Lessons From Our First Year

Our first year has flown by. We've had some good times and some not so good times, but we are more convinced than ever that God has called us to Poland. We've also learned a few things about living cross culturally. Some of those things were more easily learned than others, and just when we think we've got things figured out, we realize how much we still have to learn. Here are a few of the things we've learned so far...

• Don't ask, just eat. It's always good.
• The yellow ones don't stop...taxis in Elf or trams in Warsaw.
• Hats, scarves, gloves are wardrobe essentials for much more of the year than I'd like.
• The English section of a bookstore is a great place to find someone to ask questions of.
• If you think, "Should I take an umbrella?" the answer is yes.
• Never get on a bus without your bus pass.
• Having no clue what someone is saying allows you to remain calm while they yell at you.
• Always be prepared to shake hands, but never in a doorway.
• Hot soup is expected at lunch, even if it's 90 degrees and there is no a/c.
• Cold drinks are not good for you.
• Eat all the ice cream you want in the summer-you won't find it in the winter.
• Soup is a beverage.

We anticipate learning even more in the coming year, and we're excited about seeing God work among the Poles. Thanks for walking with us this year.

I Need an Irish Translator

A teammate and I spent the last week at camp with children from orphanages and low income (very low income) homes. The camp was hosted by a team from Northern Ireland who did an absolutely amazing job. The children at this camp were as young as 6 and as old as 15. They were unlike any children I've ever met. Perhaps the best description of this experience can be summed up in what a Polish man working at the camp said. "I'm somewhere between becoming annoyed and wanting to kick the next child that walks by." Chaos reigned during the week.

The team from Northern Ireland was a privilege to work with. They faithfully gave testimonies, sang, and told Bible stories. They challenged the children to think about their need for Christ and begged them to consider His gift of salvation. All this was done amidst, screaming, kicking, hitting, biting, and general unruliness. In spite of all this there were a number of salvations.

One boy was particularly horrible. The last morning at camp he seemed calmer than he'd been during the week, and I put this down to sheer exhaustion. During the closing service the children were asked to give a testimony if they had accepted Christ during the week. Konrad went to the front, which he did whenever anyone was speaking. Instead of causing disruption I was surprised to see him wait patiently while another child finished speaking. To my complete shock Konrad shared that after watching The Chronicles of Narnia the night before, he went back to his cabin and thought about this week and asked Jesus to be his Savior. I'm still shocked by the change in this child - he's about 11 years old. After the service I found Konrad walking toward the bus with his things. I wanted to take his picture, but he had been crying. He said he didn't want to go home, but did let me take his picture. (He's the boy on the left.) Konrad didn't want to go home not because he'd had so much fun at camp. He didn't want to go home because he lives in conditions that we can't even imagine, and I'd rather not describe. Konrad is a different child, but he will face things at home that no child ever should. Please remember to pray for Konrad, that he will grow in his faith and be strengthened in the knowledge of a God who loves him.

Just a note, I know that Irish is not actually a language, but I couldn't understand what most of this team from Northern Ireland said. As they shared their testimonies I found myself waiting for the Polish translator so that I could understand what they'd said! I laughed at myself when I commented to my teammate that I need someone to translate the Irish for me...Pray for this group as they have another week in Poland. They are being used in an amazing way!

Tesco = Wal-Mart (Not)

In our city there are 3 stores that seem to resemble Wal-Mart, where as everyone knows you can do one stop shopping. Rather than being called supercenters, they are called hypermarkets. These hypermarkets look remarkabley similar to Wal-Mart. Both Wal-Mart and these hypermarkets sell food, clothing, home decor, and seasonal items. Right now, just like all Wal-Marts, these hypermarkets are stocked with back to school supplies.

This morning I went to Tesco because it usually supplies all the requirements for taco night. It is the only store in town where we can buy tortilla chips, and it almost always has ground beef and cheddar cheese. Unfortunately Tesco has been out of the tortilla chips for the last 2 weeks, and today they were still out. Worse the place where the chips are normally displayed is hosting a different product! Our tortilla chip eating days may have come to an end.

In the US we definitely have an abundance of products all made by multiple manufacturers, while there are limited choices in Poland. There are however a few things that always make me smile when I go to a hypermarket. First is that you can always find avocados...in Poland, really?
Second there are more tea choices than you can begin to imagine. An entire row of every hypermarket is devoted to tea and none of it is iced! The tub of live fish -the kind you eat, not the kind you feed- is always good for a smile. Seeing people leave the store with the fish of their choice in a plastic bag is even funnier. Funnier still is seeing all the fish that have been purchased for Christmas dinner being taken to the dinner table via the city bus. I also get a kick out of the chocolate aisle, especially at Christmas time. The chocolate aisle sells chocoalte bars-Snickers, M&M's, and other candy have their own aisle. You can buy white, milk, semi-sweet, or bitter chocolate bars and any of these can be bought in combination with various flavors like mint, toffi, raspberry, or strawberry. During Christmas time the chocolate aisle is constantly being stocked and restocked. They move a lot of chocolate.

So, today I left Tesco without tortilla chips or ground beef (which they were also out of). I couldn't help but think that Wal-Mart would have had both products. What's the point of this? Really that I am perfectly happy without them. I'd rather be here than anywhere else in the world.

Thank you so much for your prayers and support of Lottie Moon that enable to us to live and minister among the people of Poland.

Imagine, Persevere

I'm often struck that we see only the present. It's very difficult to look to the future and imagine what the Lord has in store. I know that I often tend to give up if things don't seem to be going well, or if I'm not seeing the result I expect.

This past week two families from Central Baptist Church in Jonesboro joined our team to do a day camp for families. As well as working at the camp, the group from Central attended Coffee House. This is a ministry designed to allow us to meet people with the purpose of developing a friendship and sharing the gospel. We advertise free coffee, tea, and English conversation. We also have some type of entertainment to help guide conversation. This week's entertainment was Stacey Johnson and her son Nate who sang and played the guitar.

Nate is the same age as our son Ben, and they have been friends since we moved to Jonesboro in 2003. Nate and Ben are similar in many ways, and they are really the inspiration for this post. After Stacey and Nate had sung a few songs, Nate and Ben were planning to sing, with Nate on the guitar and Ben on harmonica. I must admit that I was very impressed and proud of these two young men. I was amazed to see them perform together. As I sat watching them I saw two images. The first one was before me, two young men singing and playing their instruments. The second image was of two 7 year old boys both talking so much and so fast that neither could hear what the other was saying.

I won't speak for Nate, but I know that Ben tried the patience of many Sunday School, RA, VBS, choir...teachers over the years. Perhaps neither they nor I imagined the day Ben and Nate would minister together, but the Lord did. So if you find yourself working with children and at your wits end over a child, remember that God knows the plans He has, and it's beyond what we are capable of imagining. Just persevere. God is an amazing God, we really should plan to be amazed!

I thank God for those of you who are faithful each week in teaching children how to love and serve our great God.

Perogi: Carry Out or Dine In?

In my last blog I mentined our victories seemed to have something to do with language and/or food and that these two were often closely linked. It seems that our failures are also linked to language and food. We continue to experience both growth and failure in language and ask that you not forget to pray for us as we study Polish.

On Tuesday evening I went to the home of a neighbor who is in her 60's. She is studying English and had asked me to come over and help her. After spending an hour or so reviewing her lesson she asked me if I liked perogi. I told her yes, and she began to explain that she had made some earlier that day. (Perogi is a dumpling, filled with almost anything: fruit, cheese, vegetables. These were filled with cheese and potato.) She told me that she had some leftover from lunch and said, "I give you." I thanked her and said that would be wonderful. She then began to tell me how they were made and how to cook them. At this point it is after 7 p.m. I was feeling a little pressed for time because I had started spaghetti before leaving to meet her at 5 p.m., and we were expecting friends from Warsaw around 8 p.m.

As she continues to describe how to fix the perogi I suddenly realize that she intends to fix them for me and for me to join her and her husband for dinner. That was not at all what I had taken from the conversation, especially when "I give you" had been said in English. I thought she was giving me the perogi to take home and fix later...

In the end the perogi were delicious. I had to laugh to myself when her husband complemented my Polish as we talked during dinner...at least I think it was a complement. If he only knew!

Please pray that we learn to communicate with the Polish people.

Zwycięstwo w Jezusie/Victory in Jesus

Life in a country where you don't speak the language is filled with challenges. Most days seem to pass in a blur of confusion. As time goes on I have begun to celebrate the little victories. Somehow these victories all seem to have something to do with food or language skills. Food victories are those that are closely linked to language, i.e. actually getting what you thought you were ordering in a restaurant or buying something in a grocery store that turns out to be exactly what you thought it was. Failures seem to abound. I recently bought a cake mix to use as a base for a strawberry cake. I make this cake often and it's fool proof, or so I thought. I don't know if it was the cake mix or the Polish Jello, but after one bite the cake went in the trash, which from the looks of the cake should have happened before we tasted it.

Yesterday I got a haircut, fortunately this experience was more positive than negative. However try as I might I couldn't get the girl to schedule an appointment for me to return for a future cut. I told her I wanted to return next month. I asked her when could I return. I even touched her appointment book and said, "Please," but I left the shop without an appointment!

So far my favorite language victory has been translating a small joke from Polish into English between a woman I know from church and a volunteer from Oklahoma. Both people were doctors, and let's just say it was potty humor, which made it even funnier to me!

As much hope as these small victories bring, we didn't move to Poland to celebrate the small victories. We came to rejoice with the angels...That is exactly what we've been doing this week. On Saturday two men and a woman accepted Christ as Savior. I've gotten to know Dariusz and Mariola through Bible study and English club. They are wonderful people and I am thrilled to see them come to Christ. Dariusz lives in the same villiage as Maria (see previous blog), and he is now the only believer in that villiage.

Please be praying for these 3 new believers. They face many difficulties, but there is victory in Jesus!

Thanks, Mom

There's a saying that much of what parents teach their children is caught and not taught. I want to thank my mother for the things she threw my way and allowed me to catch. Growing up with a father in the army I moved 13 times before gradutating from college, including one move to Thailand and one to Puerto Rico. One of the things I remember about all those moves is exploring each new place. I was not naturally inquisitive. What I remember is my mother driving all over a new city with me in the back seat either saying or thinking, "Do you know where we are?" and my mother giving a non-commital reply that did nothing to reassure me that she did in fact know where we were. Some of these trips were shopping expeditions, and some of them were strictly sight-seeing. We always explored a new location thoroughly.

Maybe being driven all over Thailand in a Jeep (picture a gray Jeep, issued by the U.S. navy), Washington, D. C. in a Mercury station wagon, and Puerto Rico in a VW (remember the big green, standard shift campers?) set the stage for me to drive all over West Germany and Czeckoslovakia just 15 years later. My driving was for many of the same reasons my mother had driven around. There was too much to see to just stay home.

Now that we are living in Poland without a car I've felt somewhat restricted in my ability to explore. The city bus just doesn't explore that interesting little side street. The team does have a van that is used for ministry, and I've been able to drive it on occasion. Most recently was Friday night. Another team member and I picked up several ladies and went to Bible study. (Many Poles don't drive, and there were lots of suprised comments that I was really going to drive?!) As we were leaving the Bible study the pastor's wife thanked me for driving. I shrugged it off and told her it was no problem. She replied that having someone besides her husband to drive was really a blessing to her and the other ladies and to her husband.

Thanks mom for all those trips in the VW, for teaching me to drive that same VW and allowing me to bless the Polish women in of all things, a VW! I love you.

A Snow Bank, a Broken Arm, and a Bowl of Soup

While on a short term trip in 2008 I briefly met Maria, the mayor of a small village. While visiting with others on our team Maria told one of them that she wished she could "have a faith like yours". I had the pleasure of meeting Maria again yesterday and visiting in her home. I was with Marcin, a young Polish pastor; 2 Journeygirls, Ashley and Bailey; and my son Ben. We were there to lead an English club for the children in the village. Maria had invited us to have tea before time for the club to begin. Maria's home is toward the end of a one lane road, which is something less than that when it's covered with melting snow and ice. At Marcin's suggestion I turned off the road and parked on the snow.

When it was time to leave for the English club Maria decided to go with us. This is where it gets interesting...Despite the fact that I had no trouble driving the van onto the snow to park, I did not appear to be going to back the van out of the snow. The wheels were spinning, and I was going no where fast. At this point Maria went home and returned with a bucket of dirt, which she began spreading under the tires with a garden spade. No luck. We were stuck. She began to push on the front of the van while telling me to back up. Ben jumped out to help, but it was no use. (Have I mentioned that Marcin who was acting as interpreter has gone ahead to tell the Bible story at English club?)

Maria left once again and returned with a shovel. Ben tried to take the shovel from her, but she wouldn't give it to him. She was very good at giving directions. At this point it just got funny. Ashley who is actually a very good photographer took out her camera and began filming. Maria had told us earlier that she thought American films were ridiculous because the teenagers in them had so much (i.e. cars). I told Maria she was going to be in an American film. She just smiled and laughed. Long story short, it took 40 minutes and everyone pushing for us to get free of the snow.

When we got to English club Maria told Marcin that all the people who went to mass were watching through their windows, and no one came to help us. She didn't like that, and she didn't understand why people who went to church wouldn't help others. After English club, as we were leaving the building, Maria slipped on the ice and broke her arm. We took her to Marcin's where we were going to do another English club. Marcin got his car and took her to the hospital-Maria doesn't own a car-then drove her home after several hours at the hospital.

This afternoon we took some soup to Maria and her husband, then stopped by to see Marcin. He told us that while they were at the hospital Maria had told him how much fun she'd had when we were stuck in the snow. She explained that Polish people would have been angry and frustrated, but that we had worked together and had fun. (Not sure that's the word I'd have used, but it is pretty funny when a petite woman in her 50's is pushing Ben, who's 6' 1', around and wrestling him for a shovel.) Marcin said they had a great conversation about who Jesus is and what it means to trust Him. All this to say pray for Maria's salvation. You never know how God will use a snow pile, a broken arm, and a bowl of soup.

All things work together for good...Romans 8:28