Happy New Year!

Ok, business first. P-day is being moved to Mondays starting next week. Writing a missionary could become a fun Sunday tradition or something...

And the big transfer announcement is that I'm staying in South Warsaw again!!!! I'm really happy about this. I was not ready to leave the members or the people we've been teaching. I'm so excited to stay here and still help them progress in their faith in Jesus Christ. And I'm training. Which is a little overwhelming but I'm actually really excited. This means I get a brand new missionary fresh from the states... kind of.  Fresh from the states in the sense that she's been at the Provo MTC for two months, but not fresh from the states really because she's from Finland. Crazy. She's going to be automatically awesome just by the mere fact that she's Finnish. Anyway, I get to meet her tomorrow and then we can get to work.

But I want to add an addendum to this, don't let this lead you to believe that I already speak Polish fluently or that I'm a rock star missionary who does everything perfectly. Those would both be false statements. I'm still learning so much everyday, and I'm sure the next two months will be a huge growing experience. But I'm going to work hard and do my best, relying on the Lord. It's strange that I've been in the country 4 months and already a senior companion, but currently the Poland Warsaw Mission is what we call a very young mission. Meaning most of the missionaries are new missionaries. 90% of the mission has been here for less than a year and over 50% have been here less than 4 months.  So I'm actually already considered an old missionary. There aren't many Sisters who have been here longer because 5 Sisters go home tomorrow. A little crazy, but that's life. This is how it's supposed to be.

Comments about the holidays:
I think "Holiday" should be translated "day of eating more food than is healthy" in polish. I feel like that's all I did ALL weekend. Really good food and really interesting food. It was very satisfying and then it was more than satisfying. I don't think I've eaten a lot for the last two days in an attempt to recover. But it was really fun. And I want to say thank you to Aunt Sherisse and Aunt Hedi and the Beehives and to you for the wonderful bundles of holiday love that everyone sent. They are more than appreciated. Thank you for thinking of me even though I'm so far away. I love you all.

I missed everyone, but your love and the love of members here in Poland was able to remember me that Christmas isn't just about presents and singing fun songs while drinking hot chocolate- it's celebrating the fact that Jesus Christ did come into the world. How wonderful is that? I am forever grateful. I know he was who he said he was. He is the Christ, our Savior and Redeemer, the Son of God. I have felt the effects of his Atonement in my life, his love and his peace. As we take the sacrament each week we promise to always remember him, or in other words, we promise to keep the true feelings of Christmas with us always- Peace on earth, good will to men. What a wonderful thing to be reminded of.   I always love the holidays, they are times to remember.

I love you all, it was great to hear from you too. I'll be home before you know it, and until then, don't worry about me too much. I'm being taken care of.   I'm safe and happy and loving this wonderful work.

Love you,

Siostra Allen

P.S. About the referral. I'm assuming that Tomasz is the son who lived in America and Dorota is his mother.   I'm super excited to go visit them.

Wesolych Swiat (Merry Christmas)

Hey all,

I can't believe it's almost Christmas. It feels like I've been in Poland forever, and at the same time I feel like I'm just starting to figure out the basics of missionary work. I wonder if that will ever go away?

First things first- The Christmas phone call.
Yes- buy an international calling card, apparently that's the best way.
Then dial:
+48 (country code) then ....... without the 22 before it. Because we're a cell phone they don't use the city code.
Call at 11:15 a.m. your time; 8:15 p.m. our time.
It can only be 40 minutes.
Hope that's okay.

It was a great week. We had a Christmas Zone Conference and a temporary threesome with Sister Stay a brand new missionary. Her luggage got lost, so she stayed with us for three days while they recovered it. It was so much fun to have her with us.

You asked about my plans for Christmas. It's going to be busy. In Poland "Wigilia" or Christmas Eve is the most important part of Christmas celebrations. There's a big dinner with no meat and lots of fish and then you sit and sing and talk until midnight mass. We're going to be going to a member's house. I am SO excited. It's going to be an authentic Polish Christmas. On Christmas day I think we're going to go visit some single members who aren't going to be able to spend Christmas with family. There's a missionary lunch, then we're going over to a Mongolian member's house for dinner, followed by phone calls home. So you'll be able to hear all about it when I talk to you.

Sister LeFevre has been teaching me Polish Christmas carols for the past month- we sing them at the beginning of companionship study. So now I love them! I heard music playing in a store today and started humming along just like I do with English carols. Yesterday we visited a family in our branch- Piotr and his two teen-aged daughters Ania and Asia. I love their family. Yesterday we took a couple minutes to sing carols together before the lesson with Piotr playing the guitar. Are missions supposed to be this fun? 

Miracle of the week: Jakub, Kuba for short.
About a month ago we tracted a building near a members apartment we were going to visit. We knocked on a couple hundred doors but no one was interested. Fast forward to this Tuesday. We have a meeting with the same member but decide to contact for 30 minutes in her area before hand. We only stopped two people. The second person was Kuba. He recognized us from tracting his building and talked to us for 20 minutes. He didn't take a Book of Mormon or give us his number which normally means we'll never see the person again. But we gave him our flyer and told him that he could call if he ever wanted to meet and was always invited to church. Miracle of miracles, he called us (that never happens). We met with him. He felt the spirit testify that our message was true. He is such a nice and respectful man. I hope we'll be able to teach him more when he gets back to Warsaw after the holidays.

Oh family. I love you all so much. I can't really wrap my mind around the fact that I'm going to talk to you on Saturday. But I'm excited nonetheless. I have such a testimony of this work. I know it is where I need to be. I am humbled to be a part of Heavenly Father's greater plan for us. He is our father. He loves us so much. He has beautiful things in our future if we will only trust him. The Book of Mormon is a gift from God that can bring us peace and happiness as we study it every day. It is so wonderful that I get to spend my days telling people about it and inviting them to read it. The most valuable present I received for Christmas was the conference ensign that you sent. As I have read from it each morning this week I have felt the prophetic power behind their words. How blessed we are to have a living prophet and apostles to help us make it through the trials and turbulence of life.

Once again, I love you. Thank you for all that you do to support me here. Wesołych Świąt! (merry christmas!)

Siostra Allen

one week before Christmas

Wow, I can't believe it's almost my birthday again. Weird As far as things I'd like- tights/socks if you didn't send them for Christmas would be great. And some things I've really come to like are headbands and normal ball point pens (they sell a lot of ink pens here but I like the cheap ones better). And then just some homemade cookies or something fun like that. Whatever you have time to send would be fun to receive.

I sent you all a package for Christmas, let me know when you get it. (I've actually sent you a couple letters from Poland, have you received any of them?) Mail here isn't quite reliable. But I think I got your package today. I got a package slip in the mailbox and we'll go pick it up at the post office after grocery shopping. And say thank you to the ward young women. I got their Christmas package too. That is really so nice of them.

As far as cooking goes, we don't have a lot of time to cook so everything we make is normally really simple. We'll make pasta and sauce or rice and vegetables. If you have any good fast recipes please send them my way. I'd love a little variety.

 

So this week has been a really good one and also a difficult one. We're working really hard right now to accomplish some goals by the end of the year. They are going to take a miracle so we're pooling all the faith we have to work miracles. I know it's possible, but I also know that there is opposition in all things. So when we're showing faith and obedience and God is going to bless us because of it, obviously Satan doesn't want anything like that to happen. Too bad this is the Lord's work- we already know the outcome.

 

A popular finding technique in the Poland Warsaw Mission is White Boarding. I love WBing. You write something on a white board and try and stop people and get them to respond. Normally it's a question. This week we decided to try something new in an attempt to follow counsel given by Elder Kopishke to testify of doctrine from your first sentence. We drew the Plan of Salvation and started asking people what it was. The first thing that you say in response to them is "God has a plan for us" It was sooooo amazing. Either people weren't interested and you could ask the next person, or they responded to it and we just continued testifying. Better yet, when we briefly explained that we can learn more about the plan through the Book of Mormon a lot of people asked us where they could buy it, they wanted to read it. When we said that we could give it to them for free, they were happy to take it. This is so exciting for a missionary, because we know the amazing power of the Book of Mormon as a testimony of Jesus Christ. It really does change the lives of those who study it with faith and now more people have a copy.

 

 I love you all so much. I'll have more for you next week when we can talk! Have a wonderful day.

 

Papa (Bye-bye),

 

Siostra Allen

 Well, it's been colder here than I've ever experienced, but suprisingly I've stayed pretty warm. I have a good coat, boots to help me trudge through the snow, and I layer like crazy. I bought a hat and sweater a few weeks ago and I can buy anything I really need here in Poland, so don't worry that you didn't have time to sew me anything for Christmas. I'm doing great. Transfers aren't until the last week of December because we do 9 week transfers instead of 6 week transfers (Sister LeFevre goes home on the 30th) so if my package gets here by Christmas, it'll come to the right place.

 

We do get to call on Christmas. Sister LeFevre tells me that last year they e-mailed their parents their phone number and set up the time. And then her family just called her. So definitely plan on calling me, but I'll give you more details as I get them.

 

My apartment is a very nice apartment in comparison to a lot of the ones I've seen. It has a kitchen, bathroom (with a washer, small washer, in the bathroom), a living room with two comfy chairs that we try not to fall asleep in during study time, and a bedroom. It's right off a major road in South Warsaw- Puławska, so there are lots of tall apartment building around and traffic going by and a tram line that we can see from our window. We put up our Christmas lights and Christmas tree in the window so that the world can see our Christmas spirit. And there is an ambulance unit on the bottom floor of our building- so we say hi to them when we walk past. You never have to worry about a medical emergency while I'm living here. They don't really have central heating here. Some apartments only have warm pipes to heat them, but luckily ours has wall units in all the rooms so it stays pretty warm. I wear socks, but can wear a t-shirt quite easily.  It's a great location because it's near a tram stop, but also not too far from the metro. This was nice last monday during the blizzard when none of the tram lines were working and a lot of people had a hard time getting home. We were able to take the metro and then walk the rest of the way- 20 minute walk. So that's nice. Warsaw is really condensed. It has just as many people as Las Vegas, but they all live in 1/8 of the space. Very few people live in homes. They live in tall concrete apartment buildings and use public transportation.

 

 It's been a good week. The weather is a little hard for missionary work, people don't like to come out in it. But we're keeping our spirits up. We are staying obedient and warm and working hard. I feel like this week has been a real turning point for me. As we're working I'm enjoying tracting and contacting and I'm actually understanding a lot more. I have so much more to learn, but I'm excited to be about the work. I dream about missionary work now. Crazy I know.

 

I'm so glad to hear that everyone is doing well. Josh- good luck at try-outs. I know you'll do great. I love you all, and am again unfortunately out of time, but I'll e-mail next week and then... we can call!

 

Love you,

Siostra Allen

Winter Wonderland

Hi family,

Last time I e-mailed you the weather was quite agreeable. It was chilly, but bearable. I wore a peacoat and a couple pairs of socks, that afternoon I thought it wise to buy a hat, but I still was quite warm. Well, yesterday night it started snowing. Not just a pretty dusting on the trees and window sills. No, it was a blizzard. And it kept blizzarding all day and into the night dropping at least a foot of snow on the country of Poland. It's already to the top of my boots. So now Fall is over and it is officially Winter. I will probably see snow everyday for at least the next 3 months. How's the weather in Vegas? Wait don't tell me.

The nice thing about snow is it's pretty. The empty trees are now full of snow and Sister LeFevre and I sang Christmas Carols to each other while we were tracting yesterday. This is my favorite time of year. I just can't help myself from a kind of childish wonder and awe as we put up Christmas decorations, stare at the snow, wrap presents, celebrate with family and friends. It's just such a happy time. And I love that all the happiness is centered around the Savior. I love 4th of July barbeque's and Thanksgiving feasts, independence and gratitude are amazing things to celebrate... but Christmas is celebrating that all the centuries of prophecies were fulfilled with the birth of a child who was the Christ, who fulfilled his purpose in redeeming mankind, who gave us purpose and potential in life. So I'm excited that tomorrow is officially December.

This week was full. We had a Thanksgiving feast on Thursday with the Lewis', an American family in our branch. It was some of the best food ever, and they packed our bags with leftovers, so we've eaten well all week. There was a baptism her in Warsaw, Eustace, Grant's friend. It was a beautiful baptism, and they asked me to sing, so that was fun. Amra got to come too, which was great because she got to see what it looked like and get excited about her own baptism on the 18th of December! She is such a wonderful person. I can't even imagine anyone more prepared for the gospel. One of my favorite things as a missionary is getting to hear people describe how they feel the spirit. A warm feeling in their heart, they are happy when they meet with us or are at church, things make sense. I'm so grateful I've had the blessing of teaching her.

I am so grateful to be here in Poland serving the Lord and for the many blessings and tender mercies he gives me each day. I know He is mindful of me and that this is His work. I finished the Book of Mormon today. I know it's true, even more so now than when I started it. And I imagine that testimony will grow with each other time I read it throughout my life.

I love you all. Stay warm and stay same.

Siostra Allen

P.S. The senior missionaries in the office have a blog and I know there are a couple pictures of my on there. Just so you know: Richardsinpoland.blogspot.com