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