A weekend of many great events!

This weekend was full of great activities. This blog post will be a 'pot-pour-ri' of many events. Try to follow along; and hopefully, it will make sense!

Sunday night we had 3 special visitors from Lodz ...Sister Su and Sister and Elder Tarasevich. They had a very important meeting with President Nielson. Plans have been made for a Thai translation at the Freiberg Temple, and Sister Su is going to the temple this week to receive her endowment. Leaving Tuesday morning, she needed a temple recommend from President Nielson. This great sister is so excited to go to the temple. There are two times that missionaries want to see their investigators in white, at baptism and in the temple. This shows the wonderful work Senior Couples can do in Branches.

I need to back up a day to Saturday morning. The day started at 5:30 a.m. when I had to drive President to the airport. He was attending a Priesthood Leadership Meeting being held in Vienna, Austria. How exciting to get to go to Vienna! When he came home, I asked him..."What was the city like?" President said it reminded him of Peoria, Arizona. WHAT? He couldn't remember anything and said of the 9 hours he was there, 6 was in a stake center (which was beautiful), 2.5 hours was in the airport and 30 minutes was in a taxi. He did say the meeting was tremendous. Mission Presidents, District Presidents and the Area Presidency met and the day flew by. When President Nielson comes home from these meetings, he so excited for the great work of the Lord to move forward. We love our Area Presidency and the great men that they are! Here are our Poland District Presidents, Pawlik and Dresler with Elder Erich Kopischke (our Area President).

Returning back to Warsaw Saturday night with President Dresler to very cold 7 degree weather.

While President was away I had plenty going on here in Warsaw II. The Branch held a special Teacher Development Training seminar Saturday afternoon. Above are those who participated in teaching our great teachers (and anyone else in the Branch that was interested!) how to be better gospel instructors. (LtoR): Monika, The Nettos, Brother Pew, The Picketts.

We had a great turnout.....I counted at least 30 people! This is most of them....with several 'hiding' in the back. It was truly a great night and very well planned. Thanks to all who helped! Among those attending were: Anja, Krzystof, Dominik, Dennis, Sisters Armstrong and Gorniak, Beata, The Picketts, The Staples, The Netos, Kasia, Marcin, Brat Herman, Alex, Monika, Brother Pew........and many others.

At Church today was Brother Weisenburger (Left)from Florida. (He has a son serving in the Santa Rosa California Mission. Our great friends, President Jon and Susan Bunker, are his Mission Presidents!) Also shown are Mikol and his wife, Kate, who just arrived from the States a few weeks ago. These are wonderful people and will surely bless the Church and lives of many in Poland. Welcome!

Elder Krzyminski and Dabrowski with 2 of their Investigators and Brat Herman at Church on Sunday. This is a wonderful couple who are just a delight to have with us.

Now back to Saturday......I said you would have to pay attention to follow this post! Elder Basha is busy taking care of the newest purchase in Lodz. We have had problems in Lodz renting a place with a swimming pool that would allow us to use it for baptisms. So to solve the problem, we bought our own small pool to use as needed. This branch had one a few years ago; but it was damaged so we started renting facilities with pools. Now we that have our own, our problem is solved! It will be put to good use as there is another baptism in Lodz in a couple of weeks. (The pool was set up in the Relief Society room and took Elder Basha about 3 hours to fill).

Elder Basha and Elder Szymanski with Sebastian before the baptism. This was a great day for Sebastian, the Branch and the many people who have been praying for this. Congratulations!

Now here are some faces that haven't been on the blog in awhile!!!

Remember these familiar faces? These were some of our former Assistants... Carson Garrett, Thomas Eastman and Stuart Tribe. All three were great missionaries, and I think pretty great guys to go on a date with. I can see that they have mastered planning as missionaries, and it's carried over into their social life. They look great, don't they? All six of them look great. This makes you realize that the church and the world are so much better with returned missionaries coming back with experience, wisdom and prepared to do great things. We love and miss these great men!!!!