Serving in Hel!

Sister Kuchar and I reunited at Zone Conference in Poznan

My companion Sister Montesinos, myself and Elder Jourdan at a restaurant in Hel

My companion and I at Port Hel

We're in Hel (beautiful little town on a peninsula an hour or so from Gdansk by car) And that's a member in Gdansk Branch who took us out there for our culture day. Waldyk (I think that's how to spell it)

This past week has been filled with a lot of new experiences! I'll start of with yesterday (while it's fresh in my memory). So yesterday we had District Conference in Bydgoszcz (instead of the normal Sacrament Meeting at Gdansk chapel). So we woke up early (as usual) and took an approx 2-hour train ride and 4 of us Gdansk missionaries walked from the station to the Bydgoszcz chapel. It was really nice seeing some of the members and other missionaries from Gdansk, Bydgoszcz and Poznan (and maybe someone from Szczecin came too?) and then an Austrian guy walked in the chapel (he's currently being taught by some Elders in Bydgoszcz). So I was of course super excited to speak German, so we were talking for a while but then the conference was starting so we all sat down. The conference was super spiritual for me, and I just love being able to see Polish people bearing their testimonies and uplifting eachother as members in this relatively small district. I was thinking about how many people come to stake conference back in Hebersham (a crazy amount in comparison to the maybe 50 people that came yesterday) and how I would love to see Poland have stakes of that size one day. Poland doesn't have any stakes yet, but I have a lot of hope to one day see a temple here :) I would do anything to be at the opening day for that! So after the conference, I found the Austrian man again, and we had a pretty cool conversation just about what he's doing in Poland, and what Austria is like (and he complimented me on my German which was nice!), so then after our conversation, I went to some other members and tried to speak Polish with them and it was so bad! Oh man, I forgot how to say the simplest of things in Polish and it was so embarrassing! Well I managed to speak to one member who knows the Irelands in Sydney, and she was so excited that I know them. She said she loves them a lot, and it made me so happy to think that this couple who were here a few years ago, are still making an impact on people's lives, and I'm grateful that they were able to be such an obvious help to the members here in Poland.

This past week we also had Zone Conference (for the missionaries). We went down to Poznan (a beautiful city!) and received training from our Mission President and his assistants. It was so cool to see Sister Kuchar again (she was in my MTC group and is now serving in Szczecin) and we just had the most awesome time catching up and discussing our common problems being new missionaries in the field haha. It's nice to have someone who just understands and especially when they're such a great friend! Oh, the train ride over to the conference was pretty cool too- I was playing my guitar for a lot of the way (I made sure not to be annoying I promise!) and I played a Polish patriotic song called "Zeby Polska byla Polska" and there was one other man in our carriage (with us 4 missionaries) and he was singing and tapping his foot as I played that song, so that was super cool!

On Saturday, we decided to take our "culture night" (which was sort of more of a "culture day" in our case), which is when once every transfer (9 weeks), we get to do something culture-y for a few hours and have fun :). So our district got an invitation from Waldyk, a member in Gdansk, to come with him to Hel (a really pretty coastal town a couple of hours drive away). So that was a great experience, and he even bought us lunch (very nice of him!) and we got to walk alongside the coast and look out at all the boats and just have good conversations with each other. The members here are so awesome. It was also pretty funny going to Hel, just because of it's name I've got to say! haha, and it's probably even more funny, because it's sometimes a curse word for Americans (I have to keep refraining from using certain words that are totally fine in Australia but that are NOT in America hahah you know what I mean!) all good, so we had a blast!

Well, I've got to go now, man there's so much more I could tell you about but I've run out of time! I guess I can tell you all funny stories when I come home in 15 months (ah I've been here for a month already!) but thanks for reading my nonsense today ;) I love you so much :)

Siostra Grgich