We spent last week in Warsaw getting our special Polish documents and attending zone conference. Sharon also went to a special sister missionary conference while I hung out with the other senior missionary elders.
Our first challenge was to go on Monday obtain the special Polish document, the Karta Pobytu. This document allows us to live legally in Poland for a period of three years. Upon our arrival in Poland a lawyer employed by the church submitted our paperwork to Poland. Now 6 1/2 months later the documents were ready. We had an appointment at 2:20 pm at a government building in Warsaw. We had decided to take the 9:50 am train to Warsaw this time to avoid having to park in downtown Warsaw (a real pain). The train was on time and when we got to Warsaw, we had no trouble taking a tram to the government building for our appointment. Upon entering the building we found it full of people just like us waiting for their letter to be called at their appointment time. Just as we got settled in a line going into the interview room we heard our letter “P” being called. Now was not the time for timidity. We muscled through the line and soon found ourselves in the interview room. A few minutes, a few signatures, and a lot of paper documents later, we were holding our Karta Pobytu’s in our hands. Mission accomplished.
Tuesday we had a free day in Warsaw. We delivered some papers to our mission office then decided to tour Łazienki Park.
On Wednesday we were uplifted as always at zone conference. President and Sister Roney gave us inspired instructions to help us in our missionary responsibilities. All the missionaries in the Warsaw and Posnań zones, two thirds of our mission, were in attendance. An added bonus is to see missionaries we’ve served with before who are now serving in other areas in Poland.
On Thursday Sharon was invited to a special sister missionary conference for all the sister missionaries serving in Poland. We senior missionaries who are elders were not invited so we decided to go see the Warsaw Uprising Museum. We also kept a running dialog about situations we’ve seen, technology we’ve mastered, and things that are bothering us as we went through the day. We ended up at the Palace of Culture and Science, a tall building in downtown Warsaw that was built by Stalin during the Communist times.
Our trip home was uneventful on Thursday night with one exception. The announcement for our train said it would be 110 minutes late! I quickly bought tickets on an earlier and faster train and I was so glad to get them. We traveled home on second class but we made it!