Warsaw and the COLD

Metro

Me on the Metro

Metro Stop

(the letter below was actually from a week before -- Drake recorded it for me, but wasn't able to email it the week prior)

Hello family – 

I’m in Warsaw with Elder Hubbard.  Our area is a district in Warsaw called the Mokotów.  (Mokotów is densely populated and has some light industrializion, but is full of parks and beautiful areas).  

It’s really cold right now. Yesterday we were out and about trying to find people and it got down to negative 18 degrees Celcius, which is subzero temperatures Fahrenheit.  And I think that’s probably the coldest temperature I’ve ever been in my life.  It was  pretty cold.  My face was freezing off.  But thanks to all the thermals that mom sent me, I was warm.  My whole body was warm.  Just my face and my eye balls were freezing. :) 

 Last night it got super cold and we woke up this morning and we have no water.  What?  No!  So we have no water so a lot of the things don’t work, obviously.  And so just 5 minutes ago I called the landlord and asked him why and he said there was  a huge breakdown with the water.  The pipes got so cold that they either froze or they broke, so a bunch of buildings in our area don’t have any water right now.  And that stinks, literally, because we can’t take any showers, ha ha!  Hopefully they’ll take care of that pretty quickly.  So it was pretty cold yesterday. It’s not AS cold today.because IT’s a little bit more sunny, but it’s  still below freezing.  I filled up one of my milk bottles (it’s plastic)  with water and  put it out on the window sill and  then went and got it and it’s frozen solid.  So it’s below freezing out there, but a member told us yesterday that it is going to be negative 35 degrees Celcius next week, which is negative 31 degrees Fahrenheit.  That is so cold!  I don’t know what that’s going to feel like!  IT’s going to be crazy.  So we’re going to walk outside and freeze!

Oh, and today, right now it’s lunch break.  It’s about 13:30 right  now.  So 1:30 for all of you American talkers.    In Poland everything is  the 24 hour clock. So you don’t say 1:30, you say 13:30.  You don’t say we have a meeting at 6:00.  You say we have a meeting at 18:00.  It took awhile to get used to, but now it seems more normal now than the other way.

So we already went out today and walked around trying to find people and talk to people for 2 hours  We have studies in the morning from 8:00 until 11;00., and then from 11:00 we go out and work.  So we went out for 2 hours and we came back at 13:00 so we could have lunch.  So we were out for  the 2 hours and  ahhh, nobody stopped.    That’s what it’s like.  Sometimes you can go whole weeks without anyone stopping or even taking a pass-along card.  But um, it was COLD OUT THERE, so I wrapped up with 2 scarves and one of the scarves was the one that dad brought back from Germany and we got back and IT WAS FROZEN SOLID!  Just like dad had said. . . . because I think the wetness of your breath gets on it, so it got hard by the time I was home.  But now it's thawed out. 

But yep, that’s what’’s going on right now in Poland. And It’s pretty cool , literally, very cold, but it’s going to be fun.  Probably tonight, we’re have planned to have a meeting with a guy that I met on the street about a week ago.  He was holding a Lacrosse stick, so I just walked up to him and said, “What’s that?” and he said it was a lacrosse stick.  So I started talking to him and everything about about who were were and talked about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith, so we set up to meet with him a week later.  And he was holding his  helmet and I said, “What kind of helmet do you have?” and he showed it to me and it was Riddell and I told him “My dad designs helmets for that company” and he said “That’s way cool!”  So we have a meeting today. Hopefully.  I called him this morning to confirm but he didn’t answer, so I hope that he shows up.  Probably he won’t.  Probably in 1 out of 5 meetings that you set up with people on your mission, the person shows up.  :) Most of the time, they don’t actually show up.  And we call that FLAKING!  We get flaked so much. :)  Like I went once a whole week last transfer, where we got flaked 10 times.  Wow!  Yeah. 

So we hope he shows up and after that, we’ll be tracting.  Nothing much happens tracting.  But we’re asked to do it, so we do it.  I’ve only been let in once on my whole mission tracting.  And that was because we were caroling with the Sister missionaries and the sisters are  always let let in.  :)  So we’re going to be doing that tonight. In Poland, during Communist time, they built these giant block buildings that are super tall and are super HUGE and they are just packed full of people, because they are all apartments.    And we’re going to be knocking on doors and getting doors slammed in our face and it will be really fun.  :)  And it won’t be out in the cold.  So that will be our day today and then tomorrow, we have church. 

So I love you all and I hope you have a great day.  Bye!

That pointy building is Stalin's tower.
It was built by the Soviets.