hedgehogs, hot hibiscus herbata, hymn books, and harkening to the prophet

Hedgehogs, hot hibiscus herbata, hymn books, and harkening to the prophet. Oh and harmless missionaries doing less active finding. That about sums up our week here in Gdańsk.

Hedgehogs- there is a little park by our apartment that we walk by on our way home and we've noticed the cutest little hedgehogs! Jeż is one hedgehog and jeże is plural. 

Hot hibiscus herbata- one of my favorite people in all of Poland invited us over. She served us some delicious hibiscus drink. She had spent some time in Egypt a while back and well, still had some dried hibiscus flower. She boiled some water, put the flower for a coupel mintues and voila, you add some sugar (trzeba becaise it is pretty bitter) and it is REALLY GOOD. More importantly though were the things we discussed with her. She shared her conversion story with us and some crazy adventures she has had. One of my favorite pictures of my parents is them standing on a bridge with some beautiful building behind them and a river. Maybe it is in Amsterdam. Anyways I carry it around with me in my scriptures. Turns out the archtiect for those buildings is the same who designed most of the old town here. How cool is that? When she saw the picture, she asked if my parents had been in Gdańsk. "Not yet," I said. 

Hymn Books- we finally FINALL got an official copy of the hymn books in Polish. It only took how many years? It is pretty exciting. There are so many more songs to sing now in Church and for our other meeting in Polish!

Harkening to the prophet- I love general conference. We watch most of the sessions here. Some on Saturday and some on Sunday. We had a little RS party here on Saturday and then we watched the Women's session together. 

Harmless missionaries doing less active work? Sister Dekker and I were cruising with the Taggart's searchign for less actives and addresses. We were at one apartment which I have visited before but no one was home. We got inside and made our way to the apartment. When we got there, a man abruptly opened the door and we asked if the pani Monika lived there. He shouted the man's name and closed the door. Not too long after that did pani Monika come out and she was not a happy women. I understood everything she said, but it was so fast and abrupt, I couldn't quite process it. Basically she opened the door, told us to leave. I was confused because she didn't even know what we wanted. Then she told us she is calling the police! She kind of pushed Siostra Dekker aside and thrust her hand at my name tag on my coat and ripped it off. She loudly said she is calling the police and then disappeared into her sad and crabby apartment. Siostra Dekker and I just kinda of looked at each other and thought, "let's get out of here!" So I'm one name tag down now. I am still not sure what happened, she was so unhappy. We just hope her day got a little better because that was weird weird weird!

We also met with the couple who came to church last week! They are totally awesome! And it was the greatest craziest meeting i've had. Turns out we got their address wrong and were on thte complete other side of town. When we were late and tried to rescedule, they wouldn't here any of it and came and picked us up. Tea and herbata as usual were served (#classic). We had a really great discussion and they were full of so many questions. It was lovely though and I hope we will be seeing them soon!

Well that's it for this week! Next week will be week 9 of our week 10 transfer! Crazy!!