Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Elder Daly begins the countdown . . . .

Hey family! Im not sure if Alysia got my letter and tape while she was at home but hopefully you all got to hear it. And i sent another quick little letter home the day after TurkeyDay so id assume you got that as well. So yeah this week has been amazing i hope you all had a wonderful thanksgiving :-) mine was quite superb. Elder Holland made it worth while and the food was decent. Nothing compared to home though. Its alright i was held over by a couple of pumpkin pies that you all sent me that saved my life ;-) thank you so much for those... i have been getting all of the food youve sent me .. needless to say the other elders in my district are jealous. i share though...sometimes. In answer to Mom's questions .... Elder Jones and I are the new Zone leaders.. which has been especially fun this past week. The american elders that just left yesterday morning were so inclined to write and copy a 'hate' letter to some of the Russians on the 3rd floor... long story short elder jones and i were called in to talk to the Distrist President Garrett who works directly beneath the MTC president. He wasn't very nice about the whole thing to be honest.. Let's just say i was sad to see the 12 american elders go (the Taco 12, going to tacoma, WA) however now i dont have to hold my breath everyday praying that they wont do anything stupid. Then one of the elders grandmother died and he was taking it pretty hard. Another elder had something seriously messed up with his corneia in his eye so he went to the emergency room. Elder Guinn in my district was told he had mono earlier this week which gave us a scare but he's alright. So lots of amazingly awesome things went down :-) its been kinda stressful but all good nonetheless. The language is still Polish, and its still hard. We had Speak Your Language (SYL) start this week so that has been an adventure haha. It's actually crazy how much we found out we knew once we started talking and forming sentences. Its hard though because 80% of our vocab is gospel related so our sentences are pretty interesting. Our teachers just laugh at us when they hears us interact with each other. We get to teach the first lesson in Polish on thursday.. the day of reckoning is fast approaching. Luckily elder jones and i have been living celestial lives so it should turn out for us. I just sweating being able to remember Josephs first vision verbatum in polish, should be ok :-) mmm wat else wat else.. ill answer some of moms questions here... our departure date is still the 26th of December and im pretty sure it should stay that way.. im supposed to let you know that i cant call on Christmas because the MTC only has 4 pay phones for over 2000 missionaries... so i apologize for that.. hopefully they let me call in between one of my 3 flights on the 26th. I am feeling better just caught a little cold, feeling quite davage to say the least... although its starting to get...really... cold. ugh walking to the temple this morning at 5:45 am .. it was like arctic circle temps.. better get used to it if my first area is Gdan'sk and i have to baptize some Polskis in the baltic, ah how rad would that be?! i cant believe yall got snow! thats crazy.. elder jones and i have been betting on the date its going to snow... .... ... its 12 days passed my guess. wat else do i do on pday.. mm i temple, i email for 30 mins, i study, i write a few letters while doing laundry.. some meals somewhere in there haha.. i study some more.. then we have a devotional and a testimony meeting after then i have some branch council meetings after that. as to pertaining with my weight.. haha i thought it was funny you asked that, no worries mom youll still be able to hug me when i get back haha.. i think if anything i may have lost a couple pounds.... im not a huge fan of the food although i did throw caution to the wind and used my past inspirations from Jordan to get down several plates of food. I apologize if theres anything i missed in this little weekly update, 30 mins goes by faster than you think... a little oveer half way there!!! 4 more weeks.. it seems pretty unreal that Poland actually exists.. i guess i have to walk by faith rather than by sight... seeing the pictures of it on the walls in my classroom seems like the closest ill ever get. Its crunch time though and im quickly starting to realize that i actually might be going there someday and when i do i might have to speak POlish. i definitely have a lot of work to do :-) the gospel of Jesus Christ is true.. ive never been more sure of that than i am now.. and wat a wonderful feeling it is to not have to worry about anything but the gospel and the people of POland :-) have a great week family.. read the conference report of the Ensign if u havent already! it will change your life kocham was

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Thanksgiving Week Letter from Sean-MTC

hey there everyone! yet another gloriously davage p-day in provo, UT. This week was pretty ordinary i would say. All is well at the MTC... just looking forward to an amazing MTC thanksgiving.. yayy... haha no im excited it should be good, they usually have way good speakers such as John Bytheway etc. so hopefully we will get someone respectable. !!!!!!!!!!! so this last Tuesday devo we had Elder Russell M. Nelson!!! it was incredible, maybe even the highlight of my MTC experience. By far my favorite apostle. Thursday we had some more RC and TRC action and it went really well. Talked to a lot of cool people that are pretty much prime for having the Gospel taught to them. I talked to this one guy named Jesus from downtown Los Angeles. He was so excited to be getting a Book of Mormon and having the Missionaries come teach him. I had a ton of opportunities to testify so it was really helpful. Lots of stories of lots of people but ill just leave it at that. The TRC was great its the last time we get to teach the lessons in English.. we dont have TRC this thursday because of thanksgiving but the next thursday we will be teaching lesson one po polsku! so it should be an interesting experience. I'm pretty sure it won't be too difficult.. I do fear for my Elder Jones, languages don't come as quick to him so ive been trying to help him out, he should be alright. Other than that my life is pretty exciting. The days all mesh together and the only distinction i have between days is by remembering basketball games ive played. The Polish language is tough, there's really not much else to say about it.. but it is very do-able. Elder Jones and I were contacted on the way to dinner by a couple of Elders that are going China... needless to say i should count my blessings because. All of our Bulgarian Elders left at 5:00 this morning.. Elder Jones and I got them all checked out. Im pretty jealous, my day will come though. On Saturday we did an "airplane" contacting activity because most of our language zone (serbs, croatia, bulgaria, czech, etc) left or is leaving this week. It was pretty good times because they had the czech teachers pretending to be pilots (over the microphone) and stuardesses (spelling on that).. they also had the lights flickering half the time.. it was pretty tough to keep focus on contacting the person next to us.. especially when we had to do it in Polish. Sunday is always the best day of the week. Although ive been feeling kind of under the weather the past few days and Sunday was probably the worst of it... it might have something to do with the fact that i ate 15 coughdrops in 2 hours? Take my advice on this one and don't ever do that haha.. but all our meetings were way good.. Elder story and griffin should us the ropes of being zone leaders... our district got a new leader Elder Adams.. he's a stud. Brother bott .. yeah lysh the one that teaches at byu! came and spoke to us for our Sunday devo. He has incredible.. what a mountain of a man. He knows the scriptures back and forth and back again, thrice. It was pretty inspiring as he talked about the war that is being waged on both sides and how there has never been better organization and power both on the side of the Lord and the side of the adversary. After his talk, Sister Coles (one of 5 sisters) in my distict wanted to receive a blessing of comfort. We (4 Elders and the 3-some of sisters) went up to our class room and had a quick prayer (while walking to the room i had been praying with great "fervor" if you will that i would have the Spirit to help me know what to say if i was given the opportunity to give the blessing) She asked me to give it and needless to say my heart was pounding a bjillion miles an hour. But i knew the Lord would provide and He did, in a way that I've never felt before. It was the first time i've given a blessing and it was one of the few times in my life where the Spirit took control and i couldnt believe the things i was saying. It was the strongest I've felt the Spirit since ive been here, hands down.. so i just thought id share that with you. Ive had a pretty full and grateful heart since that point. Elder Jones and I went to the Temple this morning and did initiatories for the first time since we went through for our own initiatories. It was awesome, we each did 15 names and im now hardcore pumped for the rest of what will sure be a most exquisite prepartion day. thanks everyone that has written me! ill try to see if i can write a few of you today.. time is pretty tight though so i apologize if i dont get to it. ill try to send home either a memory card for my digital camera or a disk home because i cant upload pictures here.. I love you family have a great week.. happy birthday in a couple days mom!!! sto lat.. sto lat :-)

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

MTC letter from Sean-November 6, 2007

Czesc! I can't believe it's already p-day again. The days are so long but this last week seemed to fly. This week has been the most davage week of my mission! week 2 thats not saying much but it has definitely been a great experience. On tuesday night Elder Bednar spoke at the devotional. I don't know what it is about apostles of the Lord, but needless to say it was amazing. It's weird how repition of such simple truths that I've known all my life can have such a profound effect. Well basically this week was a lot of class followed by alot more class. On thursday our district got to go to the TRC (teaching resource center? i dunno there are way too many acronyms) where we had to become acquainted with and testify to 'role playinog' investigators who spoke polish. elder jones and I got this sweet bonus 80 year old native Polish lady who used to live in warsaw. she was probably my favorite. with one of the other investigators we had elder jones was trying to ask him for his contact info. but instead of saying zapisac he said zabic... so he basically he told the investigator he was going to kill him. the guy started laughing hysterically as well as me but i dont think elder jones realized what he said.. haha anyways good times. we also all got to go to the RC (the call center) and we called all these people who had asked to receive any number of gifts (dvd, bom, etc) some of the elders and sisters had success.. i on the other hand talked with 2 people the whole hour we were there. lots of answering machines... but the two people i talked to really boosted my self esteem. it tells you where the people are from that youre calling.... and how old they are. so when the name jackson thomas popped up from bronx, NY i was a little frightened. He answered the phone and i never got another word in "i know wat yall about, mormons all up in my space.." after the number of explicits followed i figured it was best to hang up the phone. so yeah that was my first experience with hands on missionary work. Sunday Elder jones and I taught a lesson for Distict meeting. We taught on Christ's earthly ministry and it actually went really well. The testimony meeting was pretty emotional because the american elders (going to seattle) all left at 3 this morning. I was tough t seem them g but w had a grand o journal signing and picture taking session. its not going t be easy t see 2 more sets o american districts come and g before i even leave, but i a excited t meet new elders and help them out. Our district i doing s well. went to the temple this morning, like every pday. its awesome how you can learn something new everytime. polish is going well, its difficult but coming. Thanks grandma and grandpa for the card :-) Hope things are getting better in So. Cal, Uncle Bob and Aunt Mel. The Poland Warsaw mission is the only true mission in the church :-) have a great week family, i love you all so much, letters/dearelders make my day :-) kocham sie starszy daly