A few pictures, a few words

Drake didn't write much this month -- just commented on a few photos I sent to him.  But in his voice recording, he said quite a bit!  He said that they had a few days of exchanges wtih Elder Saltmarsh (below) and a Polish/New Zealand/Tongan missionary named Elder Zelezniak. (Hopefully we'll get a photo of him another day).  Elder Zelezniak grew up in New Zealand and other places, but has Polish descent.  Anyway, Drake said that he's an amazing missionary and has been on his mission for over 2 years -- he asked to extend his mission because he loves it so much.  He goes home in a just a few more weeks and Drake feels blessed to be able to get to work with him.  

He loved getting to work with Elder Saltmarsh for a day, as well.  He said that they set up a display with a scripture on the white board, and sang hymns in Polish as people passed by in the park.  I'm sure they both loved it!  

On exchanges with Elder Saltmarsh

A mini-missionary from Poland (Aleksandra) sent this photo with the following  written below:
Believe, Hope, Endure -- AWESOME MISSIONARY!

Tons of Ties and a Turtle

Me with Jan's pet turtle.

Dear Mom,

Ok! This week I actually have some time to email! so here I go! :)

As you know, I am in Kraków. It's a pretty cool city. The branch is pretty small but bigger than Poznań's. The branch president's name is Andrzej Kucia and he has been a member for about maybe 10 years. He is in his 30s, unmarried, and is a dentist! Our newest member of the ward is a 50 year old man named Jan. (Pronounced yawn) He got baptized two days before I got here. So he is the recent convert that we have been working with a lot. We meet with him almost everyday. He is absolutely obsessed with Indians. Like Native Americans. That's what got him so interested in the Book of Mormon in the first place. He is pretty cool. He paints. We went over to his house an there was a turtle walking around on the ground. It is his pet. His room is covered with American Indian stuff and paintings of Indians, that he drew. Last week, he gave us a painting of his of a shipwreck. It is now hanging in our apartment. I will send a picture.

Painting from Jan

We went to Auschwitz a week ago. I sent a voice recording about that and the guy I talked to. It was all very interesting and very surreal. It felt like I was inside a history book or in a documentary.  I think that maybe Grandpa would think that was interesting. 

When I was in Warsaw, there was a member named Marcin Gałecki. I talked about him in a voice recording once. He is the one that loves temples. When he heard that I was going to Kraków, he told me to visit his uncle Marian Lisek, who lives there. So last week, we went to his address, and right when we got there, an old lady (maybe 90 years old) was opening the gate to the driveway. We asked her if Marian lived there. She said he did. I asked her if we could visit him. She said yes and let us in. I asked her if she was Marian's wife. She said yes. We went inside and Marian wasn't home yet. But she had us sit down and made us some raspberry tea and cookies. I asked her about her family and if she had photo albums. So she got out her photo albums and showed me the pictures of her family. Then Marian got home and we talked to him. We talked to them about the Restoration, the Book of Mormon and the Plan of Salvation. They are Catholics, but don't actually believe in it. We asked them if we could come back another time. So we returned a week later, and they were home and let us in. Marian is 90 years old, and is not healthy. He thinks he is going to die soon and doesn't really care about anything anymore. So we shared with them the Plan of Salvation and testified to them of what we know. 

Marian and his wife.

I told him that I know there is a life after death. I told him that my grandma died a year ago and that I miss her so much. But that I know that I will see her again. I asked him if he would want that all to be true. He said, "Anybody would want that. But I just don't believe it." So we testified more. It turned out that they are just so old that they don't care about religion anymore and doesn't really matter to them anymore. Pretty sad. But we offered them service and told them that we may come back soon in the future to help them, check up on them, and see if there is any service we can do for them.

Zone Conference was 2 weeks ago. I got to see Elder Hubbard. That was cool. I was asked to give a special language presentation to the Zone about how to learn Polish. So I did that. Yup.

I bought frozen strawberries from the store today

So yup. That is what is going on right now. Oh! We also have an investigator named Kamil. He has been coming to our English course and he comes to church and institute. We had our first missionary meeting with him last week and taught him the First Lesson (The Restoration). It went well. He said that he will get baptized when he finds out that the Book of Mormon and the church. We committed him to read and pray. At the end of the lesson we knelt down and he said a prayer asking if the Book of Mormon is true. He wasn't in church yesterday because he was out of town. But we have a meeting set up for later this week. I translated for all 3 hours of church yesterday. Haha. After a few hours of translating your brain kind of is melted. haha. But it is really fun.

I think I am going to send a package home soon with some stuff. I have way too much extra weight. It makes transfers really hard. I have like way too many T-Shirts that I don't even wear. Oh, Elder Cieślak and Tingey actually just last week sent a package that I left in Warsaw that I didn't have time to send. So that should come soon. I don't even remember what is in it. But then I might send another package this transfer.

Guess what?  I met a guy on the bus today from Los Gatos!  Weird, right?

Alright. That's all folks! Love you!

Love,

Starszy Drake Allen

P.S. I think you will all like the voice recording today. haha. It's different than most.

Note from Renee -- In Drake's voice recording, he spent the whole time talking about his ties and which one each of us in our family would like best.  (Missionaries wear ties 6-7 days a week, so they get into their ties :) )   It was fun to hear his reasons for why we would like each of them.  And he even sent pictures to show us which he was talking about :)

Dad (his chocolate chip cookie dough tie)

Mom (because I like purple & periwinkle)

Cebre (he calls this his Candy Cane tie)

Terra (because she likes orange, & stripes)

Racer (because he likes blue and it's kind
of like Ravenclaw's tie in Harry Potter)

Lexie (the Strawberry tie)

Lexie (he couldn't decide between the 2)

James (because it looks like his favorite
video game character's shirt -- Ness)

Visit to Auschwitz

Auschwitz

Dear Family, 

The reason that I didn't get to email yesterday is because we went to Auschwitz.

I am sending a voice recording from there.

We don't have time much today to email either.

I will try to send some pictures.

But I just wanted to let you know that I am still alive!  Love you!

Love,

Elder Drake Allen

From Drake's voice recording

I'm with the missionaries today at Auschwitz.   We've been waiting for the bus for about an hour and a half.  We only have a half hour to email and probably won't even have that much time. I hope I have some time, but I probably won't have time to send a long email until next week.

Wow, I'm at one of the most historical Holocaust /World War II  sites in the world!  
We came with the elders from our district and the missionaries from Katowice district, too.  Auschwitz is right in the middle of the 2 cities.  The missionaries who are here are:   

Elder Zelezniak
Elder Taylor

Elder Finch

Elder Caskey

Sister Peterson

Sister Swenson 

Elder Anderson

Elder Saltmarsh

Elder Hubbard and

Alexandra (a member from Warsaw on a mini-mission with the sisters in Krakow).

This is Camp #1 --  Auschwitz is the German term for the Polish village Oświęcim, (pronounced Ohsh vien' sheem) that the German's came to and created this prison camp.  Oświęcim was a little village before it was a concentration camp.  There is still a town there.  



We were waiting here outside the gate  at the bus stop after our tour of Auschwitz.  This man walked up and I started talking to him. I talked to a this man who was maybe in his 80s who is from Poland -- and I talked to him about the gospel and about the Book of Mormon and taught him and gave him a Book of Mormon and got his number and stuff.  And he actually lives here in Oświęcim in the little town here.  He was a little kid during WWII and he was alive while everything was going on while this was a current concentration and extermination camp.  I said "Wait, you were here  and were just a little kid when they were here and were killing all of those Jews?"  which is crazy -- And he said, "Yep."   

And he told me that actually took away his uncle and his uncle lived in the camp for 3 months and every now and then as the Nazis were marching,  they would gather up 10 people and would place them against the wall and would shoot them.  And his uncle got taken away when he was just 5 years old and was taken to the concentration camp and was shot.  The man's name was John.    We saw that Execution wall and I'll send you a picture of that.

Execution Wall 

About the concentration camp and talking to that man . The most interesting thing about it . It's such a privilege because in 10 years or 15 years or whatever.  All of those people who were alive as teenagers or even children during WWII won't be alive anymore.  You won't be able to hear those stories  I've had the opportunity to meet so many people on the street or  meet with old people in their homes homes and talk to them about what it was like during WWII. It's so wonderful that I got to come to Poland while these people with such a rich history are still alive and are able to relate their stories.  It's way cool.

I met a lady I remember in Bydgoszcz named Badabada   and she told us a story about how  here in Poland, the Nazi's took away her dad and blinded and starved him.  And he somehow was able to come back.  It's a way cool historical experience.  It's a once in a life time experience to be here in Poland, such a historical place.

Especially in Krakow.  There are so many places to go and see.  They have Auschwitz and the Wawel Castle and Oscar Schindler's factory, what the Schindler's List movie is all about and tons of stuff like that.   

The bus is coming, it's time to go.  

Bye!

First week in Kraków

Kraków

The view from our apartment

Dear Family,

I am now in Kraków and am serving with Starszy Taylor.  He is from Texas.  I am continuing his training, which is really fun.

My new companion -- Elder Taylor

I will get more pictures of the inner city (the pretty part) this week.  I have been in the City Center, which is the most beautiful part of Kraków. 

But I didn't have my camera with me.

City Center in Kraków found online

Ok! I have to go! But I promise to email you a long email next week! It was weird today because Elder Taylor had to go to the dentist (who is a member of the church here, which is convenient!)   I will probably have more time next week.

I hope you enjoy the recording and the pictures though! Love you! :)

Love,

Elder Drake Allen

P.S. from Renee -- Drake sent us a voice recording of him and Elder Taylor walking on the street to the bus  on their way to the dentist.   We got to hear him greet people on the street and he taught us a few bits of Polish:

Pronouncing Kraków -- not even CLOSE to how I was saying it --  First, there's a soft roll of that "r" (not sure how to write that phonetically). But he says (and this A is a soft "a" that almost turns into an ow as in owl) -- KRA-koof (with the oooo being more delicate and European sounding than we use it).

He also said the missionaries just abbreviate Katowice (Cat-oh-WEETZ-ah) to Kato (Cat-oh), not to be confused with the mean guy in the Hunger Games 

And I just learned a Polish slang word -- not sure how it's spelled.  For "in other words" or "aka," they often say "chili" even in the of their English sentences -- Fun to learn these things that are part of their daily lives.

And the greeting on the street that we heard him say over and over  is " dzień dobry" which he said directly translated means  "Day good" (or "Good day!")  

The first word is said just like the name Jane (like Tarzan and Jane).  And the last part is Doe (as in Doe, a deer) and the "bry" is like brick without the "ck"  (These are all the visuals or helps that Drake gave us -- I'm sure I would have forgotten seconds later without them!)  And the intonation is that the Jane is higher, the Doe is lower and the brih slightly back up.

So all together now -- for hello -- they say -- Jane Doe brih (or Dzień dobry if you feel confident in your Polish!)

Headed to Kraków

My new grey suitI used the money that I got from selling my other suit that I bought in Bydgoszcz that was too big to Elder Hubbard

So, today we are on emailing a lot earlier and for not as long because I am leaving Warsaw today on a train!!!

I am being transferred!  Elder Hubbard and I thought we'd be together for 14 weeks.  This was going to be a longer transfer, with a few mini-transfers at 7 weeks.  We thought we were safe since we'd just gotten together.  But I guess not!  

I am going to a city called Kraków!

It's in southern Poland and is one of the oldest cities in the country.  It is a old castle medieval city with legends of knights and kings and dragons and stuff. Way cool, right!  

Apparently it is also the most beautiful city in Poland and some say in all of Europe!  So that will be cool.   I think Robyn Hickerson and Roger Kaspar have both been to Kraków.

I am sad to be split up with Elder Hubbard though.  It was a SUPER fun transfer because we got along so well!   I am being sent to Kraków to open up a new area and continuing the training of a Greenie named Elder Taylor from Texas. He has only been in the country for 7 weeks. It's going to be fun!  I like having trainees for companions because I get to teach them Polish! :) which is way fun.  Elder Hubbard will be going to Katowice.

For Valentines day, Elder Hubbard's girlfriend sent him a package. In it were these two matching ties. So we wore them on Valentine's Day! :)

I went ice-skating for the first time in my life this week! We did that for culture night. We got special permission from the mission president because I think that ice-skating may technically be counted as an extreme winter sport according to the White Handbook. But it was fun! It was pretty hard at first. I don't have very good balance. haha.

They are kicking us out of the library.

I am leaving to Kraków today on a 3 hour train ride!

Love you

Elder Drake Allen

Eating Foo-Foo at Dennis's House (from the Congo -- and nope!  We didn't have to eat any dried caterpillars)

P.S.  from Renee -- Here are some photos from Maciej's baptism -- the man that Starszy Allen handed a mormon.org card to on the street just before New Year's Day and got to teach briefly before he left Poznán:  

Look at that smile on Elder Peacock's face!

The Legend of Adam and much more.

Hi mom,

I hope you all like the voice recording that I sent this week. It is a lot longer than the last one! :) Did you listen to the last one during FHE last week? Are you going to do that again today?

We had a good week this week. The snow is all melted. But it is rainy today. But it says in the weather forecast you sent me that it is supposed to dip super cold again this week and then snow this weekend! That is insane!

Weird.

(Note from Renee -- I accidentally saved the 10 day forecast incorrectly and sent him the forecast for 2 weeks ago, so the temperature was actually going to stay in the mid-30s.  Didn't mean to give him a scare!  :) )

Today, we are going to go visit a member who lives on the outskirts of Warsaw for P-Day. His name is Dennis and is from the Congo. He is super funny. We have to take a train to get there. Elder Hubbard has been there before and he said that it is super fun. He makes a weird food he calls "Foo-foo" which is like some sort of porridge or something. I realized that I have no idea how to spell porridge. hmmm. Let me know how that it is supposed to be spelled.

Little does Drake know that Elder Stockford's mom posted a few weeks ago that her son went to the Congo member's house and was fed Foo-Foo and dried caterpillars!

I hope you guys have a good week this week. We have Zone Training. Oh, I think I am going to sell the suit that I bought in Bydgoszcz to Elder Hubbard. It fits him way better and is too big on me. So I will use that money to buy an even better suit. Yay! :)

I’m happy to be here everybody.  The language is fun. It’s always a challenge, which I like! 

Love,

Elder Drake Allen

Hair Cut

My hair is getting kind of long.  So we’re going to be cutting our own hair tonight, I think.  So right now, I think Elder Hubbard is in the bathroom, cutting his own hair, then I’m going to do my hair (♪♫ dom, dom, dom DOM! ♪♫) so it’s probably going to be a lot shorter because right now it’s really long and shaggy which is kind of  funny to think because this was super short comparatively to when I was back home and it was a LOT longer.  So it’s kind of weird, probably to think that I think this is long.  Okay, it’s not SUPER long, but it’s long for a missionary. I can hear the buzzer, shaver, clipper thing going on in the other room! 

Lots of milk, like always.  Chocolate milk, too!

                                                                 Adam’s Ties

Oh, I went to Adam’s this week.  So . . . (deep echo-ey voice)  “The Legend of Adam!”  So, Adam is a guy, is a man in Poland who used to be an investigator of the church and met with the missionaries and everything, and even had a baptismal date once, but since then, he doesn’t meet with missionaries. But, he owns a tie company, a tie store called Collection Adam’s.  And they’re SUPER, SUPER good ties.  And since he likes missionaries so much, He has his warehouse type store in Warsaw and on P-days, he lets missionaries come there and you get to go through the ties.  And there are TONS and TONs of ties of all patterns, shapes and color and everything, it’s crazy and he sells them to us for at cost.  So they only cost 27 zlotys each, so that’s like $9 for a super, super good tie.  But then at the end, you get to go to this box filled with this is skaza, which in Polish means Flaw.  So they just have a tiny, little flaw in them, and so he can’t sell them.  So he gives them to us for free.  So as many ties as you buy, you get to take that many skazas.  But because we had to go buy a bunch of ties for the Sheleys because they go home this week, we got to take a whole bunch of extra skazas.  So I went there and I bought 6 ties and I got 10 skazas.  A lot of them, you can’t even find where the skaza is, so you get a perfectly good tie for free.   So I got 16 ties total, which puts them at an average cost of 16 zlotys each, which is only $3.  So I got 16 SUPER super awesome nice ties that are way European looking and skinny and nice, and good material, some silk ones, too – all for just $3 each.  That’s pretty good!  

I've been teaching Elder Hubbard to play the ukulele.  He is really fast at learning the ukulele because he already has musical talent and plays the piano really well.

A little tribute to the Beatle's 50th anniversary 
of coming to the USA

Okay, maybe it's more like Elvis

P.S. on Maciej from Drake's area in Poznan.  See initial posts if you missed them -- here, here and here.  

Drake's former companion, Elder Peacock wrote this to his family:

This week for me was interesting. We weren't able to do a whole lot of contacting because we had to find a pool to be able to baptize Maciej. It has been quite an adventure trying to get something to work, but I think we have it all worked out now. Maciej has his interview with the Zone Leaders tomorrow and then he will be baptized on Saturday, confirmed on Sunday, receive the priesthood on Sunday, and bear his testimony in church. So, he has a big week. 

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.