Random Pictures and the Wonderful Malls in Poznan

It's Family Home Evening Night, Institute and FHE activity. It's as cold as a "Pirate's heart". It's about -10C and I'm amazed that anyone in their right mind ventures out in this cold. Jola is getting ready to teach Institute.

It is also Marta's birthday so we celebrated that as well. We bought her a cool string bracelet with her name engraved on the heart. She is awesome. She teaches Gospel Doctrine, is in on any discussion the Missionaries need her on and is preparing herself to go on aa mission as soon as she is 21 years old.

The pictures above and below are Mall pictures. The Malls in Poland are wonderful and far surpass the Malls in the States. The Mall pictures you see above and a few below are pictures of the Mall in Centrum Poznan. the Mall is in a renovated brick building and is huge with 2 seperate areas seperated by a beautiful Atruim. The Mall is beautiful in design with attention paid to every detail so it is pleasing to the eye. These pictures don't do it justice.

The picture below is of part of the Atrium that is open during the summer months with tables and seating outside so shoppers can listen to the musical performances. One of the above pictures is another view of the Atrium.
The mall seen below is right across the street from our apartment and is also great on a slightly smaller scale. This the view from our balcony. Below you will see the parking garage. they have a unique system here. Every parking stall has a geen light above it if it is empty and a red light if full and at the end of the row a lit sign telling you how many parking spaces are available in that row. Also in the garage is a full car wash and detail place so you can leave your car while shopping and pick it up when you are ready to go home.




Below is the inside of the 1st floor, there is also a billboard of the community of Malta where we livee. As you can tell it is all apartments. There are no private homes here.


The food court is on the top floor and has every kind of food you can imagine including even Kentucky Fried and Mcdonalds. the seating area looks over Lake Malta which right now is frozen so at any given period you can see ice skaters.


These pictures are up in the food court. Salad and Company has, besides salads of all kinds, baked salmon and creamed spinach which is soooo good. There is a fountain on the first floor which lights up as it shoots forth water, you can see the blue lights. On the main floor is a booth called Szatnia. that is where you can check your coat and packages while you shop so you don't have to carry coats and sacks all over the mall.






The Grycan store is an ice cream shop and their ice cream is so good and so rich. The Piotr I Pawel is a store like Whole Foods in the states and their Cukiernia (Bakery) has all sorts of wonderful pastries. Piotr has really good fresh fruits and vegetables. We buy apples there almost every day along with a fresh loaf of bread. Our treat in the afternoon is a sliced apple sprinkled with sea salt and some slices of sharp chedder cheese.
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The Super Apteka is a big Pharmacy plus cosmetics.

The Malls are so great that even though I hate to shop, I love to walk through these malls. It's not just Poznan, Warsaw had great Malls too. so, sometimes we just wander through, pick up dinner at the Food Court and at the end of a busy day, it's a good way to finish out.

YSA, Branch conference lunch and District meeting

At our District meeting on Monday, President Nielson and Sister Nielson gave us Kinder Eggs. You can't find them in the states. You open them up and break the chocolate egg in half and inside is a prize. I got a tiny ATV that I put together, one of the Elders got a cat balloon, one got a tiny airplane, one was a spinning top etc. Crazy little things that are so tiny.

Below this picture, Elder Marsing our district leader is giving us, mainly the young Elders and Sisters some Polish language practice. They have given us up as a lost cause.

Sister Sheahan and Sister Leppanen are thinking they have the quizz figured out. Of course, Elder Rogers and Elder Fletcher think they do too. The prizes that we all got were the Kinder eggs. Presiddnt Nielson even has one.

After Branch conference on Sunday, we had a potluck supper with lots of good food. President Nielson, Sister Nielson and the District presidency was there. It was a great Sunday!!



Our wonderful District Presidency always gives us the support we need.
In the back is Andy Armstrong, counselor in the District, Dariusz Dresler our District President, Zbigniew Rzeczycki on the District council. In front is Magda Dresler,she is over Family History in Warsaw and Gosia Rzeczycki our District Relief Society President.

Our cute YSA investigators, Bulic, Lydia and Karolina. We had plenty of food and everyone was hungry.

After food we had to have a picture of the YSAs who were at the dinner.

At our YSA activity, we had a game called egg drop. The object was to wrap your egg some way to prevent it from breaking when you stood on a chair and dropped it on the floor. We were able to use 2 paper cups, 4 pipe cleaners, 2 paper plates, 2 sheets of paper. We had some interesting inventions as you will see.

Sister Leppanen decided her egg was really protected so she threw her egg down and guess what.... it broke...

Oh! Oh!

All in all, only S. Leppanen's egg broke
so i guess she was the loser!!

Random..YSA nd Kasia

It was Monday night and time for FHE, it was time for games and food. this was Elder Buckner's last day as he was being transferred to Wroclaw. This was the craziest of all games and I will describe it later. Here you see Elder Buckner, Lydia, Marta and S. Sheahan.

Ross is throwing all his enthusiasm into the game. What the game consists of is choosing tthe vegetable you want to be. then you make up a sign for that veegetablee like a wave or whistle or whatever. One person starts by making his sign and calling for another vegetable who has to respond quickly and keep it going. You also have to call out the vegetable with a high voice and no teeth showing. the faster it gets the funnier. It actually is sort of stupid but fun and a crackup to watch. By the way, I was a carrot and Ross was an apple even though it wasn't a vegetable. Elder Rogers is next to Ross.

Alicia is sitting next to Elder Buckner as marta makes her sign for pinapple.

Next to Marta is our new Elder, Elder Marsing who comes from a small town in Idaho. His last area was Lublin Poland, another very small Branch.

This is aa continuation of the game on Saturday when we had a YSA activity with lots of different games and Pizza. Kasia Gorniak is in the blue shirt. she's staying the weekend with us. She was one of our YSAs from Poland and we love her.

Our little combined choir is practising for their special musical number for Sacrament meeting.

Kasia and I before Church on Sunday. And that's about a wrap, folks!!!!