Reflections

We sometimes forget how cool it is that Gdańsk is a port city on the Baltic and that many people make it their vacation destination. Some evenings after our classes or assignments we find a new place to see the sea and it never disappoints.

Elder & Sister Schroeder (West Valley, UT) will complete their two years next month and we spent part of a day showing them around the city. It made us re-appreciate where we live, realizing weeks would be needed to see all there is to see. We're blessed to be here.

In this part of the city center you can see the tallest, brownish building which Sister Bridge affectionately directs people to as "the ugliest building in Gdańsk" where we have our chapel on the 8th floor. Makes it easy to find. Beyond that and to the left you can see a cool bridge (another one, not the one behind the camera) out by the port area toward the sea.

You can see the derelict derricks from this bridge in the middle of the old shipyard. Here Lech Wałęsa and many of his 25,000 friends refused to work until they could have a conversation with their bosses (the government) about improving conditions at work, which led to a movement, which led to Solidarity, which led to martial law, which led to resistance, which led to the end of communist government in Poland, which led to the end of the Soviet Union.

I wish I had a segue to these pictures, but you'll just have to switch gears with me.

Saturday was one of those missionary paydays. Natalie, wife of Mateusz, had her baptism day. Our crew of missionaries, our mission president and his family, and Natalie and Mateusz and baby girls hiked along the blustery Baltic beach to find a potentially private spot for the ordinance.

This view of their cutie-pie, Bohdanka, I think is metaphorical.

My hair is fine, I don't know what the sisters (Bridge, Gornichec, Memmott) are complaining about.

Of the elements in this photo, the churned up water, the blackness of it, the elders needing to get close enough to hear and witness the ordinance, the legs whiter than the wet shirts, the joyful embrace of a husband who just used his new priesthood to perform a saving ordinance for his wife; of all these, my favorite is the reflection.

Part of the plan

Hello and thanks for looking at this representation of our experience as old missionaries in Poland. 

As our life becomes more familiar, it's harder to notice what might be interesting about it. Our missionary nephew, who disappoints his mom by not writing, replied when she asked him what he did this week: "We talked to people and did missionary stuff."

Succinct.

Our mission president and his family have been touring the several branches around Poland, familiarizing themselves with the people and the work. They visited Gdańsk this Sunday and they invited the two of us to join their family on Saturday for a p-day. President Chandler served in the Gdańsk area as a young missionary, so he wanted to recreate some of his mission experiences and pictures. One picture was of him at the train station in Hel. We spent the day there with their awesome children and are happy to report we made it there and back. We did have to pay the boatman, though.

For our excursion on Saturday, in her usual way of thinking of the kids, Sister Bridge had brought along some treats and a couple of card games to keep them busy on the boat ride home after a long, hotter than Hel expected day.

Somebody found a book at our church building with names of former missionaries back to when the work started in Poland in 1990. President Chandler's was the first companionship listed in the book. Sister Chandler started her mission about a year later, also in Poland. At the time they were not allowed to proselyte, but they could talk to people who talked to them. If a person showed curiosity about their name badge, that was a way to get into a conversation. We've found that's still true. Our Sister Halina (92) joined the Church before 1990 and thus we had three real pioneers together this Sunday.

Our friends, Mateusz and Natalie, the young couple who are half baptized (Natalie will be baptized this week now that she has delivered their second baby girl), happened to be reading in the Doctrine and Covenants 20 and saw "Every member of the church of Christ having children is to bring them unto the elders before the church, who are to lay their hands upon them in the name of Jesus Christ, and bless them in his name."

They told the missionaries they wanted to be obedient to everything, so asked what do they need to do for this to happen. I told Mateusz that, like going to the temple to be sealed, he would have to wait a year to become an Elder which is required to bless children. Anxious to keep this commandment, they asked me to bless their babies this week. I asked Mateusz to think about what he would say if he were to bless his daughters and he shared those thoughts with me. I mentioned this as part of our plan for sacrament meeting Sunday while with President Chandler on Saturday and he enlightened me that I was wrong on that point; receiving the Melchizedek priesthood does not have a time requirement after baptism. With this new information, I immediately encouraged Mateusz to change our plan, that in the long view and from my own experience, his blessing of his children would be significant in his life and theirs.

Incidentally, Mateusz's mother had planned to attend that sacrament meeting for the baby blessings, and the bonus is that she did come and was able to see what our meetings are like, She also was able to hear Mateusz talk about the importance of family in God's eternal plan for His children.

Because we had the new mission president and family in our meetings, our attendance was off the charts. I had prepared more than double the water cups for the sacrament, 30 this week. As the passing of the water got to the end, I could see there were only two cups left and Sister Bridge and the two priesthood holders were left. I realized I would have to walk from the front of the room out the back, go to the kitchen area and prepare just one cup of water to bless while everybody waited. As the tray came to Sister Bridge she reached into the bottom of the tray, pulled out a used cup, poured half the water from one of the remaining cups into it and drank it, leaving half of that unused cup and a full one for the men.

Solved.

New leadership. Czech.

I know it's been a fortnight since last I wrote. I'm happy to report that we have just been too busy to write anything down. Because of that, this will be just a newsletter this time and I hope you find something interesting from it.

Let's go back to the previous week and our most recent zone conference. We were happy to welcome our new Mission President, David Chandler, Sister Stacy Chandler, and their family. They shared their vision for the Church in Poland during their time of service and talked a lot about building on the work of leaders who have gone before. President and Sister Chandler both served as missionaries in Poland when the mission was brand new, 1990-92, that time-frame. They confirmed to us that they will do great things and have been prepared "for a time such as this."

Note the size of our zone. This is pretty typical for the zones in Poland, meaning very small. We had a large group return home last month and just one new elder to replace them. I think that in addition to the 5 senior couples, there are 36 young missionaries currently. It's nice that every missionary knows all the others and the small size makes for a very close-knit group.

After returning home from the zone conference (a 3 hour train ride, as everything seems to be) and getting through another Sunday of uncertainty relating to what church will be combined with certainty of what the church is, we left for Warsaw to meet up with the young adults traveling to Czech for a multi-country YSA conference there.

We chartered a small bus to take the two of us with 10 young adults to the conference hotel in the middle of Czech. Of course we would've loved to have double that number go, but lives are busy in the summer, well, and all other seasons too. The ride lasted about 11 hours with a stop in the city of Wrocław to pick up another contingent.

It was a superbly awesome conference. The countries represented, as far as I can recall in order of most attendees were: Hungary (by far the biggest group), Czechia, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia.

It's hard to describe the activities because they were so numerous and all of them good, so I'll just throw them in here. We enjoyed: scripture study every morning at 7:30, (on the last morning I counted 23 senior missionaries there and 10 young adults, which, after listing the other events will make sense), morning devotional, Institute (choice of several teachers from across Europe), workshops, futball, volleyball, zorb futball, tennis, disc golf, canoeing, ax throwing, swimming, ping pong, choir, firesides each night, geocaching, we saved a hostage by solving an escape room, lip-sync battle, talent show, dance instruction, fire pit, dances every night past midnight, we made blankets, wrote testimonies for copies of the Book of Mormon in several languages, and ate a lot of good Czech food.

We got back to Warsaw on the bus Saturday evening, too late to catch a 3-hour fast train home, so instead took a slow overnighter getting us back to our home in Gdańsk at 4:30 this morning (Sunday). Whew! What an awesome week.

Can't see much of the bridge we're on, but you see what pretty surroundings this hotel is in. 

We had several profound and spiritual experiences. I want to share just a couple, but I fear I won't relate them well enough. Both that I'm thinking of relate to the Church in Czechoslovakia during the communist era, but we had many other impressive lessons about the role of these young people in gathering Israel.

The socialist government in Czechoslovakia did a good job of eradicating religion during what we hear a lot about, "the communist era," or "during communism." Poland is unique in that the Catholic church was allowed to continue because the government knew it would have caused great unrest, being so entrenched in the culture of the people. Czechoslovakia did not have that advantage. We got to hear from two of the original members from Czech during that era, Olga Kovárová and her friend, the current Prague stake president joined the Church in 1982. She wrote a book Saint Behind Enemy Lines, detailing how she was able to share the gospel very carefully. What she longed for as a student at university was a message of hope. That message was purposefully omitted from any of the "doctrine" in communist Czechoslovakia. When she found it, interestingly through a friend's yoga instructor, she also decided to learn to teach yoga. Her teacher, who she later learned was a member of the Church, encouraged her to share a brief, 5-minute message of hope after her yoga classes, using quotes from communist officials. She was able to find quotes to do this, and if anyone questioned what she taught, they assumed she was a good communist because of who she was quoting.

A side note, our friend Natalie, the wife in the young couple we have talked about getting baptized here in Gdańsk, is from Czech. She said "This probably sounds strange to you but my grandma always tells us 'You should get out and do something useful. When I was your age I was building socialism!'"

Several years ago I came across and snatched up a copy of the Czech Book of Mormon from that era because it is unique. It is printed smaller than other copies, is red, and has the initials of the book "KM" Kniha Mormonova embossed on the cover. There is another book that looks like this which has the writings of Karl Marx (KM) . If anyone noticed you carrying the book, they assumed you were just being a good, studious communist.

This leads to the other experience I want to share. A young man from Czech described the method Church members used to worship during that time. Remember that this was between 1982 and 1990. I know we're old, but this was not that long ago. At the conference we divided into groups of about 15 and re-enacted what these people did. A few things to note. During that time, children were taken to socialist school by age 5. Among other doctrines drilled into them, they were taught to spy on their parents and report anything they did. Religion was strictly forbidden. No meetings of more than 5 people were allowed. Talking about anything related to a religion or ideology other than that of the government would lead to arrest, interrogation, intimidation, threats, and up to 11 years in prison. As a result, Czech is now one of the top three atheistic countries in the world.

We sat silently in a room representing our apartment with the shades closed and the lights out. Two home teachers arrived unscheduled. Children were not allowed to be in the room, parents could not let their children know what they were doing, effectively stopping any family involvement and breaking any trust between parents and children. Apartment buildings were built purposely in such a way that you could hear what your neighbors were doing. People were given special concessions if they reported on their neighbors, or they and their families were threatened if they did not report on their neighbors. In this circumstance the two home teachers arrived. Everything was a hushed whisper. They had us whisper together the song "I am a Child of God." One of the young men who was our home teacher whispered a thought centered on the story from the Book of Mormon about the people of Alma who had heavy burdens placed on them by the government. They were even forbidden to pray. These people prayed only in their hearts and increased their humility and faith and the Lord made their burdens bearable to them. He eventually miraculously freed them. Our home teacher encouraged us to continue in faith and to not lose hope. The other home teacher then whispered a prayer and they left us praising God in the silent dark.

It's all good?

I realized it might appear from what I write that our mission life is always super awesome, which a lot of the time it is. Truly. But, it's important that you know that there are times that fill the role of opposition.

We don't discover delights without frequent fails.

In the summer of life, you sometimes get a thunderstorm; sometimes lightning strikes too close to home.

Not all bridge selfies captivate the way you envisioned them.

Sometimes you cut things a little too close and barriers are unyielding.

Sometimes you cancel a baptism and four of your most interested people ghost you in one week.

I love this saying, probably not by Winston Churchill, but profound nonetheless:
"If you find yourself going through Hell...keep going."

Marking time

It's kinda exciting that the couple who recently joined the church in our branch had a new baby girl this week. This is a rare blessing since families are not the way most people come into the church. Most people actually have to face stern opposition from family members. Thinking about that little girl growing up knowing what our meetings are like, what FHE is, with a life of knowledge about the restored gospel, it gives us hope for the future. And that little girl will add a solid 10% to our sacrament meeting attendance.

Midnight from our balcony.
You can't see your way walking or driving without a light,
but you can see some light in the sky.

This week in Finland they would have had fun cultural/pagan celebrations around the longest day of the year. We didn't have any all-night parties and people were not out and about in the light, but one person in the neighborhood had firecrackers, or there was a shooting. (kidding!) It was the day to celebrate Mary's ascension to heaven without tasting death, so that was a thing.

The solstices are my favorite times of the year. From this point we know the days will get shorter. Six months from now we know the amount of light will steadily grow. I don't know why I like them except that the marking of the earth's movement around the sun and our place seems clearly defined for that moment. It brings me solace.

Perhaps it reflects our longing for a clear signal of our progression. Jean and I feel we have lost track of our position in the long span of time a little bit because we have lost our regular reminders of eternity that we get in temples. Missing those reminders makes the scriptures that much more precious. The words of humans who really, I mean really, knew where they fit give us hope and a sense of place from how they lived their lives.

Missionaries trying to get into a selfie with the president

We had our last zone conference with our mission president, his wife, and their family. Another marking of change. The missionaries truly love him. As always happens in missionary life, we must say goodbye to people and the known and face a little bit of unknown. What tempers any anxiety is the faith that the Lord knows how all this will work out and He chooses the right people from all the choices and all the times.






We were walking to the chapel one day, not late unusually, through the old part of town and there was, surprisingly, an old church we had not been inside. The variety and number of old churches in this country is quite astounding and I admit that often I am not bored when compelled to look inside. Sometimes while driving we see an old church in a village and take off from the main road to investigate. They're always fascinatingly well cared for. Jean spotted this one as we walked by and noted that it had a bell tower. What added to my excitement was to learn that to climb the narrow circular stairs up the tower we also got to pay! About halfway up they have a "museum" which is really a few 500 year-old clocks in an attic room. They were interesting, but I didn't get why this church had them in their attic. The main tower clock has the longest pendulum mechanism in the world at 31.2 meters (that's right, I know you were wondering where that was, well, it's right here in Gdańsk Poland).

Our self-guided tour (aka, nobody around except to take our fee) led us up to where the bells of the carillon are mounted. Imagine our surprise when one of the largest bells that we were standing under gonged half-past the hour. I'm sure the people on the other side of town that heard it were probably not surprised at all. That gong would've been good information to be warned of by our non-guide, but better that we didn't get there 30 minutes earlier or later, I guess. This brings to mind something from our personal history. I suspect it may be true for many couples, but Jean has for years suggested I don't hear well, or more precisely, I don't hear HER well. It may be true, some of you know our relevant "Christmas badger" story. You also may have heard that those tiny devices in your ears are incredibly expensive. I have also mentioned that medical non-essentials like Lasik, teeth whitening, braces, and whatever else you can think of (haven't checked on liposuction, hmm), are much cheaper here than at home. So, of course when we saw an office that sells them, Jean said "There's a store that sells hearing aids!" then, after the typical non-response from me when spending money might be required, she said "Let's just go see how much they are." To which I said "What?"

Just a picture from a small restaurant in a small town
where we got a big steak for a small price

Your dose of Bridges on a bridge.
This one is in Warsaw at a huge park in the center of the city.
We spent the day in Warsaw for zone conference,
then had some time to kill before catching our train home.

It was Fathers' Day

It was Fathers' Day and it was remembered. For this I'm so happy and I feel blessed!

I've noticed that when I look at photos of groups of people, especially old photos, I might find something interesting in there, like the hairstyles, the clothes styles, the lighting or setup or location, the awkward poses, but I'm really just thinking "Huh, another old family photo." When you look at your family photos you don't look at the things, you look at the faces. You can't stop the image of their face from bringing memories and emotions. I hope you'll look at some old family photos and feel the good in them.

A castle with a bridge

Contrast

Clear sky after a storm.
Late night drive home from Warsaw

It's June now, and that gives us long days of light to enjoy. The rules say missionaries are to be in their apartments by 21:00. A few nights lately we've been out well beyond that curfew.






We were fortunate to attend another baptism, this one in Warsaw. Warsaw has the only church meetinghouse in Poland and the chapel was full of people (about 60). It felt comforting to have such a large group of saints together. I found myself wishing we could bring our branch members to experience a sacrament meeting there.



We had planned with our district, the Elders, the Sisters and us, to spend a p-day in a town on the Baltic called Hel. We got to do that this week and it was a lot of fun to be with them and a couple of young adult investigators. There are too many jokes that Jean won't allow here, so we'll focus on the name's meaning from the Greek, which is "light," like the sun. Sigh, we'll have to leave it at that...

(you can private message me for more pics of that)

No swimming for missionaries.
Wading? OK.

I know what you're thinking, but no,
that's not Elder Bridge

After a beautiful, SUNNY (hot) day in "that place" we got back to the chapel for our branch FHE. One of our missionaries was not feeling well at FHE, and eventually got very sick from the heat.

We ended up following an ambulance to the hospital ER. After a priesthood blessing and the IV fluids, it was like night and day and the missionary was up and about and ready to go. We learned a little about "free healthcare for all" that night.

There are no staff to tell you where to go or what to do, only other patients who are waiting and will make sure you don't get in the queue ahead of any of them. You don't need to speak the language to understand that look. Wait outside one closed door in the hopes that it will eventually open, and when it does push your way to find out what's next. Then wait outside another door and go through the same ritual. Then another. And another. Then wait until somebody says you can leave. I thought of a more appropriate descriptor: health-nowedont-care. We exited the hospital at 2:30 AM, to see the sun rising on another beautiful day. Thankfully, all was well and still is.

(As I write this I realize our ER experiences at home have not been much different)

A bridge.
The "infinity pool" effect from 300 years ago

Tunnel of lindens

Another similar experience was when we took our dear sister to the dentist for a toothache. During our 4 hours of waiting, again in what looked like an abandoned building with only other patients, we heard many stories from her life, some we had not heard before. She is 92, so if you do the math you can see that she was born before the war, the same age our mothers would be. She told of when children were selected to work in the factories during the war. Her older sister was required to go, but because she was sickly, Halina went as her sister. She packed her suitcase with her carefully ironed clothes and personal belongings for the trip. When they arrived they took from them their clothes and everything, even every stitch they were wearing---boys, girls, men, women. They were all together in a large room. They were then herded to another building where there was a pile of old clothes and shoes from which they had to scramble to get something they could wear.

Storyteller Halina

From time to time we hear people refer to life during the communist era. They tell us that stores had two things: vinegar and mustard. For one man, his memory is the empty meat hooks. Some people we able to barter services for eggs or produce from farmers. I'm struck that this was not anciently or during the great depression, but at the same time Jean and I were "struggling" in school to make it with our young family.

This month there are several activities happening in Gdańsk celebrating 1989, the year of the first free elections. This marks the end of communism (and our James's birthday).

We're always happy when we see a 127 to take us home

The shipyards in Gdańsk are a symbol of Solidarity as that is where the strikes and worker negotiations started in the early 80's. In 1989, with a free market, immediately the only customer that every business had had, the Soviet government, was gone. When they no longer took the ships, the coal, the buses, these companies had to compete on the global market and they were years behind in technology. The idle shipyards are now only a monument to that time. Farmers had no means to get their products to market and infrastructure was very dilapidated. We still see highways that are old and deeply rutted, but that is changing rapidly. The new government at the time decided to implement two-years of no business tax and thus everybody started a business. This got them through the initial struggles of capitalism and today there's no product we can't get.



Some missionaries have had trouble getting their residency (visa) to stay legally in Poland. You have 90 days to secure your residency. One group of missionaries, about 5, didn't meet the deadline and were deported from Poland and reassigned to Chicago. That was obviously very emotional for them and this has caused a lot of worry. Thus, we were sure to file our paperwork on our first day in Gdańsk. The elusive goal is to get a certain stamp in your passport which means you're legally in the country. We were a little stressed because the first available appointment was 93 days after our entry. Of course, you can get no information on the status of your application because they are flooded with applicants. We have spent full days at the immigration office ourselves and with other missionaries. Friday we went to the office again, this time for our scheduled appointment. The lady brought out our files, which was a relief that they had them, a stack of about 40 pages. She had us correct a few pages and stamped EVERYthing. She had 5 stamps that she pounded on several pages at a time---bam, bam, bam, bam, bam---usually three stamps per page, then signed each stamp. I was watching the stamps she reached for, noticing there was a large red one she never used. I thought, that must be "the stamp" we want in our passport. Every time she touched our passports, I held my breath, waiting for her to reach for that stamp, then was disappointed when she only looked at some bit of information in them. We created 30 more pages during the interview for her to pound with different stamps and sign. After just 2 hours, she took Jean's passport, reached under her desk and pulled out this HUGE stamp and BAM! We're legal!

The moment of legality