We were invited to our senior missionary conference held in Warsaw. We rode the train from Gdańsk to Warsaw on Wednesday January 29 then walked a couple of kilometers through two parks on the way to our hotel. The hotel was the best I’ve ever stayed at. Elder Parsons was the CFO for Marriott so we always want him to book our stay. This hotel was only a block from the Royal Palace.
At 5:30 we walked a few blocks to the Fryderyk Concert Hall where we heard a piano concert exclusively of Chopin played by a virtuoso. It was forbidden to take photos during the concert so we don’t have any – just ones we took of the venue.
On Thursday, we toured the Royal Castle in the morning. The Polish kings used the castle as their residences. Later it was destroyed completely in World War II and then rebuilt from 1970 to 1990 during the communist era.
At 7pm we saw Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute” at the downtown Narodowa Teatr. It is my favorite opera to listen to but I was disappointed in it’s performance. They didn’t use scenery but had a white wall that a video was projected on. The performers could stand in several doors in the wall and sing even as the video was projected around them.
From left to right: Elder and Sister Daniels, Jacksons, Allens, Sumsions, Deardens and Sister and President Roney.
On Friday, we had our conference. We played an opening game then President Roney told us how our mission ranks against the other missions in this part of the world. Our missionaries are very capable and are ranked very high. We ate lunch at a local restaurant. Everything took longer than we planned but we still had some time for our meeting in the afternoon. Elder and Sister Daniels leave in two weeks and we leave in 8 weeks so we said our farewells. Before long we were on the train heading back to Gdańsk.