Hejka! Our first week in Poznań has been a blast!!! We’ve been super busy teaching several awesome friends (I promise I’ll write more about them next week!) 🙂

Cool experience this week:

Since all three of us Sisters are new to the city, we’re still finding our way around.  On the way to visit a member—Bożena, we knocked on the wrong door and met a man named Joseph who asked if we could provide him address information so he could come to Church!  It all worked out a little bit too perfectly to be a coincidence!

I want to share a favorite poem of mine that I was reminded of this week:

Good timber does not grow with ease:

The stronger wind, the stronger trees;

 The further sky, the greater length;

 The more the storm, the more the strength.

 By sun and cold, by rain and snow,

In trees and men good timbers grow.

Life isn’t easy – but our Father in Heaven gives us trial and challenges so that we can learn and grow – and the hard things we do make us stronger!

General Conference is this coming weekend!  Twice a year we have the awesome opportunity to listen to a living Prophet and 12 apostles and it is worth it listening to them!!!  Last conference, I made a list of personal questions that I was hoping to find answers to; and EVERY single one was answered as I watched conference!  I know that when we bring our questions to Conference we WILL hear the answers we need – whether by direct words from the speakers or inspirations from the Spirit!

You can watch General conference live at https://www.lds.org on Saturday and Sunday, March 6th & 7th, or go online anytime and watch afterwards 🙂

I love you all!  I hope you have a wonderful week!!!

xoxo,

Siostra Baldwin

 

Hey friends and family! 🙂

I have just a quick couple of minutes to email! I got transferred to Poznań, and I’m going to be a Senior Training Leader again serving in a TRIO with Siostra Aramaki and Siostra Gornichec 🙂 After a 7 1/2 hours of trains today I arrived in Poznań safe and sound and I’m so excited to be here!!!

A quote I heard this week and absolutely loved-

“I believe in Christ like I believe in the sun- not because I can see it, but by it I can see everything else.” – C. S. Lewis

Like we read so many times in the scriptures, Christ is the Light of the World! Because of Him, we can have hope. Because of Him, we can have JOY! He lived and He died for us, and because of Him we can live again. I am so incredibly grateful for the Atonement of Jesus Christ because it impacts me every single day and brings me such peace. I am so grateful to be a missionary here and I am grateful for the opportunity to share this beautiful message! 

I love you all! I hope you have a wonderful week!!!

Siostra Baldwin

pics:

-Views from Kazimierz!

-The Lublin District 🙂

-Marlena! She is AMAZING!

-The Vistula River

Hej cześć everyone! It’s been an awesome action packed 2 weeks! 🙂

A couple highlights:

-We were back in Warsaw this last weekend for our District Conference, when all the members in the cities around Warsaw gather together for one big meeting. It was so awesome to see everyone 🙂

– There was a baptism after conference! It was an absolutely beautiful experience. It is such an amazing blessing to be able to be baptized under the same power and authority in which Christ was baptized!!

– Dzień Kobiet! In Poland they celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8th and while we were at the dom pomocy that morning, a bunch of cute elementary aged kids came and gave us all cards 🙂 It was adorable!

-CULTURE NIGHT!!!

For culture night we went to the Lublin Castle and toured the museum inside, including the beautiful chapel!

Yesterday I gave a talk in church on one of my favorite subjects: God’s love for us! One of my favorite quotes by Elder Uchdorf is:

“And while we may look at the vast expanse of the universe and say, “What is man in comparison to the glory of creation?” God Himself said we are the reason He created the universe! His work and glory—the purpose for this magnificent universe—is to save and exalt mankind.  In other words, the vast expanse of eternity, the glories and mysteries of infinite space and time are all built for the benefit of ordinary mortals like you and me. Our Heavenly Father created the universe that we might reach our potential as His sons and daughters.

This is a paradox of man: compared to God, man is nothing; yet we are everything to God. While against the backdrop of infinite creation we may appear to be nothing, we have a spark of eternal fire burning within our breast. We have the incomprehensible promise of exaltation—worlds without end—within our grasp. And it is God’s great desire to help us reach it.”

The same Heavenly Father who created the universe created us- and He loves us SO MUCH, knows us so individually, and wants the very best for us. His work and his glory is for us to have eternal life with him! I can’t even express how incredibly grateful I am for that. I am so grateful for this gospel and for the incredible opportunity to be in Poland sharing a message I love!

I love you all! I hope you have a wonderful week!!!

xoxo,

Siostra Baldwin

 pics:

– reunited with Siostra Jones!! love her!!!

– the siostry @ mlc!!

–  The Lublin members and all the missionaries who have served in Lublin at District Conference 🙂

– The Lublin chapel!

Hej Cześć friends and family!

So, as many of you have probably heard by now, missionaries can skype their families every week now. I promise I’ll try to to keep emailing every week though, but if these emails get any shorter you know why! 🙂

This week at the Dom Pomocy, we taught everyone how to sing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”.  It was so much fun! I came up with a quick arrangement on the piano, we taught everyone the words, and then we all sang together. Everyone is learning English so they pronounced it “twinkie twinkie” and it was the funniest thing! Everyone absolutely loved it and we can’t wait to go back next week! They asked us to teach them some more songs so they can have a concert soon!

Another big day this week: This past Thursday was tłusty czwartek, aka Fat Thursday, the day before Lent.  Everyone eats a ton of Polish donuts called Pączki and a lot of people choose pączki as their thing to give up. I think missionaries celebrate harder than the Polish people! We had a North zone vs Warsaw zone vs South zone competition to see who could eat the most donuts… and the Warsaw Zone came in dead last hahahah! I couldn’t eat more than 2 at a time, but there was one Elder in the North Zone who ate 33 donuts! CRAZY!

And this week we had exchanges!!! Basically since Siostra Jenkins and I are the STLs, or “Sister Training Leaders” for the Warsaw zone, we got to host the Łódż sisters in Lublin and spend a day learning new ways to do missionary work from each other! It was AWESOME! I learned so much from them.

Something I’ve been thinking about this week:

Sometimes, actually a lot of the time, missionary work is hard! Not everyone wants to listen to our message, and sometimes it’s kind of crazy to think that the Lord would want me, a 19-year old from Texas to share this Gospel with the people in Poland. This week, I reread one of my favorite passages in Jeremiah 1:5-8:

“Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.  Then said I, Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child.  But the Lord said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak.  Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord.”

Yes, I’m inexperienced. And yes, I am young! But recently I’ve been recognizing more and more that the Lord is there with me every single step of the way. From learning Polish, to knowing how to answer the hard questions, He helps me overcome my inexperience and my doubts. We never have to be afraid because HE is with us! I testify of this!

I love you all!! Kocham was!

Siostra Baldwin💙

The top picture is Zamek Lubelski (The Lublin Castle!)

Hej Cześć!!!!

Well, it’s been an awesome week! Sister Jenkins feeling happy and healthy again, the sun came out this week, and overall it’s been a great week to be in Lublin! This is going to be a shorter email because I don’t have a lot of time, but I just wanted to share some of the people and experiences I’m so grateful for this week! 

The other night we were out inviting people to the English class we teach! We met the sweetest girl, Inna. She absolutely LOVED that we teach English and she had talked with missionaries before back in Ukraine! She happened to be holding a balloon animal and she GAVE IT TO US when she said goodbye(but not before promising to come to our English class! 🙂 It was so funny and we had to get a picture!

And this week Marlena, a member in the Lublin branch had us over for dinner! She is absolutely one of the coolest people I’ve ever met! She made us delicious food and then showed us pictures of her recent trip to Israel. And then after dinner, she showed us her motorcycle!!! SO COOL!

 Siostra Baldwin

Cześć! Jak tam?!

So the beginning of this week, we had a leadership training meeting in Warsaw, so we got to take a 4 hour train, sleep over in Warsaw, and go to the meeting the next day… BUT once we were in Warsaw, Siostra Jenkins was feeling too sick to go, so the morning of the meeting we ended up having a temporary exchange and I got to go with Siostra Johnson and it was so fun!!

Once we got back to Lublin, Siostra Jenkins was still feeling way sick so we went to the doctor and she found out she has bronchitis and we had to stay in the apartment until she wasn’t contagious anymore… long story short, we’ve been in our apartment for 4 days straight! While she’s been resting, I’ve stayed busy with a lot of scripture study, practicing hymns on the ukulele,  reading Jesus the Christ (I love that book!), and SO MANY hours of language study… but hey, I’m a few steps closer to being a Polish master! 😉  The last couple days have been a kind of weird change of pace, and it makes me appreciate getting to go out and talk to people about the gospel that much more! One more exciting thing this week: as of tomorrow, I’m finished being trained!

Yesterday I was practicing “Come thou Fount of Every Blessing.” The lyrics of the first verse read,

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace
Streams of mercy, never ceasing
Call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet
Sung by flaming tongues above
Praise the mount, I’m fixed upon it
Mount of Thy redeeming love

I especially love the last couple of lines! They remind me a lot of one of my favorite scriptures in Helaman:

“12 And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind,  yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation   whereon if men build they cannot fall.” (Helaman 5:12)

When we make Christ our mount, our rock, and our foundation, we can find comfort and strength to overcome our challenges. He loves and cares so deeply about each one of us, and He WILL help us succeed!

I am so grateful for this gospel. I hope you have a wonderful week! Kocham was!

Siostra Baldwin

pics:

1. The warsaw city skyline
2. Surprise exchange!
3. Reunited with Siostra Aramaki in Warsaw 🙂

This week was another good one! 

We have a great friend named Janusz who works at a dom pomocy where elderly people and disabled adults live. He’s an artist, and every week he hosts an art activity for the people who live at the dom pomocy, and on Friday, we got to help! We went to an art gallery here and we spent the morning helping with the art project of the day! I made a new friend, Anna, and together we made several pieces of art. It was an awesome experience!

During a finding activity this week we were talking to people on the street about the Book of Mormon 21 day challenge. Basically it’s an awesome challenge to come closer to Christ by reading the Book of Mormon and finding answers to questions like, “How can I find joy?” and ,” How does God communicate with us today?”. I met the sweetest lady, Ania. She read through the questions of the challenge and agreed with everything she read, so she asked me to tell her more about the Book of Mormon. I explained what it was, and then I opened the Book of Mormon up to 3rd Nephi 11, where Christ visits the Americas! She thought that passage was beautiful!  I testified to her that it is the word of God and that I have been able to find so many answers to personal questions by reading it. She ended up accepting a Book of Mormon and the challenge! 

Funniest thing this week: 

We’ve started a service night here in Lublin, and to advertise it we came up with an ulotki(flyer) design and decided to have 3000 printed as a trial run. When the Elders went to pick up the ulotki at the print shop, they realized that they hadn’t printed 3000 ulotki… they had printed 30,000!! We have a lot more than we anticipated, but I guess our service night is going to be that much more successful haha! 

I am so grateful to be a missionary!! The Lord loves us so much!! This gospel brings me so much JOY! It is so true! 

I hope you have a wonderful week! I love you all!! Kocham was! 

Siostra Baldwin

elizabethinpoland.wordpress.com   

To find out more about the Book of Mormon Challenge: https://www.lds.org.uk/the-book-of-mormon 

pics:

1. The Lublin Dystrykt (with our portraits by Sister Jenkins!)

2. Anna and I at the Art Gallery

3. Game night with Sylwia 🙂

4. 30,000 ulotki!

On Monday we went to Auschwitz! It was such a hard and sad experience but I’m so glad I got to go! I’m going to be writing more on the trip later, hopefully next week!

Transfer calls came the next Saturday, and I was definitely expecting to stay in Katowice for another 9 weeks with Sister Harmon (usually trainees finish their training with their first trainer), but I found out I was moving to LUBLIN, and Sister Harmon is training again in Katowice! The whole weekend was pretty sad – I said goodbye to Ola, Sandra, Agnieszka, Patryk, Łukasz, and several of our other friends who made Katowice so wonderful for me. Bardzo smutno mi!!!

On Monday morning Sister Harmon and I took a bus to Kraków and from there took a train to Warsaw, where I met up with Sister Jenkins, my new companion.  Sister Jenkins has been serving in Warsaw the last several transfers! We took a 4 1/2 hour train to Lublin and the Lublin Elders picked us up at the train station and helped us move all our luggage to the new apartment. Our new apartment is absolutely beautiful!

On Sunday we got to meet the members of the Lublin branch and they are AMAZING!! Siostra Jenkins and I bore our testimonies and introduced ourselves in sacrament meeting, and I was the pianist for the meeting. We also taught Relief Society and it was a BLAST! The sisters in the Lublin branch are fantastic!

The funniest experience this week:

We were out on the street inviting people to our free English class when we met the coolest guy from India named Sing! He’s here in Poland for work and he lives in a village outside of Lublin. He loved hearing what we do and he was so interested in our English class! It was so funny because halfway through the conversation, his boss facetimed him, and all of a sudden Sister Jenkins and I were talking to his boss too through facetime! We introduced ourselves as missionaries and he said that he had actually met missionaries before when he lived in England!! After the facetime, Sing was so excited that he had met us and invited us back to his village for dinner! We couldn’t go, but the Elders got his number and hopefully he’ll be in English this week!

One big thing I learned this week:

Change is never easy!  But through it all, we need to have FAITH!! I love how our friend, Bogdana, put it this week in Relief Society. We were discussing Elder Rasband’s last General conference talk, Be not Troubled and she said,  “Faith is the ANTIDOTE to fear!” And that’s so literally true! We don’t always know what’s up ahead or even what will happen the next day, but we can find comfort and strength when we turn to the Lord!

Be not Troubled (Read it!!!) https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2018/10/be-not-troubled?lang=eng

 I love you all!! Kocham was!

 Siostra Baldwin

Letters/packages:

Kościół Jezusa Chrystusa świętych w Dniach Ostatnich
ul. Wiernicza 135
02-952 Warszawa Poland

 pics:

1. English contacting in Lublin!

2. Goodbyes (feat. our matching scarves!)

3 & 4 The CASTLE we visited this week!

5.  SISTER JENKINS & NATALIA! ❤

Email 1

I might not have much time to email today (I have 10 minutes now) but I’m getting transferred to LUBLIN!!! EAST POLAND!!! I am so sad but excited. I truly love Katowice and my companion Siostra Harmon but I am excited for Lublin!

Lublin has been closed to the sisters for a few months so Sister Jenkins (my new companion) and I will be reopening the city to sisters and joining a pair of Elders (one of which, Elder Long, I knew at BYU!) We are going to be the Sister Training Leaders (STLs for the Warsaw Zone, which means I get to go to all the leadership zone meetings!) I might have more time to email later, but if I don’t, know that I love you so much, I am praying for you, and I KNOW this gospel is true!!

Email 2:  Sister Jenkins and I arrived in Lublin safely (after 6 and a half HOURS of trains!) and the elders picked us up from the train station, gave us our phone for Lublin, and helped us take our luggage to our apartment. Our apartment is brand new and so nice!

We are having a huge influx of missionaries in the mission currently and so right now every single sister is training or being trained. I will be a trainee for 3 more weeks, and the I’ll be a “normal” missionary!  Sister Jenkins is amazing! We like all the same books and the same music. She has been serving in Warsaw for the last 6 months, and I’m so excited to see what I will learn from her. 

all my love,

Siostra Baldwin 💙

 

This morning we went to Auschwitz and it was an amazing but hard experience.  I stood on the ground where over a million people were murdered not too long ago.  It was unforgettable.  I’m going to work on writing my thoughts down but it will take more time than I have now and I want to give it the reverence it deserves. Siostra Harmon and I both went on the guided tour.

Transfers are next Monday so I’ll find out if I’m getting a new companion or moving to a new city then!  I hope I stay in Katowice with Sister Harmon for one more transfer but we’ll see!!!!