Another busy week in Katowice.

Hey everyone, another good and busy week here in Katowice. Things are picking up slowly but surely. Its great serving here, i love the branch and my love for the area is growing so much too. The branch president is amazing, I love him to bits, he's the nicest most humble guy and he watches Doc Martin and tells me every week that he's been watching the episodes hahaha. Makes me laugh. This week he asked me what 'Doc' meant haha.. He's a precious soul. Our friend who is getting baptised on Saturday came to church on Sunday which is great because it means she can 100% be baptised this weeeeeeeeek which is really exciting. I've had the privilege of teaching her from the very beginning and seeing the progress she's made has been so special. The gospel is special. It changes lives, I've seen it change mine and now I get the blessing of seeing it change others. We had exchanges this week as well, so the Kraków elders came over to us. It was good, we had a good laugh and it was good to catch up with my old comp elder Yergensen. Shout out to him. The temperature is dropping over here which is kinda scary, winter is coming and I'm not sure I'm a fan of that. I'm English but I'm still not accustomed to the cold weather. I'm like my mum, I need the sun hahaha.

On a spiritual note, I had a strong impression yesterday while reading in 2nd nephi 9 and I wrote down these words. The cold hand of death claims us all, its part of the great Plan. But because of Christ's Atonement and His Resurrection, all will live again. The sorrow, the pain and the grief of death is swallowed up in the joy of Christ. There would be no meaning to life without the Redeeming Christ of Gethsemane and Golgotha. Because of Him we can all have the hope of life after death, and that hope is our priceless inheritance. "Thanks be to God for the matchless gift of His Divine Son."

Speak to you all soon, have a lovely week.

Starszy Ashworth x

Hello everyone.

Hello everyone, it's been a few weeks I think. All of this Facebook work that we're doing is making me hate looking at my phone on pdays haha, so I've taken a little break. But I wanted to let you know how I've been getting on. I'm not too sure who reads these anymore, but if you do then great. It'd be good to hear from you all to see how you're doing, I'll try and find the time to reply haha, but if I don't then I apologise. This last week was really good. I went on exchanges to a city called Białystok, it's right up in the North East of Poland and its a beautiful city. I'm down in the south so it took is 6 hours on the train to get there but it was a really good exchange, I spent the day with Elder Frank, one of the zone leaders, and he's a really good guy. We had a lot of fun. We ate lunch at an Italian restaurant, random because we're in North East Poland haha, but it was good and for desert we got something called a donut shake. Its as absurd as it sounds. It was a snickers milkshake, with this kind of snickers cookie dough around the rim of the cup, a big donut on top and then some cotton candy to finish the job. Should've called it the heart attack shake, I felt gross after it haha, but it did taste amazing. You know it's bad though when the straw you're drinking from is placed through the donut 😂 we taught an older couple as well, and afterwards they let us pick blueberries from their garden and so the fruit made me feel a bit better about myself lol. I learned a lot from the exchange though, and I hope I can go back to Białystok some time. Not many new things are happening in Katowice unfortunately, we're still trying to find and to teach, but good news is that we have a baptism coming up soon. The person has had a baptismal date for a while and so we're hopeful that it can finally happen.

Lastly, I read a scripture this week in Alma and just wanted to share it. It's about a group of people in the Book of Mormon called the anti-nephi-lehis.

They were lamanites who had converted to the Lord. As part of their conversion, they buried their weapons of war, and covenanted to never again fight against God or their brethren. They didn't just put their weapons back in their homes and hide them in a box or something like that, but they buried them deep in the earth. Of them it was written

"yea, I say unto you, as the Lord liveth, as many of the Lamanites as believed in their preaching, and were converted unto the Lord, never did fall away."

This touched me because they had dedicated their lives to God, and they had got rid of that which had distanced themselves from Him, and they made sure to never take up those weapons again, even when their enemies advanced and they faced certain death. It made me think of the 'weapons' that I can bury, to make sure that I never fall away.

Love and miss you all, stay safe.

Starszy Ashworth x