Week 53 - Lodz

Jake & O

Zgierz

Hey all!

     How are thing going for you all?  They are going really well over here.  This week was a solid one.  We had good lessons with W. and T. again, and I think they are both doing well.  We are probably going to finish off the recent convert lessons with W. this week, so that'll be good.  This past Saturday, we were also able to meet with O. at a restaurant he recommended to us, and that was a good meeting.  O. is such a stud.  He's a super deep thinker, and he really takes religion seriously.  I like to say that we as missionaries learn a lot from meeting with him haha.  He's so awesome though.  Definitely one of the coolest people I've met on my mission.  We're hoping he'll have time for a meeting this week, we'll see how it goes. 

          We also got a couple of solid looking potentials this week.  We have I., who we met at our English class.  He's from Ukraine, and he seems really solid.  We're gonna start meeting with him hopefully this week, and it should be solid.  We also have E., who we found in our area book.  We visited her apartment, and she was home, but she didn't have a ton of time, so she invited us back this Saturday.  So hopefully something good can come from that.  But yea, the work is going well. 

          This week coming up here is also the last week of the transfer, which is pretty crazy.  It's easily been the quickest transfer of my mission.  Exited to see what happens though.  We get our calls this Saturday, so that's when we'll find out.  This week, I continued my studies of the Old Testament.  I finished off the book of Joshua this week, and there's the verse in the last chapter that I think most of us know, but I really like it:

12 [...]choose you this day whom ye will serve;... but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

 Our Father in Heaven has given us agency, and I know that as we use our agency righteously, as we serve our Lord, we are blessed, and he directs our lives.  Hope you all have a great week!

-Elder Hadfield

Week 52 - Lodz

Hey all!

     How are things going out there?  This week has been a pretty solid one.  We unfortunately weren't able to meet with our investigator O. last week, but he did make it to church.  We were able to talk a bit, and we invited him to some restaurant on this Friday, and he said he'll probably be there.  Hoping we can see what's up with him and how we can help him.  We met with W., the recent convert, and T., the less-active, and they are both doing well as well.  On Friday, we had a pretty cool experience.  Elder Blau and I were doing language study, and I got a call from my boy Elder Erickson down in Mielec.  He and his comp had a referral for a less active in our area named A. who texted them asking if they could bless her son, because he's sick.  Well obviously they couldn't do that, so Elder Erickson sent me her info, we called her, and we were able to go down later that day and give her son a blessing.  She lives in a city called Pabianice just South of Łódź, so it was a little bit of a journey, but it was worth it.  We were able to share a little bit of a spiritual thought as well.  She's had a rough past few years, but we're hoping we can continue working with her and help her remember how the gospel can bless her life.  So that was a cool miracle that happened this week!  Super cool to see that happen.  Hoping we can continue with a really solid week this week to build off last week.  Something else that's pretty crazy is we only have another two weeks left in the transfer.  What the heck?  We'll have to make these last two weeks legendary.  Well, hope you are all doing well.  Have an awesome week!

-Elder Hadfield
Zoo p-day pictures follow:

Week 51 - Lodz

Hey everyone!

This week was a quick one.  Pretty crazy that it's p-day already and I'm writing you all again.  This week was good though.  We had some good lessons with W. and T., our recent convert and less-active.  We weren't able to meet with O. last week, but we have a meeting set up for Wednesday, and we're praying that it will go well.  

We've done a lot of finding this last week for our English class, and we've been seeing some growth in that.  Which is good.  We're also having more people stay for the spiritual thought we share afterwards, so that's pretty sweet.  Hoping to see this success continue so we can start getting some new investigators.  

With tracting, usually it's in apartment buildings, so we usually ring on what are called domofons.  I attached a video I took of one my third transfer.  Basically how it works, is you stand outside the apartment building and enter in the number of the apartment you want to call to, and then they'll answer and you can talk back and forth.  We usually go with the approach something like "Jesteśmy z Kościoła Jezusa Chrystusa, i dzisiaj rozmawiamy z ludźmi o Jezusie Chrystusie", or "We're from the Church of Jesus Christ, and today we are talking with people about Jesus Christ".  Then if they want to listen, they'll either listen over the domofon, or they'll let us in.  We'll usually talk about how Jesus visited the people in ancient America.  It's good. 

But yea, excited to see what this week brings.  Hoping it goes well and we can get some new people here.  Hope y'all have a great week!

-Elder Hadfield

Elder Blau

Elder Blau said: This just showed up on Piotrkowska one day. I don't know what it is

From the blog of Jake's Companion, Elder Blau:

These buildings are the bread and butter of Lodz.

Area: Łódż
Companion: Starszy Hadfield

Halo,

This week has been pretty good. Nothing too crazy has happened, but I'll do my best to make this a solid letter. We had some cleaning to do last week because some sort of check thing was happening. I used to think that we had a really clean apartment. There are a few points in that last sentence that are pretty important for understanding. One of them is the use of the past tense. We cleaned everything pretty well and then the District President came. His name is possibly President Jarosz. I know how to say it, but spelling is way beyond my capabilities. He found everything. It was good though. We changed out our water filter and fixed a bunch of stuff. It ended up being a really good thing to do. 

I think that I passed my 100 day mark this week. I don't know how I feel about that. It feels way too fast, but at the same time, I feel a little like I have always been on a mission. Elder Hadfield sang sto lat to me, but switched the lat for some case of dzień. I think that that was the day of the silliest rain storm of my life. We have been finding people from the Area Book and visiting them and then knocking on the doors of their neighbors recently. We went out to find this one guy who lived so far out of the city center that his house was in a forest. He was nice, but not interested. Then we were waiting to go back to the center on a tram when it started to rain. It soon became some of the hardest rain that I have seen for a long time. We were under a cover, so we were safe. We got on the tram, and we were going on our merry way through a torrential downpour. Then all of the sudden the rain stopped. It had only been like 10 min. That wasn't even the silly part. The sun came out and there was a beautiful sunset. We got off at a stop to switch trams, then suddenly there were trams that shouldn't have been there going down the track. I guess that the 10 min rain had flooded their tracks. It was all types of ridiculous. I can't support it. I don't think that it has rained since then. 

We taught English on Saturday, and I thought that It was bomb. The most people that we have had come to a Saturday English class has been 2, and last week we didn't have anyone. This week there were 5 people. It was insane. They just kept coming. We started with a prayer like normal and then had everyone describe their favorite movie. It ended up that a lot of the favorite movies were really sad, but I found a way to only cry a little bit. After that we played a game where we had one person go out of the room and we picked something that they had to draw and then we had to explain step by step how to draw it. It worked really well. We got some great drawings out of it. Picasso would have been proud. After that we had two people stay for the Religious discussion after the class, and they liked it a lot. Four of the people said that they were going to come back next week and the other one said that he might go horseback riding or something. I'm pumped. It was a good English class. 

[Answers to Dad's questions]: 

Question: So my impression is that you're having a pretty good time. Scale of 1 to 10? Also, tell us something about Elder Hadfield. Answer: Like a solid 8. Elder Hadfield is great. He speaks Polish really well and is a hard worker. He really doesn't like listening to Christmas music before Thanksgiving, so I have been playing a bit of it. It is pretty fun. We back up our side with scripture and everything. He also has seen like no movies. It is incredible. None of my quotes are working. All that I have to work with is Spongebob. It is really funny. I like him a lot.

Questions: How many people come to the branch on her regular Sunday? Tell us a little something about how the branch functions. Do you have to teach lessons every week? Answer: We normally have about 20ish people on a normal Sunday. They normally have a missionary play the piano and We normally teach Gosple principles, but next week we are having a recent convert teach it. The branch is pretty good here. Most of the members are really nice to us. 

Questions: Do you ever get to play your melodica ? Your guitar? What are you doing for exercise right now? Pull-ups? :-) Answer: I played my melodica for a little bit a couple days ago. I play guitar a lot. I haven't played it on the street yet because we haven't done many district finding activities. For exercise I have been doing a lot of stretching and some push ups. I read in the adjusting to Missionary life book, that I am allowed to march to appropriate music. I thought that was pretty funny. The door frames in our apartment are weird, so I haven't done any pull ups yet. Maybe my next apartment will be better.