Ummm. I don't speak Polish

Hello again everyone!!!

This was my first full week out in the field and boy. Do I have a lot to learn! It's fun but also slightly intimidating that there is so much for me to learn. Good stuff. Anyways, I figured I would start off this email with the fun stuff I didn't get to put in my last email because I had a rogue computer that thought it would be funny to stop working when I was about to finish.. silly English computers. It knew I was an outsider.

Quotes of the week! (from MTC)

"Umm I don't think theater is a sport. What position do you play? Peter Pan?" -MTC Teacher

"I'm going to go to a tiny Island and baptize everyone; they're going to build a bronze statue of me" -MTC Teacher

"What? Do men not say 'aww'?" -Me

"Well when? I mean, when I see cats yeah..." -One of the Elders

*After failing to jump over a desk*"See, when you do dumb stuff, you still get stuff out of it!" -Elder in my district

Alright, don't take the advice of that last one. Don't do dumb stuff kids.

English Words of the Week!

When you call someone you say "I'll ring you!" or "I'll give you a ring" Catchy slogan huh? Could be confusing if you attend BYU schools though...

When you want to stop by someone's home you say "I'll call by later!"

OH. And dinner appointments are called tea appointments. So yea, we have tea every night :) Weird haha

Funny Story!

So Sister Nelson and I are out street contacting and just talking to a few people here and there, but mostly everyone just kind of keeps walking and doesn't listen to us. Well we are about to pass this one gentleman and so we wave and say hello and he stops! Which is golden because then we get to talk to him! Did I say golden? Oh yeah, it would be golden if we could speak Polish.

But umm... I don't speak polish.

So we try to talk to him but obviously we aren't getting very far. So he show him the Book of Mormon and he just smiles so we take it as a good sign haha One thing we do as missionaries is we teach free English Classes! So we try to tell him that we offer that but he just keeps saying "No enlgish no english!" So Sister Nelson pulls out a pass along card with the website mormon.org on it and writes our number on the back along with "Free English Lessons" and hands it to him.

He looks down, back up, down, back up and then he just gets this huge smile on his face.

OH NO. So what do we do? Well this polish man obviously thinks that we just gave him our number so umm we run for it of course. So awkward.

But hey, this is missionary life! It's anything but normal haha

My Weekly Update

Now on to the good stuff!!

This week was my first full one like I've already said but it was really good. Full of little miracles and full of rain. As always. But we have seen the sun quite a bit in the past week and everyone tells me that I must have brought it with me! So that feels nice haha maybe the sun will stay longer.. and I hope it gets hotter here. because otherwise I might have to wear everything I own when it comes time for winter.

But the English countryside is incredible! We don't get to explore much but when we take the buses in between towns we get to see it :) Oh. And the buses are double-decker! So fun! But the roads are so tiny so it's a little scary sometimes.. everyone just drives wherever they want to haha

I'd have to say though that the highlight of my week was general conference last weekend. I think it really carried me through a lot of this week and it's struggles. Especially the talk by Elder David A. Bednar. He gives an analogy at the beginning of the talk about a man who has this big truck and he takes it out to go and get some wood but he ends up getting stuck with no one around to really help him. He tries and tries to get it out but eventually just goes and starts cutting some wood off the side of the road where he is at.

After loading this wood into the bed of his truck, he climbs in and tries to get going again. Much to his amazement he is able to gain traction and head home! But it wasn't until after he put the load in his truck that it was able to gain that traction and head towards home.

Missionary work is hard. Change is hard. There are a lot of things that you have to do and learn and you have no time to do it. You have this big truck that should be able to just plow right through but you find yourself stuck. But it is our loads, our challenges and our trials, that provide that traction for us to move forward. There is a lot that we have to do as missionaries, and it most certainly isn't easy work. But it provides that traction for us to move forward, to progress towards that end goal of returning to live with our Father in Heaven again and becoming a better person here in this life. It helps us to grow stronger and to find more peace and happiness in this life.

So I'm grateful for the load in my truck. Because I know that as I rely on the Lord I will be able to come out of the place I was stuck in as a better, stronger person and a more effective missionary.

I just have to try my best and the Lord will do the rest <3

I love you all and will keep you in my prayers :)

Ta Ta for now!

Love, Sister Reed