Life in Szczecin!

Hey hey hey family! 

Well, life out here in Szczecin is interesting. It's a smaller town, like Bydgoszcz, with about 400,000 inhabitiants. I think I like these smaller towns better than Warsaw. Eh, I'm not sure. I loved Warsaw. Anyway, it's been a new experience. As much as I loved Bydgoszcz (and I truly did. That branch is awesome) I was glad to get out to a new city. Elder H is awesome. I've never seen a more dedicated trainee. He's so focused on the work and his mission. It's great and just what I needed. He's 20, from Orange County California. I'm excited to serve with him. We're setting some high goals and we'll hopefully see some good success. Elder Mikolyski is not trunky in the slightest. He's ready to work hard and end his mission on a bang. I'm so happy to be serving around him again. We had a good laugh about the irony of our situation. He started out as my district leader, then was my zone leader. Then we both went to Warsaw, he as Assistant and me as a Senior Companion. After that, I was his Zone Leader, and now I'm his district leader on his very last transfer in the country. He's the best. I've been so blessed to be able to serve around him my whole mission and see the growth that's taken place in him. He's a spiritual giant. He's going to do great things in this last transfer with Elder F. Elder F is awesome as well. You were right, he's a great missionary. Basically, we're going to do some awesome work this transfer, and we have a district goal to baptize four people. It's totally going to happen. We've got some great missionaries and awesome work to do.

This is my President's emal portion for the day:

It's been a great week up here in Szczecin. I'm enjoying being here in this branch with this district. I'm grateful the Lord has placed me here. I feel that this district has a special chance to do some great things. We've taken some time and set some goals as a district for what we want to accomplish. We set some goals for number totals we want to see throughout the transfer. They are as follows:
4 Baptisms
24 Investigators in Sacrament Meeting
32 New Investigators
200 Total Lessons Taught
200 Copies of The Book of Mormon Placed
Each companionship has committed to play their half and do what they need to in order to achieve these goals. I really am excited for the things this district can do. We have a lot of hard-working missionaries and a real desire to do the Lord's work. I'm also realizing just how much of a blessing it is that the district is smaller. It's going to allow me to know all of the missionaries in my district better and tailor district meetings specifically to their needs. We're excited to get down to work and do our best.
I've been studying the past few days about meekness. I'm still having a hard time separating it from humility. I'm beginning to think they are more or less the same thing. The more I learn, the more I realize just how hard of an attribute it is to develop. I recognize that I want to receive recognition for everything I do by those around me. Such is the natural man. Yet, true meekness, true excellence, does not draw attention to itself. It's such a hard attribute to develop. Pride is so evident in all we do as human beings. I know that if I continue to strive to learn about humility and meekness, try to develop it, and give thanks to the Lord for all that I have, I will make progress.

Well, in other news, the recordings work! I just loaded them onto my voice recorder and I'm going to go listen to them when we get home! I'm super excited to see what all of you have to say.

My entrance to Szczecin was exciting. Well, I should say the first day I was here. After dropping off my bags, we were on our way to the chapel. We stopped at a grocery store so I could grab a bottle of water to leave in the chapel. On our way out, I got pelted with what felt like a handful of rice. Sadly, it was much worse. I got pooped on by what seemed like a flock of pigeons! It wasn't just one little dropping, but more like 10. Some landed on my head, some on my backpack, and some on my shirt. We had to go wash me off at the chapel. Luckily, it was at the end of the day, so we didn't have to do much work with a poopy shirt. Oh the adventures of missionary work! That was an interesting omen. But, it was not predictive of the things happening here. I'm loving it in Szczecin. I'll do my best to take some pictures this week and to send them next week.

As for more of an update on the week, saying goodbye to Bydgoszcz was sad. We went over to the Kagele's for a dinner and had a great time. Elder Allen was playing songs on the ukelele and we were all singing and just talking for a minute. It almost felt like I was back home. It was a super strange deja vu sort of experience. Like Yogi Berra would say, "It's deja vu all over again." The Kagele's are an awesome family though. What a blessing they are to the missionaries in Bydogszcz and that branch.

To pronounce Szczecin, I would say the closest pronounciation would be sh-che-cheen. Yeah, that's about as close as I'm going to get.

Pictures take forever to load on this computer, and I'm running out of time, so those will come next week.

I'm excited that BYU pulled off the win against Texas! That's big news. Hopefully they'll be able to do ok this year. And congrats for AF! Ah, I'm always so happy when my football teams do well.

I apologize, I'm really out of time, so I can't do personal notes this week, but know that I love you all. I know the gospel is true! LIfe is awesome as a missionary and I miss you all lots!

With lots and lots of love!

Elder Vernon