What a great week. Started in Hel and ended in Heaven

 Well Hey there Family and Friends!!!!

Agnieszka, Tomek, and Kasia and Irena What a special day.  With Brother Harker

 I don't know where to begin! Sorry about last week.  Hel was really fun! It's beautiful up there.  The ocean was really cool and the beach was so nice.  This week was amazing.  Started in Hel and ended in Heaven ;) ;) I'll start with Saturday.  There were 4 baptisms; Agnieszka, Tomek, Kasia, and Irena.  Wow, it was so powerful! Brother Harker baptized them and they were so happy.  I can't explain it.  When agnieszka got out, she threw her arms around her kids and said, I love you so much! I felt the love of the Lord there with us and with them.  What a neat experience.  Then on Sunday, they were all confirmed.  that too was a wonderful experience.  I wish there were words to describe it. I am just so filled with love for them and for the gospel.  Their lives have changed soooooo much.  You can literally just see the spirit working in their lives.  It's wonderful.  

     So yesterday after church, we had the wonderful opportunity of having our Mission president and his wife over for dinner.  They sat in our study couches and we ate our our study table hehe :) I made a roast beef with mashed potatoes and gravy and carrots and jello and juice :) I was in heaven being able to cook and have them over and just talk and get to know them more.  What a great experience! Our mission president is so inspired and so humble.  They work so hard and always make sure everyone is taken care of.  It sure means a lot to us.

  

     So aside from those wonderful experiences, there were many throughout the week.  A bunch of little tender mercies.  One day we were sprinting so hard to catch the bus to be on time to our next lesson and I just wanted to stop and walk sooooo bad! But I knew we could still catch it.  So we kept running and running and finally, we made it right as it was pulling away and we got on and made our 30 minute trip.  So cool! :) Then one night we went on a wild referral chase :-) It was clear out in the hills and we took one tram, then another, then a bus, then walked, then another bus, which happened to be wrong, and then we walked forever.  Well, we were just going to call it a night when we got the building and realized we didn't have the apartment number.  BUT we tried the first 2 and ended up finding the person we were looking for!!!! Soooo coooooooool! That was awesome :) That night I celebrated by eating a couple Oreos in milk :) ( and I thought of you daddy!) :) 

      So we try to always invite our investigators (on the first visit) to be baptized when they know this message is true and the God answers their prayers.  Sometimes it's a little scary, cuz we don't know what they'll say. But yesterday this awesome girl named Agata, when we asked her, she said, "If I get to that point, for sure!" We were so excited.  It so good that they know why we're there.  She is cool! So there were so many stories throughout the week, I wish I could share them all.  I am learning so much.  I would also like to apologize to anyone and everyone reading for being selfish and over confident.  I am learning a lot about myself, and I know that I have a long way to go.  But I hope that you can forgive me for not always being the best listener or the best person to turn to.  I hope the Lord can make the turn in me throughout this short time in my life. 

     Well, I have to go.  I wish I could stay and write forever.  I love you all. Thank you all for taking care of my family.  I miss them and I miss all of you.  This gospel is worth it all.  Have a great week.  Till next week! :) Love, Sister Shelby Ostler

Wonderful Baptism

Irena with her husband who is already a member

At the beach in Hel

The sisters with sister Harker

With the elders at the beach

After the baptism with Agnieszka and Irena

     

Be careful what you pray for...

Hey there Family and Friends! 

       How is life? I hope everything is going good. Is it still summer over there? It's turning into fall here.  Starting to rain more and get chilly! :) I think it's kind of fun.  But not a lot of time to cuddle up to the fire place and drink hot chocolate ya know? This just isn't the time for that.  Makes me think that I sure took some things for granted before now, that is for sure.  So this week was good.  I have to start by saying- as soon as I gave that challenge last week in my letter, I was put to the test.  I don't know why, but I just had a tough, rough, struggle for a couple of days.  I was forced to apply my own challenge to just "Be happy".  It was hard, and I think I discovered that it is almost impossible to put things aside and just be happy without help from our Father in Heaven.  It's just too hard to try to do it by myself.  I needed some comfort and some ... perspective. And the only place I can get that from is prayer.  So, that is something that I learned this week and it's sure helping me now even.  :) 

      So, where to begin!? I have an example of prayer for ya! So... I'll admit, I eat a lot.  There I said it.  So at the end of the day, when we get home for dinner, I eat SOOOO much! I'm just starving! So I made it a goal to try to eat less, and of course, I prayed for help as I try to accomplish this goal.  So...... God, being the kind Father that he is, answered my prayers! We went to buy our food today and neither of us had any money on our cards! We had ZERO! So.... I used my own money, which made us really only buy the necessities right? Yeah, We realized later on that that was, in some round about way, an answer to prayer.  Hehe.  Sometimes I think He gets a laugh out of our prayers- maybe just mine- but really :-) So yeah,  that was a fun lesson learned.  Be careful what you pray for too! :) 

      Okay, so I LOVE the members and investigators that we have here in Gdansk.  They are amazing.  Agnieszka and her daughter, Kasia, gave a talk to us for our last lesson.  We asked them to both prepare one on Humility.  It was sooooo good! They both had their resources and their sweet testimonies of Humility.  It was really cool.  Then we went to Samjit's (the member from Thailand) and she had made us like 6 or 7 rolls of Sushi!!! She is so sweet! We sure love her.  Then in English/Book of Mormon reading class, Lukas drew the coolest drawing of Lehi's vision of the Tree of Life! So cool! He is awesome.  He had a really cool interpretation too.  I love our class :) Oh! and our member, josef and his wife who isn't a member, irena, is picking a baptismal date! We are so excited for them!!! Ahhhh! they want to go through the temple together.  It makes me so happy.  

      Well, My hands hurt from typing so fast.  I only have a few more minutes.  But I did something today in personal study, it was cool. I mapped out my conversion.  I made a time line of my life and I had the ups be the spiritual times and the downs be the... non spiritual times (or less-spiritual).  Then I looked for patterns and reasons why there was an up or a down in certain areas.  It was really neat.  I learned a lot.  So that is my challenge for all of you.  Take a few minutes and map out your life and ask yourself what things have happened or have you done that have brought the most happiness or the least happiness.  Then live according to which ones brought the most.  It's really cool. Let me know how it goes.  

Are they talking on the phone...or maybe the recorder.....

Yum Yum Sushi.  Shelby must be in heaven

Looks pretty healthy Shelbs....

      Okay, well, I better go.  I sure love this mission. Hands down it is the hardest thing I've ever done.  All day, every day.  But I look at the Prophet and all the apostles who have done this or are going to be doing this for the rest of their lives.  They amaze me.  This work is worth every drop of sweat and every mile walked (or ran).  It's just worth it.  I hope everyone gets the opportunity to serve.  As my great friend Danny told me, this is the only time you get to "Walk with the Father and live like the Son."  Have a great week! :) 

Love, Sister Shelby Ostler

Sister Ostler is blonde again....she must have found a hair salon in Poland

Hey Friends and Fam

Gdansk Missionaries

Wowie, what a great week.  Where to begin where to begin? I don't know where the time goes, it just flies! This week was full of a lot of miracles.  First I want to talk about some of our investigators.  They are so cool! One is about 50.  She is trying so hard to learn English. She's intrigued by the pioneers and mapped out a bunch of stuff in the Book of Mormon. Pretty much, she wants to be baptized.  She just gets it, ya know? Her name is Janina and she is so cool!  Her husband is living in England for a while and we will teach him when he gets back.  We have so much hope for her! :) So another one is named Aleksandra.  She's just this spunky lady around 65.  We met with her for the second time on friday and she invited a friend to listen in.  We gave a lesson on the restoration and Aleksandra was just excited about it, she couldn't stop telling her friend more and more.  They love how we pray in our own words and how we can repent.  They are so fancy and elegant, they just make us smile.  Then her other friend comes over! We taught all 3 of them and are meeting with them again in a while because they wanted more time to read the Book of Mormon. Sooo cool! :) So yeah, we love them.  There's lots more, but that's all for now.

      So one really neat experience this week was in our previous english class which is now our book of Mormon reading class.  We had 4 people and a member in on the lesson.  We had them act-out chapter 4 of 1st Nephi and then we talked about it.  It was really interesting to see the different responses.  One of them (who has SSSSOOOOO much potential) had a really hard time with Nephi being commanded to kill Laban.  It can be a tough subject to talk about, but it really opened the door for her to start thinking more about it.  We talked about the nature of God, and how much He really loves us.  And then, one of the other girls, Mili, joined in and started talking about God in the Old Testament and it was so cool to see them help turn this story into real life.  The Book of Mormon is so great! She will come to know this truth and she will be so strong, you can just see it! :) I love it.  

      Okay, so pretty much, I love the first 4 or 5 hours of the day.  We go running, get ready, have personal study, have companionship study, and then 12-week program (Which is awesome).  Personal study is so great!!! For an hour we just get to read and study from the Book of Mormon, Preach my Gospel and church magazines.  It is so uplifting! Then we get to talk about it comp study.  This week I studied compassion a lot, and that was sure powerful to me.  Compassion sure goes a long way. It means so much to me when someone shows compassion or empathy, so I tried to study how we can implement more love and compassion everyday to those around us.  Christ is just the perfect example.  So I've noticed that when we sing in our lessons, the spirit is always stronger.  We've been doing that as much as possible.  It's really neat. 

     Okay, so a few things I've learned and my challenge for you.  First of all, I learned that if all else fails, and nothing else is working out in life, no matter what it may be- Hard work will bring you comfort and confidence.  That is something we can control.  Second-  By our willingness to be consistent, we are blessed consistently, and when we are not committed and are wavering, our lives too, will be unconsistent and will waver from time to time.  So, here's my challenge.  Pick one thing in your life and be consistent in it.  Maybe it will be praying mornings and nights, maybe it'll be reading 20 minutes a day, maybe it'll be changing every little complaint into something you're grateful for, and maybe it's just consistently trying to share your love for others around you.  I have chosen the complaining one.  I know it sure helps me to be consistently happy here on this mission.  I testify that being consistent in this gospel will bring blessings.  :) :) 

Haha. I knew it was just a matter of time until Shelby
found a hair salon.
Now I think they are teaching the hair dresser :)
Cute dress Shelby.....
and cute hair Sister Ostler and Sister Bez

Love It!!!!!!!

These great Sisters earned the Standard of Excellence.....
They love to talk to people.....and people love them

A lesson on the beach.....

Beautiful Poland

Baltic Sea in the baskground

      Okay, I am trying to think of what else to say.  My mind always goes blank under pressure! :) Well, I have a fantastic trainer. I really feel like I couldn't be more blessed.  She is so solid! Every day I learn something new from her, whether it's gospel related, teaching related or polish related.  I hope we get to serve together longer.  We've become great friends. :) So the other day we walked into this old house/apartment and it was pretty sketchy....... spider webs all over and then on the old stairs there was this huge cat with a tumor on it's face and it was breathing heavily and staring really creepily at us.  I had to laugh because it was like this old scene in a movie and were right in the middle of it.  So funny :) Well, life is great.  I love the mission.  It's hard work.  I'm pooped about 98% of the time, but it feels so good! How do you explain that??? I'm not sure, but it's a good feeling.  Life is great.  I hope you're all doing great at home.  Remember I love you all :) Enjoy the journey! :)

      Love, Sister Ostler