So Cold, but so good!!!

Dearest Family :) Que pasa?! :P I love Ryan's little Spanish guys in his letter. I don't understand them at all haha. Fam the letters were rocking to say the very least. So much craziness! I can't believe the water pipe broke ha. You sound like you're in Poland :P It sounds like the first week back was not bad at all. Pop, Monterey sounds beautiful, but I can imagine that the traveling loses it's novelty rather quickly and all you can think about is the fam. Golfing sounds nice though :) Neat to learn about what your doing for the next two years for sure. Ma, i'm glad everything is going so well with the RS. You're going all high-tech on us! Ha i love it. Mom, texting up a wild storm, spreading love, wisdom and recipes at outrageous speeds ha :) That was so darn nice of Jimmy. Goodness I love that kid so much. I think I might drop him a quick e-mail. I feel like a dirtbag in terms of writing letters. To be perfectly honest, it is hard in Warsaw to write letters. P-day is just packed into a little ball where from moment to moment you're running around. I promise, I will write letters soon though. I'm dying to hear how all my friends back home are. Is Tayla married yet???? Lol. Kelsey?? I need to get on that. lol. Returning to normal letter lol. Spencer, sounds like a rocking time at the party. Tell Jazzy-Fizzle Sto Lat!! for me eh? (it literally means 100 years....I think it's a wish that you'll live a hundred years? The Polish people wish you stuff up and down the wall, it's amazing.) Glad you had so much fun brother, I wish I could hear your voice too little bro. And...I don't think there's any other word for Brat. Lol. You could call me Michasz (Mee-ha(like your laughing)-sh) and that's like Mikey lol. Sarah beara what is going on??? You sound sooo good it makes me smile sista. Your reading up a storm- so good to hear you're reading a scripture a day and looking for miracles. That was way touching for me sis :) Sometimes it is hard to find miracles all the time, but you can. Little things can be miracles too, for sure. You're doing amazing sister. Love you so much. :) Annie babe! School sounds like a good time for sure. I loved Science too for sure, it was always crazy how stuff like that experience happens. We will have so much time to do everything we need to. You, Sarah and Spencer and I will watch monk til we're monked out of our minds, and than I'll make you Polish food, and then we'll play Croquet and Monk it again!! :p Something like that eh? :) Love you sister. You, family are too nice to write to me every week. I love it so much. Life here in the Warszawa South Central District was AMAZING this week, for a couple of reasons. First of all, at District meeting, with the inspiration of Our Zone Leaders and Elder McRae, we decided to try to get 20 meetings a week as a companionship. Which is TONS!!! Like....a lot and a lot of meetings. But we were all stoked and excited to do it. Because we know that it is possible with the help of the Lord, despite the loftiness of the goal. So Elder McRae and I were on turbo mode to get these 20 meetings, and we went hard. E. McRae is a work horse lol. I love to work hard, I am willing to work hard as can be and Elder McRae pushes me to do that. I think I'll take that from him as I leave him, probably next transfer. With his influence, we alway try to make the very most effective use of time, and it works wonders. We worked our bottoms of this week and we...after several miralces and crazy events, achieved 15 meetings. Which is by at least 6 meetings, the largest number of meetings I have gotten thus far on my mission, and it felt so good. This next week we are FOR SURE getting 20 lessons. The Sister missionaries got 20 lessons and the Zone Leaders got around 8, and we set a record for the Zone for the most meetings and New investigators (E.McRae and I got 8). Before I shoot into a story, a new investigator, Pop, Is when you actually set up a concrete time and place to meet with someone who has not ever met with the missionaries before. I know without a doubt it's different in other missions, but that is the Poland New Investigator lol. Ok, so a couple amazing things happened this week, I must share. I'm amazed your not all bored from these letters yet...ok lol here they are. First of all, we had a way cool culture flashback/good meeting experience. We've been tracting tons lately, cos it's been freezing. And it's hard to be out there talkin got people for more than 2 hours at a time. So we tracted this building and as we walked inside, it just had a different feel to it. It was obviously very old- there was graffiti all over the walls up to the very top floor, and I was in awe. The stair case was in a big spiral, wooden, and it just felt, like a different time period. We knocked on several doors, and finally made it this one lady who let us in. She was very old, 93 we found out, and had been living in that same apartment room, where we sat with her, since before the war. She was there to see it all and she had a picture of her brother on the wall. He had died during the Warsaw Uprising, and she told us a bit how it was back in the day. We chatted and shared the Gospel with her; she was very kind and seemed to enjoy the message and we left a Book of Mormon with her, she promised she would read it. It just blows me away to be in some of these buildings that are not all that terribly old, but have survived one of the World's most tragic events, and here she had lived through it too. Not all buildings say how old they are and what not, so it was neat to know that without a doubt we were sitting in a house that had lived though the War. When we left the building, it felt like we walked back into the future. In connection to our burning desire to meet with as many people as possible, we had set up a day with 5 meetings. The first four went through so well, and our last meeting was with the Neto's, a couple in the Ward, so we were feeling way good at 19:30, when our second to last meeting ended. We waited for the Neto's to come, and eventually after 20 minutes called them and it turned out that something had happened and they had mis-communicated witheachother- bottom line was they were not going to be there! And we were DETERMINED to get those 5 meetings that day. So we decided to go by our house and tract around there, trying to find a man we had met on Christmas eve, who had pointed in the direction of his house. So in an attempt to find him, we finally entered a building at around 8:35 at night. We had to be in at 9. And tracting doesn't always guarantee a meeting, at all. But we were determined, and though I was somewhat skeptical that someone would let us in, we went onward. We prayed in the Elevator for someone to let us in soon enough to teach them a lesson; which meant in the next 10 minutes. On the top floor of the building, we knocked the first door. An old Babcia (grandma) talks to us through the door (which happens ALL the time and Elder McRae hates it ha), and she was not interested. The next door we try, door number 2 for the evening, opened up. It was an older business-like woman, and I asked if we could share a message with her about Christ. And She said, Yes! I turned to look at Elder McRae and i swear my eyes must have been the size of Walnuts. We taught her a lesson, and she said we could come back in a couple of weeks. To me, it was 100% the hand of the Lord that softenend this lady's heart ot let us in. She wasn't a dandy old lady who lets in any ol' stranger, but she let us in and sincerely listenened and had good questions and I was just in awe, and was so grateful to have that opportunity. So amazing. We met some other amazing people this week. We had ameeting with this man named Krzystof, and as we started to talk about prayer, he very sincerely, with a touch of gratitude in his voice, said, I must come to your Sunday Service. I started to tear up a bit, and E.McRae told me he did to, just cos it was so amazing to hear someone appreciate what we had to say so sincerely. It was amazing. We also met this man Michal. (Mee-how....it sounds japanese lol). He was drunk when we knocked on his door, talking to us in very elegant english. He was way cool though, and we set up for the next day. When we went to his house that next evening, he was a different man. Composed, very noble feeling even and just a very genuine man. He was a translator, he translated books to the caliber of that 1776 book from English to Polish and He knew both languages very well, but he very graciously spoke Polish to us and was patient as we replied. We was so interested and really wants to come to church and is excited to read the Book of Mormon. E.McRae and I both think he has potential to be a Stake President here one day. So many more cool people did we meet...(ok that was on accident...but that's how Polish people form their sentances ha). OOO! Ha, speaking of random things breaking in your house that just shouldn't like water pipes- as we left our house on friday, E.McRae turned the key in the lock, to lock the door. As he turned it, the mechanism somehow broke so that the key just spinned freely in the mechanism, locking us out of the house completely. And it wasn't a matter of having a spare key- no key would work at all! So we found a locksmith in this little shop accross the street and he opened our door for us (but had NOOO idea what he was doing! Ha he took a hammer and wedge and just beat the poop out of the lock until it opened ha). He said he could but a new lock on it, but we'd have to wait til 6 that night, which was devestating, cos we had 2 meetings planned, one of which was with the Herman family. But we stayed and planned for our next week while waiting for him to return. Both our meetings were rescheduled for the next day, and all was ok- and espite our frustration at the turn of events, it all worked our for the better, because the entire Herman family would not have been present had we gone Friday night, but Saturday morning, they were all there. We read out of the Liahona, we slid on this frozen pond (IT WAS THE COOLEST EVER!! I have such a good video of me eating it way good ha o goodness), and Ola, the oldest daughter, and I talked about the Gospel the whole time walking back to the Train. (Pop, we go out there and it takes a good while- but they are so amazing! and Poland needs them to be baptized, and I think we're on a good path. We count our Dinner break as part of the trip, and we feel like it's for sure worth it. They are still in our boundaries too). WE're meeting with Irina's son, Arthur twice this week, and that'll be good. Hopefull he will get interested and baptized soon! Ok, I think I'm going to have to wrap it up here. I love you so darn much and you are the best fam in the world to write me like you do. You make me so happy and I truly do feel like the luckiest Older brother in the World to have the siblings I do. I love you fam. Talk to you next week :) - big hug, little hug, big kiss, little kiss, another little kiss, big hug, Starszy Michael Rushton :)