Until a couple of years ago, Danuta Jampolska never tried to quit smoking because she thought she didn't have the willpower to do it. After all, she had been smoking for 18 years.
But all that changed in 1989 when she - as a tour guide from Warsaw, Poland - was hired to work with the BYU Folk Dancers on a segment of their summer tour to the Soviet Union, Poland and England.It was then she felt a special spirit about the group and the spirit of Elijah as she began helping one member of the troupe find records of her ancestors in the central European country.
"I had 10 years experience as a tour leader and I never had met a group like them. They didn't drink or smoke. They were so polite. I never heard anyone quarreling or swearing. It was like we were in a different world," she said.
"When my job was over, I had this feeling that I would like to stay with them and find somebody to talk to. I asked hundreds of questions."
Cathy Herbut Black, one of the leaders who accompanied the group, answered questions and later sent the tour guide a copy of the Book of Mormon, which eventually led to her baptism last December. The two formed a quick bond after the tour guide learned that Sister Black was from Canada and had family roots in Poland.
"The first thing she said was, `Who is this Cathy Black?' It was almost an uncanny instant connection," Sister Black related. "I was the only one on the list from Canada, where she had worked earlier and where she learned English, and that interested her."
Sister Black also had family ties in southern Poland and was interested in tracking down some names while she was on tour; she asked the guide for help.
"When I saw where we were going to be in southern Poland, I realized we would be less than 100 miles from the little villages where my grandparents were born," Sister Black said. "My first thought was that it would be nice to go there, and then I decided I had to get there and had to find someone to help me get there."
She had planned to find someone in Bielsko-Biala to help her rent a car and to find a translator. "When I got there, the people were too involved in the festival and couldn't help me so I asked Danuta for help."
Meanwhile, the job as a tour guide for the group ended after accompanying the dancers in northern Poland from Warsaw to Mragrowo for three days. In addition to her work as a tour guide, she is also busy in management and promotion of cultural events for the Cultural Center Ochota in Warsaw.
But the two made an appointment to meet and travel to the two small villages where Sister Black's grandparents were born - in Novawes and in Krolowa-Gorna.
"If somebody needs help, I just help," Sister Jampolska said. "I knew if Cathy would go by herself, she would find nothing."
Before meeting Sister Black for their appointment to go to the villages, the tour guide returned to Warsaw and began making phone calls to locate records and search for any of Sister Black's relatives in those villages.
"An incredible amount of things happened in that one day we met together," Sister Black explained. "I was able to get birth records on my grandfather and found my great-great-grandparents that I hadn't known about before from a records office in Kamionka-Wielka."
In a previous phone call to Nowysacz (a city near Krolowa-Gorna, the village where Sister Black's grandfather was born) the tour guide found a man living there with the same surname as Sister Black's maiden name. She arranged for a visit.
Sister Black began to cry when she walked into the home of Mieczyslaw Herbut because he looked almost identical to her father, Michael. The two men are not sure how or if they are related.
When she found the records for her great-grandparents, she learned that her cousin had been named Anastasia Stafiniak, the same name she found on the records in Kamionka-Wielka as the name of her great-great-grandmother.
"I am the only member of the Church in my whole family," said Sister Black. "It is such a beautiful experience for me, having an LDS point of view, to see the hearts of the children being turned to their fathers.
"If I didn't have a testimony of family history before the trip, it is definitely there now. I think I was taken by the hand and guided to every place. Other members of my family have traveled to Poland as well, but I think I was able to find so much because Danuta was an angel sent to help me."
Before leaving Poland, the BYU group invited Sister Jampolska to attend sacrament meeting in their hotel, which was a testimony meeting. "It was incredible," she recounted. "I saw people weeping. People don't do that in Poland. They cry at funerals, but not at church on Sunday."
The group introduced her to the mission president and she was given the address of the mission office. After the trip, Sister Black continued corresponding with her and sent her a copy of the Book of Mormon.
"I didn't go to the mission office for a while. But then after I got the Book of Mormon from Cathy, I decided to go and had the first discussion. I read one page of the Book of Mormon and it made me cry. I knew there must be something there. Many good things started happening to me."
Sister Jampolska met Walter Whipple, then president of the Poland mission, and he talked with her about the Church. She told him she could not become a member of the Church because she smoked and was not able to quit.
"He asked me if I would like the missionaries to help me quit and said, `They know how to do that.' Two days later the missionaries called."
During the next six months, she took the discussions, quit smoking and was baptized Dec. 27, 1990. She is a member of the Warsaw Branch in the Poland Warsaw Mission.
"The moment I quit smoking was like a miracle for me because I'm sure I would have never quit. The missionaries did an incredible job. I think the main reason I quit was when they told me that they wanted me to promise to them that I would not smoke a single cigarette and that they would pray for me.
"I wondered why somebody who I knew but was not a close friend to would care enough to pray for me. There was so much happiness in Elder [BlakeT Van Roosendaal's voice when he heard I hadn't smoked a cigarette. I felt like I couldn't go against that. Once I quit smoking, I knew there was no way back. I had to go straight."
A chance to do some of her own family history came recently during a visit she made to Utah. Sister Jampolska, this time with Sister Black's help, went to the Church Family History Library in Salt Lake City to track down her family roots.
