Sister Coles and I met some amazing people on the street who I'm really excited to teach this week- and Ekin is still keeping his promise to live the word of wisdom (at least until Jan 20, because we only got him to promise to go without his hookah for 3 weeks- so he could see the difference in his life). He believes in the Book of Mormon and comes to church every week, but he thinks it would be too hard for him to join the church- too much opposition from his family in Turkey and too much social pressure from his friends in Poland. We had one of the members, Wiktor, on the lesson with us, who had the chance to tell Ekin how much opposition he faced (and still faces) from his Catholic family and everyone at school, but how he joined the church anyway because he knew it was true. And how he would make the same decision no matter where he was from or what religion his family was. Wiktor's awesome. He's 17 years old and despite being the only person his age in the entire branch, and in spite of what his family thinks, he always faithfully comes to church and institute, and comes with us on lessons whenever he can. I have so much respect for the members here in Poland. They're such amazing people!

We had a good New Year's here too. One of the members, Bożena, invited us over for dinner and then all of us missionaries went back to the chapel to hang out together and wait for midnight- but at 11:00 pm, we got a call from the zone leaders telling us that we all needed to be in our own separate apartments- and that we weren't allowed to be hanging out together. Our whole zone (at least 20 missionaries) had no idea and just assumed that the rules would be the same as last year. Apparently something got lost in communication. But as soon as we found that out, we all headed back to our own apartments and Sister Coles and I got home just in time to watch all of the fireworks from our balcony. In Poland, all fireworks are legal on New Year's (even the big stadium ones) and everybody all over the city lights them off. There were big fireworks in every direction for at least half an hour solid and sporadic ones well into the night after that. We still had an amazing view from our balcony and after they'd died down for the most part, we got to go inside and get right into bed, rather than fight through crowds to get home at 1 in the morning, which was nice. The next day all of us missionaries met together to celebrate the New Year, and we opened bottles of non-alchoholic fruit champagne and sprayed them out the window at noon instead of midnight. It was still way fun. And the streets were completely empty on New Year's Day. All of the stores were closed, because everyone in the entire city was sleeping.