February 28, p-day

Today we decided to go visit the aquarium in Gdynia, but it wasn't open.

The sign on the door said that it would be open from 10 am till 5 pm.

Maybe that's during the tourist season.  We'll try again when the weather warms up.

The east wind was blowing so cold that I stayed in the car most of the time

to take these few pictures in front of the aquarium.

Some day we'll find out what this represents.....

...and who the man in this statue is.

As you can see in the background, the bay was frozen solid.

Good bye to our branch president

We had a farewell lunch after church on Februaty 27.

Our branch president Marcin Pawelchyk is moving to England. :(

Janina (standing in the back) cooked delicious Polish

white barszcz for us.  After the meal we were all so full 

that it  felt as if we'd had a big Christmas dinner.

Here you can sort of see Pres. Pawelchyk in the back

playing with his baby.

Pres. Nielson will be in Gdansk on March 13th to

reorganize the branch presidency or to call a new

president for the branch.

President Pawelchyk and his wife Gabrysia.

Their baby was born on September 1, 2010.

I need to get a picture of them with the baby.

This month's transfers

No changes for Gdansk. Yeah!!  We get to keep Elder Plumb, our pianist.

We also get to keep Elder Siebert, the only one in the branch to sing on key.

Sister Halina has a good singing voice too, but the rest of us just sing,

because we like to, not because we have a talent for it.

Before and after

Do you remember this?  This is how the chapel looked when we came here.

This is how it looks now.  I made the curtains yesterday. 

We'll find out tomorrow what the members think of it. 

I made curtains for the Relief Society room first (to practise).

When the branch president saw them, he said that the room

felt like a temple.  I hope the members will be happy

about the change in the chapel.

Our new sign

"Hold it straight."

Elder Siebert came out to be in the pictures.  Inside the chapel was much warmer.

It was a cold day.  Starszy Zatylny wore his "Polish" hat to stay warm.

Looks good!!!

Now people, walking or driving by, can see that this is

 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

 Everybody is welcome on Sundays at 11 am.

English classes are on Tuesdays at 7 pm, and "Sport Saturday" is at 5 pm.

Winter fashion in Poland

This might be  kind of a boring blog for you to see, but I find it quite entertaining to look at all the fur hats that Polish women, young and old, wear.  Just scroll down and see what I see every day in the stores and on the streets, when it's cold.  I couldn't get good close-ups and didn't know how to make them into close-ups either.  Sorry.  Some men have interesting fur hats too, but I couldn't get any pictures of them. 

I like the pom-poms hanging from younger ladies' and girls' hats.  Some teen-aged girls have rabbit ears or cat ears on their hats.  We didn't see any yesterday.

I wish I could have caught pictures of more fur coats.  Some of them are quite interesting, especially the ones from years ago, that older ladies still wear.

This lady had a tail about 12" long - black tail with a white tip.  I wish I had a close-up of it.

These girls were walking too fast.  I could not catch up to them.  I liked the hat on the girl on the left.  Maybe you can see it, if you can zoom in.

See the pom-poms again. 

Polish babies are taken out for freash air, even when it's below freezing.  These two pictures were taken when the temperature was -8C or about +17F.

Slowly learning

Here are the books that we have used to learn this difficult language.

Clarence can speak to people, but Anja is just learning words.  She also understands a lot of the grammar, but can't put it into use.  Finnish language has helped with the grammar and also the pronounciation.

This is one way that we learn new words.  Half of the cards are in Polish the other half in English.  We then play "Memory Game".  We have another set of cards with short sentences like: "How much does this cost?"  "Where is an ATM?"  etc.

Kazik comes once every week to listen to us read The Book of Mormon in Polish.  He is very patient in correcting our pronounciation.

And I'm sure you remember our Polish language teacher.

She hasn't given up on us yet.

1/2-mile apartment in Gdansk

I was standing across the street from these yellow buildings, when I took the next two pictures, one to my right and the other to my left.  That's how long this apartment building is.  We missionaries call it "One-mile-apartment", but it's actually only .7 km.

If we could convert all the people who live in these apartments, we would probably have at least three stakes, maybe more.  But as it is, we have no stake in all of Poland.

Prep-day activity

On Monday, Jan 31, we woke up to a nice sunny day.  We decided that it was a good day to go for a drive to the Russian border.  Russia has kept a little piece of land between Poland and Lithuania, so they can have access to the Baltic Sea, in case they need to ..... whatever.  Ask Germans and Poles, they'll tell you why.

This bridge is less than 5 km from the border.  We thought it was quite unique.

The road was the best we've seen in Poland.  No potholes.

This is as close to the border as we could go.

When the border guard saw me taking pictures, he came to talk to us.  He told us that we should not take pictures, but did not tell me to delete them, so I have them for you to see.  He then asked where we were going.  When we said that we were going back to Poland, he walked away and let us go.

Sweets anyone?

This is a candy isle in one of the grocery stores.  Both sides of the isle are for candy.

Another store, that we go to, has twice as much room for candy.  A lot of the candy is American - M&M, Snickers, Skittles, etc.

Drive to Warsaw, Jan 28, 2011

We left Gdansk early in the morning.

The sunrise was beautiful.  I need a better camera, which probably would not help much, because I'm not a good photographer.

It was quite foggy, so the trees had a nice frost on them.

We enjoyed that part of the drive.

Later, as usual, we saw drivers who passed us when there was traffic coming towards us.  And two solid lines don't often mean anything to Polish drivers.  We are quite used to it now.  Everybody just pulls over to a shoulder to give room for those who are driving in the middle of the road to pass others.