Familiy night in Lublin

When we came back to Poland after Christmas we decided there was NEVER going to be a dull moment. We vowed to stay busy... There is much to see and do here on this side of the planet...

The members in Lublin hadn't caught on to Family Home Evening. They didn't really understand it's point. So President Mecham introduced this concept last Monday and instituted monthly branch FHE here in Lublin. It was a HIT!

This FHE was focusing on goals. After understanding the importance of goals, we set our own branch goals for this year.
1) Progress personally in the gospel. Thank Heaven the church already instituted programs for this purpose: Personal Progress for all the sisters ages 12- death. Duty to God for all the priesthood ages 12- death. Faith in God for all the primary children. The members are soooo excited!
2) Read the Book of Mormon! Daily study of this book will change lives! The members in Lublin are reading it!
3) Go to the temple. Our temple is in Frieberg, Germany. Our branch will be attending that together in November. That is going to be lots of personal and branch work... There will be many attending for the first time. We are really excited!

With the introduction of each of these goals there was an action item activity which took place... after all, a goal with no action is just vanishing thought.
somehow I missed the photos of the "night crawler" portion of this activity. It was awesome though.
1)night crawler activity was a huge pan of gummy bears and worms in chocolate pudding. Each team nominated a representative who was instructed to find as many worms as they could only using their mouth. Elder Kennedy killed Mariusz at this! I think mariusz like the American pudding more than he cared about the gummy worms.
The point was that as we set goals there will be many deterants and most of them will be good. But if we want to achieve that goal we must only go for the best things that will help us do that. The bears didn't count for points... only the worms.
2) finding hidden mini safety pins in a pile of rice is harder than it looks...

Beata and Marlena battled for the treasure's in the rice. Marlena won by a landslide!
The point was that searching the scriptures for its treasures will bless our lives.

3) Lemons are sour! If you squeeze 1/4 of a lemon you won't have enough lemon juice to make a picher of lemonade. But if you squeeze and sqeeze, little by little you will have enough!

Marlena begged for another turn at this one... She loves lemons! So McKay gave up his spot as the lemon juice sucker to her while Fidel was her fierce aponent. The rules were to suck juice out of the each lemon wedge and spit it in the cup. 3 MINUTES!!! Whomever had the most juice at the end won!
The point was that little by little, if we keep working on the goal we will achieve that goal... Our goal, of course, is going to that temple in Germany!

On another note:
Last night we hosted a missionary discussion at our house! Pawo was introduces to the church while living in England a few months ago. He moved back to Poland to be closer to home in January and looked up the missionaries to continue his investigations of the church. He is getting baptized in April. Sabastian is Marlena's 13 year old son. He is investigating the church also. His introduction came through his faithful mother. Last night Sabastian accepted the invitation to be baptized in April. Cole will be 8 next week. He will also be baptized when grandparents arrive to this part of the world... That will be 3 baptisms in Lublin this year. In the past 2 1/2 years there has only been 1 baptism here. We are soooooo EXCITED!

In the NEWS:
We are moving to England in July! The dome here is finising up early and Mr. Mecham will just have to travel a bit to finish up closing negotiations. Mr. Potter, whom he works with, is BEYOND capable to do the rest. I think even the Potters will get to go early on a new assignment! We are going to miss Poland and our friends. It is a bitter sweet feeling to think about moving to England. We just fell in love with POland... and so we know that in time we will feel the same about England...
When we told Marlena (last night) that we were moving she said, "President, at family night you told us we would ALL be in the temple together this year". Then she stared at Mr. Mecham like her statement was a question... until he answered, "then I guess Becky and I will meet you in Germany this November". Knowing that I get to see our Polish friends again in November will make moving a little easier! If you were hoping to come put your feet under our Polish table you better make plans sooner than later...

Our obsession to create life:
The children have found out just how inviting it is to create new life... on dragonvale. Their breeding caves are always occupied. It's a good time.

I can not describe the excitement around here when a new dragon is hatched! Never a dull moment!