Category: Mom And Dad

One of our challenges in Sacrament Meeting is getting languages translated.  We have members who can only speak Russian or Spanish or Portuguese or English or Polish or Ukrainian (with a mixture of Russian).  How to cover all these languages? We also have two members and one friend who are polyglots, speaking Polish, Russian and…

Janina Murzyńska is one of the long time members of our branch.  She is 71 and has never married.  She has, I think, five advanced degrees, including a doctorate in architecture from BYU. She was a university professor here in Gdańsk for her career. She speaks four languages: English, Polish, Russian and French. She has…

I learned the Spanish language on my mission to Argentina but then I didn’t use it and I essentially lost it. I could piece together a sentence or two – but I couldn’t think in Spanish and the connection between the words and the thoughts behind them was gone. In our mission to Salt Lake…

Being with the young missionaries is like drinking from the fountain of youth.  I haven’t felt better in a long time.  Today’s preparation day adventure proves it. With me in tow, the missionaries, Sisters Dil and Sands and Elders Pavlik and Wicker ascended up about 165 feet to the observation deck of the Gdańsk Town…

Last Monday, June 3, we got on the train and went to Hel with the missionaries, returning that afternoon. If you are a missionary in Gdańsk this trip is a must. The weather was perfect. Our train unexpectedly stopped for 30 minutes and we passed the time playing riddle games amongst ourselves. This was Sister…

Yesterday on the way to visit a member couple, Sharon and I stopped for a walk in a park near the beach in Gdańsk. You can see from the photo what the name of the park is. On our walk we passed a sculpture of President Reagan and Pope John Paul II. The sculpture is…

The rock-hound in me won’t let this go unnoticed. Gdańsk is the home of amber and the beginning of the amber trading route that runs south to Italy. Last Monday Sharon and I walked 1/2 a block to the Gdańsk amber museum. Here is what we found. First let me describe what amber is. Amber…

I just wanted to show you the things you can buy on a given Saturday at the Farmer’s Market. I say the produce is exceptional and the flowers are exquisite. The lady with the name badge is pretty nice too.

Missionaries try to find people who would like to hear about the gospel of Jesus Christ. When I served in Argentina in the late 70’s we found people by going house to house. We would stand outside the yard by the gate and clap our hands as loudly as we could. If we were noticed,…