Time for Farewells / Time for new adventures! 2/22/15

With my MTC missionaries -- Elder Waskiewicz, Elder Wolfley, 
and Elder Blom before they headed home

Dear Mom -- 

My extension now begins.  Instead of going home tomorrow with my MTC group and other 4 sister missionaries, I will stay for another month.

I am going to be going around the mission with Elder Fotu training missionaries and serving in every single city (that has missionaries) for a couple of days each. That will be fun. I'll be able to meet all of the missionaries and go to all of the cities. I am most excited to go the cities that I used to serve in, especially Poznań and Bydgoszcz.

Drake with Elder Fotu on the right (Traveling Assistants)
Elder Retallick and Elder Kimball on the left (APs)

It was really really hard leaving Kraków. I gave my farewell talk yesterday. I cried. A lot. I almost got a hold of my emotions until I looked up and saw that all the members were crying too. So that made me cry more.

Today I have my last day with my fellow MTC missionaries. They leave tomorrow morning. It'll be crazy.

I hope I will have more time to email next week.

Love,

Drake

Visiting Zakopane 2/15/15

Giving a Geography lesson to all
(Poland on one side of the ridge and Slovakia on the other)

Up in the mountains with the Krakow missionaries

Dear Mom,
We are going to Zakopane today. Snow city in the mountains. Seriously no time to email. Going and doing fun things for P-Day is fun and all, but it's not fun having no time to email! Hopefully I get to catch up next week on emailing. Love you! -Drake

(a week later)

Dear Mom,

Once again, I have no time to email. One of these days I hope I will actually get some time. I have some super sweet pictures to send from Zakopane. It was the coolest P-Day of my mission. It was really fun!

Love, Drake

With Brother Pawlik for the Shelby Cobra factory tour

P.S. from Renee -- Drake still hasn't sent his pics from Zakopane.  These are all from others.  Once I get them, I'll be sure to add them on.

Multiple Mission Pictures -- end of 2014 & beginning of 2015

What do you do when you can't fit in everyone?

Take the photo in halves!

The entire Poland Warsaw Mission

Drake and Elder Garrett

Zone Training with Katowice

With the Edgrens again

Reunited with Elder Hubbard, too!

3rd Time's a Charm -- Auschwitz again. 1/19/15

Hi Mom,

We went to Auschwitz today. So I have like no time to email. I don't think people are supposed to go there more than once. It eats part of your soul. And that was my third time there. But that's what happens when you stay in one area for a year... new missionaries come and want to see things too. So yeah. I have been to lots of things in Kraków...

Auschwitz: 3

Salt Mines: 2

Kościuszki Mound: 5+

Pawlik's: 3

Ogrodzieniec Castle: 1

Wawel Castle: 5+

Rynek: 50+

Jewish Quarter: 3

Oscar Schindler's Factory: 1

Częstochowa/Jasna Góra (Black Madonna): 1

Sorry, I don't have more time to email. Things are going well. I'm still alive!!

Love,

Drake

P.S. (I already got my package! I have been sharing it with everybody!! :) )

Drake made a special request for grape Jolly Ranchers for his birthday.  I sent him a pkg. of 160 :) 

Photo of Auschwitz with the flowers: "Auschwitz-Birkenau abgebrannte Barracken" by WeEzE - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Auschwitz-Birkenau_abgebrannte_Barracken.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Auschwitz-Birkenau_abgebrannte_Barracken.jpg

New Tracting Plan in Action -- Krakow 1/05/15

Here's the scoop on the new tracting plan (written by Renee from Drake's voice recording):

In "the olden days" they would go to the giant apartment areas, and would knock on doors one by one. Half of the people wouldn't be home and the other half said they weren't interested (at least that was Drake's experience with tracting his first year and a half in Poland -- and in the winter months, they would sometimes tract for 3 or 4 hours at a time).   And I think that was his only time being asked in until this new idea

So a few weeks ago, President Edgren talked to Drake and Elder Jones about trying a new tracting plan.  (He heard about this idea from the Czech Republic mission president at a recent mission president conference).  Instead of just showing up at the apt. building unannounced, they would write up a little letter and drop them off in all the apt. mailboxes.  The letter explains who they are, the message that they'd like to share, and the time and date they'd return.  (Time being a range, since they are knocking on so many doors).  Also, I think they wrote 2 dates (like Tuesday and Thursday), so if one didn't work, the other might.

This way the people were somewhat prepared for the strangers at their door and if they were interested, but might otherwise be gone, they'd find a way to be there.

They also had a new plan to keep track of what happened at each door.  Before they would go through the building and wouldn't return unless they had an appt. (which never happened for him, but that was the idea).  So for all of the people not home, they wouldn't get another chance to hear the gospel at their door.

Drake wrote up a letter in Polish and included pictures of him and Elder Jones so they'd know who to expect (and even added some gold stars to seal the envelopes to make them look fancy :) ).   Then they passed out their letters on Wednesday night and said they'd return on Thursday and Sunday.  As before, they found 1/2 of the people at home.  

Elder Jones took a record of what happened at each door.  He said that out of about 100 doors, 60 of them opened their doors.  He says that usually they spend a lot of time at the doors trying to explain who they are.  This time, they already knew and would say, "Oh, you're the Mormon's?" and many would still decline, but they were generally more friendly about it.  He said that one nice thing about keeping the record was that they felt like they were making progress and were moving somewhere instead of just wondering.  Some said that they read the letter and would like to meet with them, but didn't have time (were about to leave or whatever).  So they were able to make appt.s to come back.  He said otherwise, they may have just said, "Sorry, we don't have time right now."

Since about 1/2 were not home that first time, they came back a second time (so many who would have been left out the way they used to do it) and they had 3 homes who wanted to set up meetings with them, which was insane to them because to get 4 appt.s in just two tries, after going a year and a half with only let in once?  He says he's still in shock when people invite them in (wonders where the hidden cameras are, etc.  :) )



Today he said that after going back to that building a third time and finishing up there, they chose another building last week and it ended up being a family building.  HE said it was super noisy walking around and you could hear kids and babies, so that was fun -- because the idea of teaching the gospel to a whole family is probably their dream.

When the knocked on the doors the next day, they said that many families (about half) opened their doors and were really nice to them, saying "thank you,"  even though many weren't interested.  Then they came to a door and saw a dad with his wife and two children standing behind him saying,  "Wejdź. Wejdź. Czekaliśmy na Ciebie!"  (or " Come on in! Come on in! We've been waiting for you!"   Once again, he went into shock as they invited them to sit on the couch, offered them something to drink -- they were so excited to get teach the whole family a lesson!

He said it was pretty funny because they came back 2 days later to go to the rest of the apts. and accidentally went to this family's apt. again (thinking it was a different floor), but they talked some more and the man invited them again and then called them a few days later and said he was talking to some friends at work about the missionaries and he was wondering if he could give their number to his co-worker's brother :) .

So they are super excited about this progress.  For a year and a half, never let in.  Before this last transfer, he was let in 2 times (and was super happy about that).  Just in this past week, they were let into a home every night that they went tracting -- 4 nights in a row!

Christmas and the Cold 12/2014

walking in the cold

Elder Jones braving it without his hood

Brrrrr!!!

Christmas morning!!

Opening the package from home

Ooooh!  Johnny's Garlic Seasoning (he was beginning to ration what came for Christmas the year before)

Yummy pasta

What's this?  Hand warmers?  Hmmm

And Taco Seasoning -- Yay!

Jasna Góra Monastery -- Visiting the Black Madonna 12/1/14

Panoramic View of  the Jasna Góra Monastery

Starszy Allen in front of the Jasna Góra Monastery

People travel from all over Europe (and especially from all over Poland) to come see the painting of the Black Madonna.  Some people in Poland firmly believe that Mary was a Polish woman. 

Here's what Wikipedia says about the monastery & painting:


 The Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa,Poland, is the most famous Polish shrine to the Virgin Mary and the country's greatest place of pilgrimage – for many its spiritual capital. The image of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa, also known as Our Lady of Częstochowa, to which miraculous powers are attributed, is Jasna Góra's most precious treasure.[1]

Sign outside the gate in many languages

Letter from a week before:

Dear Mom,

I feel bad not being able to send as long as an email in reply as you do to me!

But things are going well.

The tracting thing is going well. I will tell you more about it in my voice recording that I send next week.

Today for P-Day we went and played Squash. It's like european raquet-ball. It was interesting. The ball isn't like a raquet-ball though. It's small and not as bouncy. So that's not as fun.

Transfer calls are this saturday. I will find out where I will be for the rest of my mission. I hope I stay in Kraków. That would be super awesome. We will see, I guess.

Let's see, what else happened this week. hmm. Oh, I went on an exchange in Wrocław. That was cool. Wrocław is really pretty. I can't think of anything else super exciting that happened this week.

Oh! There was a multi-branch YSA activity here in Kraków on Saturday. YSA's came from Kielce and Katowice. It went well. It was a christmas party and it was fun.

I am sending my christmas package home tomorrow. The gifts aren't as extravagent as they were last year. They will also be unwrapped. So I will have to tell you which ones are for who.

You should start sending me the weather again each week so I can no how cold it is going to be and if it will snow.

I haven't gotten a christmas package from you yet. Did you send it already? And where did you send it to?

I love you! :)

Love,
Drake

Panoramic hoto of Częstochowa"Jasna Góra - panorama z Bastionu św. Rocha" by Jaroslaw Jankowski DG at pl.wikipedia. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jasna_G%C3%B3ra_-_panorama_z_Bastionu_%C5%9Bw._Rocha.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Jasna_G%C3%B3ra_-_panorama_z_Bastionu_%C5%9Bw._Rocha.jpg