“I Was Flying on the Wings of Joy”

In 1987, 23-year-old Urszula Adamska was the manager of a special vacation program for schoolchildren in Warsaw. During a visit to the travel agency, she met Robert Magnuski, a young man who had recently converted to the Church. The two struck up a friendship, and soon Magnuski was sharing his new faith with Adamska. Magnuski gave Adamska a pamphlet that told the story of Joseph Smith and a copy of the Book of Mormon. He also challenged her to study the New Testament.

While studying the Bible, Adamska read a passage that she could not understand. One night, while trying to prepare supper for her father, Adamska was unable to focus. Her mind was preoccupied with trying to decipher the scripture she had read. She suddenly recalled the story of Joseph Smith, who was confused by the many competing versions of Christianity he heard preached. Acting on the assurances of James in the New Testament that God would give wisdom to those who asked for it (James 1:5), he prayed for guidance. The vision that he received inaugurated the Restoration of the gospel.

Inspired by Joseph Smith’s story, Adamska prayed that God would help her understand the passage. “When I said, ‘Amen,’” she later recalled, “this wonderful feeling came to me.” She understood the scripture and felt a wonderful, warm feeling inside. “I was flying on the wings of joy,” she said, describing this time in her life.

A short time later, missionaries taught Adamska the gospel and asked if she wanted to be baptized. “Please baptize me as soon as possible,” she told them. “[I] had thoughts in my mind, feelings in my heart, that this [was] right for me,” she said. She was baptized two weeks later.

During the next summer, Adamska spent a few months helping the missionaries in Wrocław teach the gospel. At the end of the summer, Dennis B. Neuenschwander, president of the Austria Vienna East Mission, asked Adamska if she wanted to serve a mission.

“I would like to,” she answered, “but I don’t have the money.”

“Urszula,” he replied, “money is not a problem.” Neuenschwander told her that if she had a desire to serve, others could help pay for her mission. When asked why she wanted to serve a mission, she replied, “The missionaries shared with me a wonderful message … and I would like to give it back by sharing this message with others.”

In July 1989, Adamska arrived in the Washington Seattle Mission in the United States—the hometown of one of the first young missionaries to serve in Poland. “I knelt and I prayed to Heavenly Father,” she recalled. “I thanked him for this wonderful opportunity.” She was the first missionary called from Poland.

In April 1990, while still serving her mission, Adamska traveled to Salt Lake City on a special assignment to help translate the temple ceremonies into Polish.