Sweldering Heat!

August 10, 2015

Can Never Drink Enough In this Heat!

It is BLASTED HOT OVER HERE!  I never am doing this heat thing again! Even when the sun is not blazing, the humidity still clings to everything. You would think that because Europe is supposedly modern they would invest in air conditioning, NOT! Basically this week has been very very warm and sweaty. The members say it is the hottest summer in over 20 years, and might last until September, Mommy help! I seem to wander around in a sticky haze all day and no matter how much water we drink, it never quenches the suffocating fire. At the end of the day my comp and I come limping and dragging into our apartment building looking like run over wet animals, then we spend the night tossing and turning with all of the windows open and the fan on high speed 24/7. Needless to say I don't know if I am cut out to live in the tropics.

Other than the heat, we actually saw quite a jump in our work this week. It was wonderful. We did that member MTC a couple of weeks ago, and ever since then we have been working with members role playing and studying Preach My Gospel. Then we saw some really good success with our less-actives as well. Over all we had 7 less active/ active member lessons! The week before last, we had two of our less actives CALL US, and they wanted to set up to meet, which never happens. Both meetings opened the door for future opportunities. One of them said that thanks to an invitation from a member, she wants to quite working on Sunday so she can start coming to church again. Then she said that she wants to find out personally that her decision to get baptized a couple of years ago was a good one. I jumped on the opportunity in my mind and was like, we are going to meet every week and work on building that testimony, then she beat me to the punch and asked if we could meet at least once a week to discuss more. I finally feel that after working for months here that things are finally connecting yayy!

President Edgren came last week and did interviews that presented to our district about linking our weekly planning and daily planning better. It was cool because my comp and I had already been working to do exactly that and Sister Gustafson was a driving force on staying on track with our goals all week. We managed to meet and surpass most of our goals this week. The Young Singe Adult conference will be all of the YSA's in Poland, so you know what that means, Kaja is coming to Lodz heck yeah! She always ends up strengthening me. This will be the weekend before her baptism so I think it will be a good opportunity to see how she is doing.  It will be great!!We are going to be doing a tone of cooking and running around with our heads chopped off this next weekend for the YSA Conference so I will have to let you all know how it goes.
I am so grateful for the blessing of serving a mission. It has opened the way for me to build a personal relationship and with Heavenly Father, one that actually needs to keep growing stronger. This week it also hit me how much I love this country. I have had some hard bitter moments, and never felt the deep love and felt the knowledge that I am really going to miss this country and this culture. I learned a lot about Polish history this week and it has helped change my heart even more. I LOVE POLAND, AND I LOVE THESE PEOPLE. Well... most of them, sometimes I struggle with the hoolies. Obviously I have a way to go. Keep the faith, this church is true!

Love,
Siostra Benson