Dear Family, Friends, and Interested Readers:
This week in Poland has been absolutely incredible. Let me just tell
you! Elder Blom and I have worked super hard, contacted people for who even
knows how many hours, and seen miracles like no other this week. As always, I'll
start from the beginning.
This week we had zone conference here in Kielce. The Elders in the
zone and the Sister Training Leader came down and spent a day with us. We had a
meeting where we read the dedicatory prayer for Poland, among other things. Some
of the promises in that prayer are absolutely incredible. The work here in
Poland is definitely difficult, but incredibly worth it! We then had a testimony
meeting with all of the Elders from the surrounding cities. The Spirit was super
strong and we were all uplifted throughout the meeting. There are really some
great Elders in the zone that are really good examples to me!
During the testimony meeting, I bore my testimony of the Atonement, and
that we can turn to the Lord in our challenges and our tribulations, and that He
will carry us through and help us to be better. I talked about how challenging
Poland missionary work is, and even made the mistake of saying how people don't
just exactly come up to us and ask us to be baptized here... but that we
actually get shut down a lot. The Lord sure corrected me on that one. A few days
later, Elder Blom and I were contacting down a side-street on Sienkiewicza. We
weren't having much success, until a man rode up on a bike and told us that he
was coming to sacrament meeting on Sunday and would like to join our
church...... LIKE WHAT?? Yeah, Christ is leading this work, and is VERY aware of
each and every one of us. That was such a testimony builder for me! *sidenote:
He didn't actually come to church, so Elder Blom and I are calling him tonight
to check up on him.*
Another miracle we saw this week was when we were talking to an 18
year old kid named Macze. We contacted him on Sienkiewicza and he was super
interested in our message. Elder Blom was doing most of the talking since I
wasn't exactly understanding a ton of what he was saying, and then at the end of
the conversation, I felt myself bearing testimony of the truthfulness of the
Book of Mormon, that I KNOW that it's true, and that if he will read it and
ponder on it and pray about it, that God would answer his prayers. The Spirit
was totally guiding me, and my Polish in that instant was absolutely fantastic.
It was a blessing from the Lord and I am so grateful! We are setting up a
meeting with him tonight for sometime this week and I am so excited!
Another huge miracle: We teach weekly English classes in the chapel on
Wednesdays. We pass out flyers, and then when people come, we teach them English
and share a brief spiritual thought at the end. Two men came to our beginners
English class-which is fantastic, because Kielce REALLY needs a Priesthood
holder and a family in the Church... like badly. Kielce is known as a female
town, because like everyone is a female. But they came and we taught them
English, and then Elder Blom shared a spiritual thought at the end. One of the
men was an absolute genius. He was one of those guys who was fantastic at
physics and literature and whatever, and he was just brilliant-I found that out
when teaching him that night. But he absolutely loves reading, and we gave him a
Book of Mormon to read if he wanted to. He ate it up. He'll have that thing read
by this Wednesday is my guess. But Elder Blom was talking to the other man, and
this man was watching me without trying to be noticed. I pulled out my Book of
Mormon to Moroni 10, and started reading. He slyly tried to open up to where I
was. I told him I loved verses 3-5, so he read them, and then I was able to bear
my testimony of this, and my Book of Mormon conversion story, and promised him
that if he would read it, ponder it, and follow those verses, that he would
receive a witness that the Book of Mormon is true. It was amazing, and I'm so
excited to talk to him on Wednesday to find out what became of it!
Elder Blom and I have a really good time together- and we kind of have
to, or else the work gets a little depressing with all of the denial and
blasphemies and such... so we crack jokes and talk and sing and do everything we
can to make missionary work fun, as well. I made a goal to smile after every
contact, good or bad, as a way of keeping myself positive and uplifting rather
than down in the dumps. It's really been working, and I am grateful to the Lord
for giving me the thought earlier in the week! Elder Blom and I also get really
creative with our cooking... last night we tried putting curry powder in our
spaghetti sauce.... Don't try that at home. It's honestly terrible, but we were
so hungry we ate it anyways.
I know that the Lord is leading His work here, in Kielce. Elder Blom,
me, Elder Torres, and Elder White are the only Elders in the whole city, and we
are being tremendously blessed. We made goals at the beginning of the week for
how many lessons we wanted to have, and how many Book of Mormons we wanted to
give out. This week, we smashed our goals, and it was nothing we did
differently. The Lord blessed us so much. This last week, we had 17 total
lessons, and gave out 12 Book of Mormons. Tell me that isn't a miracle. I'm so
grateful!
The Church is True! Missionary work is hard, but it is SO worth it! I
love you all back home, keep doing good things! Love you,
Elder Quackenbush
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| Elder's White, Torres, Quackenbush and Blom |
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| Sienkiewicza |
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