Why?
Because I get to add another baptism to my mission total. You know, every time somebody asks me where I went on my mission, I say "Poland", and the next thing they usually ask is "Was it a hard mission." I say, "Yes" and then they ask how many baptisms I had. I say 1, and that person is Bozena Zaleska, a very wonderful lady who I have no contact with anymore, although I do get emails from her son every Christmas and Easter. Her son has a website that is focused on his "partner" and his daughter with a link to lds.org that is labeled "My Church". I don't count him in my baptism total because I only met him once and the missionaries after me did most of the work. I did send him an email the other day asking about him and his mother, but no reply thus far.
The person I get to add to my total is one of my favorite Poles ever, if not my most favoritest. Her name is Ania and we met her at our weekly service, a place for mentally handicapped kids in Katowice, which is in southern Poland. She was about our age so we kind of stayed away from her, you know, mission rules and all, but she kept asking us about our church and mission, so we referred her and her friend to the sisters. They taught them and Ania was very excited about it. She read the entire Book of Mormon within a matter of a couple months and I vaguely remember her coming to church a couple of times. The sisters had a firm date with her, but her mom was so vehemently opposed that she had a hard time coming to church and just couldn't get baptized.
As it happens with so many investigators, missionaries just give up if they don't see a baptism in the immediate future. I still called her every couple of weeks to invite her to activities, which she always came to, and we always had long, sincere conversations about the gospel.
Of course, there was also the concern that she was interested in the handsome missionaries and not very sincere about the gospel. I would say that any good missionary can tell whether somebody is really sincere, deep in their heart. I also think the Spirit can manifest this, as well. I always thought she was extremely sincere about it, and whether or not she was interested in any particular missionary wasn't going to affect her search for truth.
I got transferred to a different area after 4 months in Katowice, but this area was close enough to Katowice that we still went down there every few weeks. I remember I hadn't spoken with Ania for a few weeks and then I got a call from her one day, and she was super excited. I don't remember the specifics, but it went something like this:
Ania: I know the Book of Mormon is true! (She had been struggling with getting a confirmation that the Book of Mormon was true for a very long time, and she was getting a bit frustrated with Moroni's promise. Most of our conversations we had were around this.)
Kent: That's great! How did it happen?
Ania: Well, I was getting really tired of never getting an answer about it, so one day I just kept praying and praying until God would give me an answer. Finally I got told to open the Bible to a random page, and I would know based on what that page says. Well, I opened it to Ezekial, where it talks about the two sticks, and I never heard of those scriptures before, and I knew it was true!
I don't know if this is exactly what happened, but it was similar to this. Ania can confirm/deny this if she ever reads this. Anyway, I thought that was great. Unfortunately, Ania could not get baptized, although she so badly wanted to.
Time passed and we always stayed in contact. I went home, came back to Poland a year later and visited her there, and she still had the desire to be baptized, but her mom was still against it. Her mom, for the record, was very very nice to us, but she just thought that being anything other than a Catholic was very unPolish.
Eventually, I became very lazy with my email contact and heard from her less and less. A couple of years ago she moved to England and mentioned she may be getting baptized, but I had heard that so many times before.
On Tuesday, I wrote her a small email, asking her if she still used her address and to write back. I got back an immediate response. In the last 2 years since I heard from her, she:
1. Got baptized
2. Got married
3. Had twins
4. Will be getting sealed in the temple in a month!
So I'm really excited to not only hear from her but also find out that her life is going so well! Ania is one of the few friends that I am closest to, and hearing all that from her has really made me sincerely happy. I'm glad that she never gave up in her quest to be baptized and to never reject what she knew to be true. She is truly an example to me and the rest of us.
Here is a picture of her and her family I found on her website, I hope she forgives me for posting it (as well as this entire post!), but they look so happy:
2 comments:
Well congrats! I had heard mention of a former investigator committing to baptism after my mission, which filled me with great joy. Alas, I heard later that it fell through. And I didn't look her up any time this past fall (my bad). My guess is she died, never having accepted the gospel of reconciliation. She was one of those babickas who you're not sure understand why the missionaries are there. But glad to hear there's a new Polish family in the church!
That's really great- I'm truly happy for you. Good too that you are still in touch. I only have contacts w/ my former comps (2 of them, at that) and I only served a few miles north of the border.
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