Week 80 - Hello Warsaw!

Elder Hadfield, P, Elder Dickson

Hello everyone!  Hope you are all doing well, wherever you are.  I'm gonna start off this email with a scripture,

D&C 124:88 -"88 Let my servant [Elder Hadfield] go and proclaim my everlasting gospel with a loud voice, and with great joy, as he shall be moved upon by my Spirit, unto the inhabitants of Warsaw[...]"

Yep, that's right, I got transferred to Warsaw a week ago!  It was a little bit of a surpise because there are a few weeks left in the transfer, but President Turek believed it was needed, so here I am.  I was a little sad to leave Szczecin, I loved serving there and good things are starting to happen there, but I'm super excited to be in Warsaw. 

My new companion is Elder Dickson, and he's so much fun to serve with.  It's going to be a great time serving with him.  We had a lot of stuff going on this past week.  We went on exchanges with the APs on Monday and Tuesday, and it was good to work with them. 

We also had quite a few meetings this past week.  We met with P. a couple of times last week, and he actually ended up getting baptized on Saturday.  So that was way cool, I'm excited for him.  We met with an investigator, M., and that went pretty well.  He seems open to baptism, and we're getting excited to work with him toward that.  We also got two new investigators from a member referral, L. from Turkey and his girlfriend K. from Poland.  They came to church yesterday and we met with them afterwards and taught the restoration.  They honestly seem so prepared, we're so excited to work with them.  They committed to read and pray about the Book of Mormon, and we're excited to see how that goes for them. 

The work here in Warsaw is going really well, there are so many good things happening, and I'm grateful I get to join in and work hard to see if we can keep that going.  Warsaw is an awesome city.  There are I think 1.7 million people living here, and I think that's twice as many as the next biggest city I've served in. It feels like there's always something to do.  The work is going well though. I'm super excited to be here and to be with Elder Dickson. We're having a great time together, and we're excited to see what we'll be able to accomplish. 

Hope you are all having a good time though.  Have a legendary week!-

Elder Hadfield

Week 79 - Goodbye Szczecin!

The email for the day was sent by a sister in Elder Hadfield's district, and we might not be able to hear from him personally today...

Hey! This is Siostra Poff. (I don't know how much your son talks about his districts, but if you don't know who I am, we've been serving together for 8 months haha)

I've been assigned as the newsbearer that Elder Hadfield is getting transferred! President Turek called him on Saturday, and it came as a shock, since it's still the middle of the transfer. Right now he is on a train, so he probably won't have any P-day time to email. He wants the city to be a surprise for next week, so unfortunately that's about all the news I can give you.. I can attach a picture, though!

I hope you are doing well! We sure are grateful for all you missionary moms and your love and support :)

Siostra Poff

Elder Lange, Elder Hadfield, Sister Gornichec, and Sister Poff

Week 78 - Szczecin

Hello everyone!

This week was a really good week.  We did a lot of contacting this week, and that was pretty good.  We didn't get any potentials from that this week, but we're going to spend more time on that this upcoming week and we feel good about it, we'll see what happens.  We also had exchanges this week in Gdańsk, and those went well.  We did a lot of contacting there as well, and we saw some good things happens with that, we found some potentials for them.  I got a chance to work for a few hours with Elder Wójcik, who was my companion in the MTC, and that was pretty fun.  It was cool looking back at the MTC and realizing how much progress we've made since then.  So this week, I've been working on my goal of listening to at least one talk from this past general conference a day, and it's going pretty well.  So far, one of my favorite talks is the one by Elder Godoy of the Seventy.  His talk is titled "One More Day", and it's really good.  He talks about being grateful each day to have one more day and always remember Christ's sacrifice for us.  He talks about how sacrifice brings blessings and sanctifies what we sacrifice for.  It's a really good talk, I recommend it.  I know that as we are thankful for each and every day and strive to follow our Savior, Jesus Christ, through personal sacrifice, we are strengthened and come to know more about Him.  As we come to know Him and strive to understand His atoning sacrifice, we are blessed with that peace and joy that only Christ can provide.  Have a good week everyone!

-Elder Hadfield

Week 77 - Szczecin

Hello everyone!

    This week was a good one.  It was another quick one, as I feel they all are.  We've been focusing lately on getting our potentials to transition into investigators, and we'll have to work on that this week.  It's been difficult getting in contact with them, but we'll keep trying. 

We'll also be working hard out on the streets this week looking for some fresh potentials, hopefully we can find some promising people this week.  This week we'll also be in Gdańsk on exchanges with the zone leaders, and those should be fun.  I always look forward to those, excited to work with the zone leaders and learn from them.  But yea. 

This past week, we had a cool experience.  There's a less-active, J., who lives in a city about 2.5 hours away from Szczecin called Gorzów, and the branch president asked us if we could visit him.  So we did that on Thursday, and it was a really good experience.  We talked with him and he shared with us his conversion story and his life in the church, and it was really cool.  He was baptized about 20 years ago when there were missionaries in that city, but there haven't been any missionaries there in a long time now.  He currently has some financial and medical challenges that make it pretty difficult for him to come to church, but he's still pretty faithful.  He said that the church has changed his life, and he raved about the missionaries he's been able to meet with over the past 20 years. It was cool to see the large impact those missionaries had on him, even though they probably don't realize it.  Even if we feel like we are nothing special or if we feel unsuccessful, we really do leave an impact on other people, and those people will remember us forever.  It's amazing being able to learn that on my mission and see that in the lives of people I meet. 

Well, we're looking forward to this week, hoping it's good.  We'll work hard and see if we can get some things going here in Szczecin.  I hope you all have a great week!

-Elder Hadfield

Week 76 - Szczecin

Hello everyone!

     What a week it has been.  It started off really solid with zone conference in Poznań, and that was great.  President Turek spoke about love and loving the people we serve here on the mission.  We also learned from each other about different chapters of PMG, and it was a really good conference.  I translated for that into English for the new missionaries and senior couples, so I wasn't able to take many notes, but what I remember was really solid. 

          With P, it's a really interesting situation.  He knows just so much about the Book of Mormon.  They've attended church a couple of times in the past, which is how they know the branch president, and President Trukszyn asked us to help them out because they both have medical things right now.  So we've been going to their apartment and helping them out with things often.  We helped P get to a doctor's appointment today, and we sat in the lobby waiting talking about the Book of Mormon.  He's read the Book of Mormon at least 10 times in different languages, and he was talking today about Peter Whitmer and Martin Harris and Oliver Cowdery and about Joseph Smith and all this stuff.  He know more things about some of them than I do.  He's such an intelligent guy and he's a pretty normal person.  Super cool.  Not sure how to teach them, but we'll continue to serve them and try to love them into the church.  We talked briefly about conference, and he said he would like to come in 6 months when we have it again.  I told him that we could also bring him a copy of the Liahona with the talks for him, and I think he'll enjoy that.  They are such good people, hoping as we keep serving them, we'll see them open up even more.  We'll see how things go this week.  On Thursday, we will be in a city called Gorzów visiting a member, and we're hoping that goes well.  It'll hopefully be a good week. 

          The week ended off on a great note with general conference.  What a conference it was. General conference as a missionary just feels like Christmas.  It's a great reminder that there's more than just a handful of church members in the world.  We watched the Saturday morning and Sunday morning sessions live, and the others we watched the day after, but we have been able to watch all of them. It was a great conference, and I'm excited to review the talks over the next 6 months. 

          It's a testament to me that "[the Lord] will hasten [his] work in its time" (D&C 88:73)  How blessed we are to be led by continuing revelation from God to guide the affairs of His kingdom on the earth.  I really enjoyed the other themes of personal revelation and temple attendance.  When we strive to make time for the temple, we make time for the spirit to impact our lives.  As we strive to be worthy of the spirit and really sincerely pour out our heart to God through prayer, we receive answers and inspired direction in our different walks of life. 

          I've set a goal to listen to a general conference talk every day up to next conference to follow President Nelson's invitation to frequently and repetitively study the talks, and I'm excited to see what I can continue to learn and the improvement that will make in my life.  The Lord really is hastening His work, what a blessing we all have to be a part of that hastening.  May we each hasten our own individual work as we strive to follow the Savior and emulate Him.  Have a legendary week! 

-Elder Hadfield