A little yeast

I wish we had time enough to write and that you had patience enough to read all that we experienced this week. Most of it is just great new experiences, so I'll try to boil it down to something that might be meaningful.

The young missionaries have transfers tomorrow. Because this mission has relatively few missionaries, they do transfers every 9 weeks instead of 6. In Gdansk we have a set of Elders and a set of Sisters and us. One of the Elders is transferring far south and another will replace him, one Sister completes her mission, the other Sister is transferring out and no Sisters will replace them. Because they have been with us from the start, it's very sad to see the 3 of them go. We've grown very fond of these great young missionaries. Saying goodbye is a constant part of missionary life, but it is still difficult. We have them over for dinner on Sunday evenings and it was sad for this to be the last time for 3/4 of them.

We have decided to be less American and leave the car parked as much as we can. This is not a big deal if you read and understand the language. We snapped a picture of one of the city areas we ride through daily. Wrzeszcz, you're right. We're getting to where we can actually read that word, but imagine trying to pick that out of the announcement over the crackly speaker along with Następny przystanek (Next stop). It's a fun challenge. We're glad to have our previous experiences to give us a head start and ease the panic.




Took a tram to meet the Elders to do service and they told us to take either tram 2 or 4 or 8 from the station and which stop to get off at. Easy. Lot's of options. It was during the evening commute and we got on #8 with lots of other people. We eventually noticed on the phone map that we were not going to the area that had our stop, so we got off as soon as we could. We were now standing in the middle of an industrial area, the sun was down, and it was looking pretty sketchy. We called the Elders to say "go on without us." We were stuck. We could see from the phone map that we needed to go back the way we came, so we waited with the drunks for another tram going the opposite direction. We caught one, rode two stops and got off in the middle of a maze of overpasses and tracks. Despite the interesting graffiti which we'll have to photograph in better light, we had no idea which way to go to find the right tram going the right direction. A young guy and girl got off at the same time and they looked like they would speak English and they did. Relief! They were kind to walk us out of the maze, show us where to find the right tram, and which way to ride. We got to tell them why were are here. We find so many times that the Lord puts people in our path just when we need them. We really felt blessed. (and the service work was done by the time we got there, so bonus!)

We celebrated the RS birthday in the branch on Saturday. Jean was the keynote and we and the other missionaries provided the refreshment. It was well attended, 10 people besides us 6 missionaries (see attachment 3). Almost all those who came Saturday didn't come Sunday to church. I guess they figured they'd done church already this week. :) Jean gave a great talk about Christ putting great value on women and, with a missionary interpreter, it came across really well.

A few things I'll have to write about in the future are: WWII starting in Gdansk, the Solidarity museum, old-town Gdansk (really old, like 1,000 years old), the largest surviving brick cathedral, Memling's judgement painting, new foods, senior missionaries, dentists. I won't take time here so will wait for a week that's less eventful, if that happens. I just have to share a glimpse of the old-town, which, with our young friend as guide, we discovered is just walking distance from where we hold church. It blew us away. We were transported into the game Settlers of Catan.




















Been thinking today about one of the parables from this week's reading, where Christ compares the kingdom to a little yeast that a woman mixes into 60 lbs of dough. There are so many people around us who will probably never hear about the restored gospel from the missionaries. In our little branch carries on and it could become discouraging. But knowing that the Lord knew this is how it would be affirms to us that it'll work out alright, that it's not news to Him. So we'll keep figuring out where He guides us to and try to share His love and His hope where we are. Paths diverge and cross, missionaries come and go, and this is not their church. We all just do what we can to help it rise.

Love you all,
Elder and Sister Bridge