessing yesterday. It was pretty awesome. Lot of good stuff in there. He said the language would come easy (I fist pumped during the prayer). I don't remember a whole lot else, but it felt really good. Also the patriarch said that I have to go to the temple the weekend I get back and I'll be set forever after that, so you better remind me when I get home.

BTW, I realized I haven't talked about volleyball yet. I was pretty sure the competition was supposed to be ridiculous. It is not. I am the granddaddy of all volleyball here, which isn't saying much. My district is getting pretty good though. After 9 weeks we should be rock solid. Though since everybody else is bad, I do get to hit a lot. I bounced 3 times today. Yesterday I made an elder scream. It was pretty funny.

I'm glad everything at home is going well. Congrats on Legacy Noah and Luke! That should be really fun. Also Noah you better be really nice to my Jeep. Good luck at the Castaic Triathlon this weekend! I better not hear about any injuries this year.

Anyways love you guys tons. I'll be writing soon. Wiem że moja misja jest dobre doświadcienie i jest spoka. Powiedzię wy wkrótce.

Narasze,

Super-Starszy Haskett

HAPPY THURSDAY!!!

Czesc guys,

Things are getting into a rhythm now here.  Every day still feels like a year and every week has felt like a day.  Still having fun though.  The Polish is getting a lot better.  We're finally learning some grammar principles that are making things easier.  Teaching lessons is getting really easy.  We usually don't write anything down in Polish anymore.  Teaching lessons in English is a breeze.  Starszy McMaster and I forgot about our lesson in district meeting and BS'd a 50 minute conversation about baptism on the spot, and the Branch President said it was solid.  Can't get too cocky though, I still sound like an idiot when I speak Polish, but at least I can say some things.  My personal favorite is "Szynki" which means ham.  It sounds a lot like "Dzieki" which means thanks so we say ham to people who hold open doors for us and they say you're welcome:)

During this week's devotional we heard from Bishop Causse from the General Bishopric.  He's a convert from France, so hearing him and his wife struggle with English made me a lot more comfortable with struggling for 2 years, considering they've lived here for more than 30 years.  At the end of his talk though he said "I need to be bold" and walked over to the piano and played the craziest solo I've ever heard.  It was awesome.

Well the food still bites.  It's on a schedule, so we're already eating the same things over and over again.  For example, Thursday is "Terrible Blueberry Pancake on a Stick" Day.  I'm just excited for tomorrow because every Friday is pizza from Papa Johns.  We're thinking about smuggling some into residence because we have a microwave.

Love you guys tons, the package was awesome.  We almost finished the Oreos in one day.  The picture at Zion's is awesome.  Keep sending those, we have a printer we can use here.

Luke the best Polish word is Zadoscuczynienie.  It means Atonement.  Look up the pronunciation. 

Narasze,

Super-Starszy Haskett

FIRST PICS

Dave said he looks like a pro already!! I'm just happy to see his smiling face!

This is his companion Starzy McMaster from thatcher, AZ.

FIRST LETTER!!!!!!!!

Hey guys how's it going? I figure I'll just reply the whole family through this email. Things are going great, but P-Day couldn't have come sooner. I'm super tired. This week was really cool, the language is coming so much faster than I expected. I can bear my testimony in Polish pretty easy now. Wiem ze Ksiega Mormona jest prawdziwa, i Jozef Smith byl prorokiem Boga. Stuff like that. 

We have Sunday and Tuesday Devo's with the whole MTC. On Tuesday we heard from Brother Dahlquist from the 70. He was talking about how excited our mission presidents were for us to arrive, so I said a quick prayer and asked for help in becoming the missionary Brother Dahlquist and President Edgren in Poland saw in me. When I finished, Bro D. immediately mentioned a missionary from Poland who was having a tough time who received an answer to his prayer. It was super cool. I know that was meant for me. Then on Tuesday, Elder Oaks came. Apparently that doesn't happen to often, but it was sweet. He said that he was an Apostle and that missionaries are apostles. The change in capitalization doesn't change the blessings and influence from the Spirit.

We've been teaching an investigator in Polish, (she's an actor) and it's going surprisingly we'll we've taught five 30 minute lessons and have her committed to a baptism next Saturday. I don't think she was allowed to say no.

Anyways the food here is terrible, earlier I said all I wanted at the MTC was fish and Chinese food. They served both on the same night and botched both. The district is really cool. There's 5 going to Poland which is the most they've ever had and then 2 going to Leeds, England speaking Polish. All pretty fun guys. My companion, Starszy McMaster, is from Thatcher, AZ, which is 3 hrs east of Phoenix. Everything is going really well.

Dad, the pic of us at the Grand Canyon is pretty sweet. I'm making a lot of friends at the MTC who I probably wouldn't have talked to before. I think there's something about missionaries that makes us hard not to like.

My brace should be in my WR bball backpack. BTW say thanks to Nik for his shoutout for me. The cookies were great by the way. I don't know if I'm going to be able to upload pictures while I'm here or not.

Narasze,

Super-Starszy Haskett

Best surprise

We got quite a surprise this morning when a text came from my cousins daughter along with this pic!! Her husband Austin works in the MTC! He was asked to teach the new missionary class today (which is rare) and guess who walked in!! So Austin got to teach Logan on his first day in the MTC!! I feel like I won the missionary mom lottery!! I'm so grateful for this tender mercy!!! Doesn't he look happy!!! Thank you Austin, I am forever grateful to you!!!! You are now the family favorite!

1st Email

Czesc mama!

Bet you didn't expect to hear from me so soon! Our P-day is actually Thursday. We didn't have a P-day today but they wanted us to write home so you didn't freak out on Monday when we didn't write. I miss you guys a lot, but this has already been an amazing experience. The spirit is so strong here. We've already learned a lot of Polish. I said my first Polish prayer today! My companion is Elder McMaster. He's awesome. We've bonded over Hot Rod. I gotta go but I just wanted to wish you well and let you know that I'm still alive. Do widzenia!

Love,

Starzy Haskett

The MTC

This was a happy hard day.  People were putting on a brave face but let's be honest, there were tears.

Drop zone!!!

Maybe we've been in LA too long! This pause to look longingly look over your shoulder pic seems like it's right out of a movie! 

I do have to say that even though it's a "drive-thru" drop off, it is nice to see the missionaries there welcoming in the "newbies" with a smile!! I know Logan will be just as happy to be there as those cute Elders were!!! 

Prep to Go

Going through the Los Angeles Temple on August 1, 2015

We thought we would grab a quick family photo before Logan took off. Well its never quick and Logan decided to photobomb every shot.  

At the church after Logan's talk.

 

Farewell Talk

When I first heard I would be speaking on the same day as Tanner’s homecoming, I was pretty excited.  At least that was until I realized I would have to sit through the shame of watching the podium raise… and raise… and raise.  That's just another lucky thing about being tall.  You get like an extra 5 minutes to prepare for your talk while you wait.

I’ve kinda been mentally preparing for my farewell for a long time, but I’m going to be completely honest with you.  My top priority today was to make this the funniest talk I’ve ever given.  One of the first things I did when I got my call was look up Polish jokes.  I respect the people of Poland, and I don’t want to be insensitive, but I’d be uncomfortable if I didn’t share at least one.  Most of the stuff I found was pretty lame but there was one I liked.  It went, “Why do so many Polish last names end with ‘ski’?  Because they can’t spell ‘snowboard’”.  I won’t be sharing that with any investigators.

Don’t worry, there’ll be a lot of spiritual and doctrinal teaching involved in this talk too… probably.  My mom warned me that this wasn’t meant to be an LDS stand-up comedy routine, but come on, that would be way cooler than a talk.  Even though I was thinking about all the jokes I would use at least a month ago, I really didn't sit down and finish writing this til like 1 last night.  High schoolers, senioritis is real and it is powerful.  I thought I would recover once I graduated but I'm still afflicted.  Stay strong.

Nazywam sie starzy Haskett.  That’s how I’m going to be introducing myself for the next 2 years in Warsaw, Poland.  I thought I might tell you a bit of what I know about the area.  It’s about the size of Oregon, but 40 million people live there.  They’re like 95% Roman Catholic, so it’s a good thing I’ve read the Bible, or I’d be in trouble. It’s cold.  One of the missionaries in the area described it as “so cold even the snowmen shiver.”  Apparently it’s gotten down to -40 degrees there, so yeah, shivering snowmen doesn’t seem like an exaggeration. -40?!  Why would anyone choose to live there?  And one of the only things my mission president told me was to buy a lot of short sleeve shirts.  What?  I don’t know if he’s living underground or…  I can use the cold to my advantage though.  When I teach about the Plan of Salvation I'll be like, "Trust me you'll want to go to the Celestial Kingdom, it's warmer". 

The language is commonly regarded as one of the most difficult to master in the world.  I read a study that said even kids born and raised in Poland don’t have full mastery over the language until they’re 16.  But hey, I can already count to 10, so we’re off to a good start. They eat a LOT of sausage.  Personally I’m more of a bacon guy myself.  Out of the 40 million people that live there, there's less than 2 thousand Mormons, which means it's gonna be a tough mission. The day I got my call, my whole family was immediately researching the country, and one of my aunts called me, and she started with, “Well, you probably won’t have any baptisms… but Poland is beautiful.” Like alright... sweet.  Good pep talk. 

Apparently people in Poland want to hear about the States. They like to see pictures of the missionary’s families, what home looks like, stuff like that.  I'm really going to over hype living in California.  Yeah I like right by Hollywood.  I've been in several episodes of Keeping up with the Kardashians.  Robert Downey, Jr. is one of my closest friends.  I'm actually set to be in the next Avengers movie. I'll be playing Black Widow's little brother. Before we really get into things, I invited a lot of non member friends, and I wanted to make sure they know how we do things around here.  Booing will not be acceptable, no matter how badly I’m doing. Sorry to disappoint you.

I’ve been asked to share a message from Chapter 3 of Preach My Gospel.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with the book, chapter 3 contains every single doctrine, lesson, and discussion used by the missionaries to teach investigators.  All of it.  It’s 60 pages.

And I have 12 minutes… time me.

There are 4 discussions missionaries have with investigators before baptism, and then 1 new one after.  The lessons are: The Message of the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, The Plan of Salvation, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, The Commandments, and Laws and Ordinances.  The lessons are organized similarly; first they start with some baptismal interview questions to prepare your discussion around.  But according to my family, I won’t be baptizing anybody.  I looked for where it said, “Polish serving missionaries can skip this section” in the Preach My Gospel, but I didn’t find it.  After the questions, it lists some suggestions for commitments you can make with your investigators.  Then finally, the doctrine used to teach the lesson is explained.

Each doctrine contains key information the prophets and apostles have directed missionaries to share.  We’re asked to study and learn all that we can, but as missionaries, we aren’t meant to be robots.  We don’t memorize and recite anything word for word.  We try to listen to impressions from the Lord and use our own words to explain things. Brigham Young himself describes his own conversion story like this: “If all the talent, tact, wisdom, and refinement of the world had been sent to me with the Book of Mormon… undertaking to prove it by learning and worldly wisdom, they would have been to me like the smoke which arises only to vanish away. But when I saw a man without eloquence, or talents for public speaking, who could only say, 'I know, by the power of the Holy Ghost, that the Book of Mormon is true, that Joseph Smith is a Prophet of the Lord,' the Holy Ghost proceeding from that individual illuminated my understanding… I knew for myself that the testimony of the man was true.”  He uses a lot of big words here, but essentially he’s saying that no matter how talented of a speaker he encountered, any worldly wisdom meant nothing to him.  It was the honest, humble testimony of a servant of the Lord that converted a man who would later become a prophet.

It’s nice to hear that eloquence and wisdom don’t matter when you’ve been asked to prepare a talk.  I can stutter and stumble up here for 10 minutes and hope the Holy Ghost gets the message across.  I’m really glad the same thing goes for when I’m speaking Polish.

Because so many of the people of Poland are Christians who already believe in the Savior, I thought, I’d share a bit from the first discussion on the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  

Since the Fall of Adam, Heavenly Father has always given commandments to his children through his servants, the prophets. From Adam, to Noah, to Isaiah and the like, prophets have led the Church. These prophets have the power from God to direct his church.  We’re blessed for listening to the prophets and keeping the commandments. 

But it’s impossible to keep all of the commandments all the time. It is inevitable that we make mistakes, or sin in this life.  When we sin, we separate ourselves from God.  This is called spiritual death. Unclean spirits are not able to dwell in the presence of God. Somehow we need to be cleansed of our sins.  This is why God’s plan required a Savior. Heavenly Father’s only begotten son, Jesus Christ, was sent down to Earth.  He was the only person to ever live a perfect life. 

During his earthly ministry, he established a quorum of 12 apostles and taught, healed, and converted many people.  Then he took our sins upon himself and then died for us, which completed his atoning sacrifice. Then, 3 days after his crucifixion, he broke the bands of death and was resurrected.  Because of this, we will all be saved from physical death and be resurrected with perfect bodies one day.  We can also be forgiven of our sins if we have faith in Christ and repent.

After Christ left the Earth and returned to Heaven, the 12 apostles who held the keys to the priesthood were killed.  This meant that the power of God was no longer on the Earth.  The world fell into a state of apostasy, which means the full truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, along with prophets called of God, are no longer on the Earth.  There were still righteous men and women living at the time, but without the proper authority to perform saving ordinances such as baptism and confirmation, there was no way for people to prepare themselves to enter into God’s kingdom.  The power of God had to be restored to the Earth. 

Then a boy named Joseph Smith was born in 1805.  From here, we all know this story.  At 14 years old his family lived in an area going through an unusual excitement on the subject of religion.  Every sect, was telling him something different.  Being the stud he was, Joseph turned to the scriptures to answer his questions.  He took the advice given in James 1:5, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him.”  He asked his Father in Heaven to know which of the churches were true, and in an answer to prayer, saw a vision.  He wrote, “I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me…  When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air.  One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!” Joseph Smith saw Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. 

With the help of angels, he started the Church and restored the priesthood to the Earth.  I’m serving a mission because I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet, that he saw God and Jesus Christ, and that he restored the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Earth.  I want to share that with as many people as I can. 

Last week my dad, Val, and I went to climb Mt. Whitney. This was the second time we did this, the first was when I was 12.  I got to the top that time, so I was pretty confident this time.  We got some good training in, like 3 days worth.  That’s 1 more day than the first time I did it.  We were gonna take this new route for mountaineers, which was a lot steeper, but shorter, but last minute we changed our plans and took the regular trail at 2 in the morning. Right away we saw a bear, which was pretty cool.  All the way up the mountain, I was feeling good. We got to the top no problemo, and started coming down, and I hit a WALL. Every step hurt, it felt like forever.  Maybe only getting 2 hours of sleep before the hike didn’t help?  Maybe only training for 3 days didn’t help?  Maybe walking for 15 hours straight, which is like many hours longer than normal didn’t help?  Either way, I wasn’t prepared as I should have been.

Sometimes a mission is going to feel like climbing a mountain.  Nothing's easy, but you've just gotta DO IT.  You’ve gotta train. Hopefully I did a little better with my mission than with Whitney. 

There’s a path you have to stick to.  It’s going to be amazing, but it’s going to be hard.  I’m going to be tired.  At times, it’s going to feel long.  My feet are going to hurt when I’m learning those winter boots in the snow.  I’m going to feel unprepared.  That’s when I have to look outside of myself and rely on the Lord’s help, because without him, I can’t do this.  But with him, I can do anything.  I know that.

I know I'm gonna miss a lot of things when I leave.  I'm gonna miss this ward so much.  I'm gonna miss all my friends who came to visit today.  I'm gonna miss my boys in the priests quorum a lot.  I'm gonna miss doing the lip syncs, and church ball, and Wednesday night activities.  I've made a lot of memories here.  You guys have been my family for the last 8 years.  I'm so thankful for my family, for everybody that came to visit.  I'm gonna miss them all so much.  I know I'm going to be sad when I leave but I'm ready to go. 

I’m so glad I’ve been given the opportunity to serve.  I can’t wait to share the message of Christ with the people of Poland.  I know it’s going to be really hard, but I’m ready to go to work.  Last testimony meeting, Brother Lewellin said that the harder you work on your mission, the more beautiful your wife will be. A+, 10/10, best advice you could give to a new missionary. I looked for where it said that in the scriptures so I could put it on my mission plaque. I know that this church is true.  I know that my Savior lives, and because of him, we can be with our families forever. I can't wait to share this news with the people of Poland. And I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.