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Young
Polish Convert Helping Church Grow
Marcin
Dabrowski, a 25-year-old LDS convert of three years, is in
many ways typical of the 1,500 faithful Saints in Poland.
by
Laurie Williams Sowby
WARSAW, POLAND -- It's a pleasant afternoon the last Saturday in July
in Warsaw's Lazienki Park. Local citizens relax on park benches
and lawns surrounding the pond and rose gardens in front of the
huge Frederic Chopin monument. Next to the monument, under a canopy,
sits an ebony grand piano which will serve as the solo instrument
as artist after artist takes the stage in a Chopin marathon, the
crowning event in a weeklong festival honoring Poland’s native son.
Marcin Dabrowski, a 25-year-old convert who
was baptized in March 2001, stands in front of the Warsaw Central
(First) Branch building, the only free-standing LDS chapel in Poland.
The lot next door has been designated for a temple.
My 18-year-old son Rob and I are here today as guests of
Marcin Dabrowski, a 25-year-old LDS convert who is serving as our
guide during a three-day visit to Warsaw. Knowing our interest in music, he has arranged
for us to attend this concert today as well as to play the piano
in branch services Sunday morning.
We didn't plan on this concert, but it's a nice bit of serendipity
-- as is the fact that the following day, Sunday, Aug. 1, 2004, marks the 60th anniversary of
the Warsaw Uprising, when citizens took up arms against their Nazi
oppressors and held out for two months before being suppressed.
We will be privileged to join in the anniversary of that historic
event, which justifiably celebrates the resilient Polish spirit.
We will see the newly opened Uprising Museum and the long wall on
which are engraved the names of some 200,000 Warsaw citizens who
died during the uprising.
Rebuilt Warsaw boasts many large parks. This
one, Lazienki Park, features a huge monument of Frederic Chopin,
where an Sunday afternoon concerts and an annual Chopin Festival
is held.
We'll also visit Ogrod Saski (Saxon Garden), with its flowers, fountains, and Tomb of the Unknown
Soldier. In this park on an early morning in 1977, President Spencer
W. Kimball dedicated Poland for the preaching of the gospel. In a brief lesson
on local Church history, Marcin tells us the Poland Warsaw Mission
was created in July 1990 from the Austria Vienna East Mission, with
Walter Whipple as its first president.
Earlier this day, Marcin has walked us into the rebuilt
city center which overlooks the Wisla (Vistula) River, Poland's largest. On Sunday afternoons in the Old Town square, LDS missionaries
set up their easels with information on the Church and invitations
to join English or stop-smoking courses. They sing hymns to attract
attention.
Marcin plays the role of local guide for
English-speaking visitors to Warsaw. The Old Town is an amazing
reconstruction of the city, which lay in ruins at the end of World
War II.
The lovely Old Town facades and peaceful ambiance of Warsaw's
narrow cobblestone streets, wide boulevards and broad parks make
it hard to believe the city once lay in ruins, 85 percent destroyed
by the close of World War II. By contrast, here we sit in this beautiful
park, awaiting via loudspeakers some of the most beautiful music
ever written.
Marcin translates the announcer's words for us before the
concert begins. His English is more than adequate, thanks to studies
at Warsaw University, where he graduated in 2003 with
a degree in Polish literature. He took Russian in elementary school
for five years when Poland was still under Soviet rule and also speaks German.
He is often called upon to translate Church talks or materials and
to serve as a guide when English-speaking parents come to Warsaw
to pick up their missionaries. Currently employed in the library
at Warsaw University, Marcin's dream is to work for the church's
translation department, bringing more LDS materials -- including
a more complete hymn book -- to Poles in their native tongue.
Rob Sowby and Marcin Dabrowski work out currency
equivalencies in Polish zlotys and American dollars against the
backdrop of the Warsaw's Old Town fortress walls.
As Marcin tells it, he was a "golden" investigator
when the elders, whom he'd been passing on his street for four years,
asked directions to the small grocery store -- and also if he'd
like to hear about their church. He didn't smoke or drink and had
no serious habits to break, and after meeting with missionaries
for two months, was baptized in March 2001. Despite some flak from
his divorced parents and step-siblings, he's never looked back.
Marcin says his story is typical of many of the other 1,500
Polish Saints who are the only members of the Church in their families.
"It is not easy to be LDS in a country where the Catholic tradition
is very strong." Yet he sees that young people are more open
to change than their elders are. One of his goals is to strengthen
other Church members with daily prayer and reading of the Book of
Mormon.
A few members of the Warsaw Central (First)
Branch pose outside the chapel after Sunday meetings.
"It's hard for me to imagine now another life,"
he says, noting his many Church friends. Much of his time once spent
swimming or reading or listening to music is now filled with Church
service, sometimes to the dismay of the widowed grandmother, a lifelong
Catholic, whose tidy apartment he shares. (He notes she was given
the apartment by the Polish government as a reward for her efforts
in rebuilding the city after World War II.)
Since his baptism three and a half years ago, Marcin has
served as branch executive secretary and counselor and is currently
district executive secretary and a seminary teacher in weekly night
classes. The classes are held at the Central (Warsaw First) Branch,
which has the only free-standing LDS chapel in Poland. (Other branches
meet in rented facilities.) Marcin happily recounts the history
of the building, which was dedicated by then-Elder Gordon B. Hinckley
in June 1991 and recently renovated to add a baptismal font, Relief
Society and elders' quorum rooms, and other classrooms. The small
chapel's doors are opened into the cultural hall nearly every week
to accommodate the branch's steadily growing membership. Members
hope the large, tree-filled lot next door, which is also owned by
the Church, will one day have a temple on it.
They must now go to Freiberg, Germany, but the 11-hour bus
trip hasn't dampened their enthusiasm for temple work. According
to Marcin, the Freiberg Temple president regards the Polish Saints
as some of the hardest working in the temple's area. "Whenever
a temple trip is organized," says Marcin, "people from
Poland are very excited. Many times, there are not enough places
in the hotel next to the temple" to accommodate them all. "They're
doing a lot of baptisms for the dead plus endowments," he adds.
Soldiers guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in
Saxon Garden. In this park in 1977, President Spencer W. Kimball
dedicated Poland for the preaching of the gospel.
For Marcin himself, who feels he prepared well in discussions
with both missionaries and the mission president before making his
initial trip to the temple for his own endowment a year ago, "The
temple is a very special place where I can find answers for my eternal
questions." He is grateful for the humble, faithful, hard-working
missionaries in Poland and hopes to one day "find a wonderful
eternal companion and have a great, strong LDS family." He
concludes, "My testimony about this Church, Joseph Smith, and
the priesthood grow stronger day after day."
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