Two is the number of the week. We have two children. Maja turns two years old tomorrow. She had her 2nd birthday (for family) yesterday and will have two friends over tomorrow for the "friends" birthday celebration. That makes two parties. As Maja turns two, we announced earlier this week that we are expecting again and Renata is due on March 21st. She is in her second month and the new one was measured at 2cm long. In two days we leave for our annual Staff Conference. This year it will be in Muenster, Germany. So we will only travel through two countries this year, as opposed to the 5 we did last year. And we will do the trip in two parts as Maja finds it more difficult to go for too long on the car. That's what we've been up 2. And you?
The first time I visited the prison I was scared. I was scared that the women would see judgment on my face, or that they would look at me and know that I was wondering what they did to be put in prison. I prayed on the way there: Jesus let me look at these women with YOUR eyes. Then I stood in the hallway, in front of the bars waiting for the guard to open a gate for me to come in and I felt huge compassion for these women. I saw faces of really messed up people, dressed poorly and very often toothless; and then I felt joy and privileged to be there. It was then that I was scared that I was going to spend my time there crying for these women instead of helping them. Well, God took care of that. The first visit was awesome. I met some very broken people. We have a Gypsy lady, we have ‘white-collar’ women, and we have homeless alcoholics coming to meet with me. I met all sorts of women, all of them from the fringes of society, all of them lost, all of them scared. Only now when I meet with them every week do I learn how difficult it is to break free from the lies and psychological baggage we carry around from our childhoods. God is mighty, and only He can break these chains. Most of the women there have husbands in prison too. Their children are in orphanages because they don’t have anyone else to take care of the kids.
Now, when I’m writing, I am realizing more and more how much compassion I feel for them. When I hear the stories from them directly I see how broken they are.
Last Saturday I went with a team from Kentucky to this prison to celebrate “Kids Day” for these women’s children and their families. The team brought gifts, they had a puppet show, and shared some of their life stories. We taught from Ephesians that our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against powers and authorities….Then we played with the kids and moms and dads and we laughed, forgetting that we were surrounded by bars.
It was the first time that I saw the moms in prison meeting with their kids. Most of these kids are ages 3 – 7 and some are young teens. It took me a prayer and 15 minutes to get myself ‘together’ again.
Every time I am in this prison I realize that only by God’s grace I am not there. Every time I talk to these women I am fully aware of God’s power in my life. I remember times when I abused drugs and alcohol and hung out with wrong crowd. I remember one time sleeping on the bench because I had no place to go…. It is by God’s love and grace that I have beautiful family, that I am alive and I feel such a strong desire and want to tell these women about His beauty, His love, and how He pursues us (this is my message to them: God pursues us). Oh, how much they need to be told that God cares for ragamuffins.
We pray. We study the Bible and I even had the privilege last week to witness one of these ladies accept Jesus into her life. Something happened in her because only Holy Spirit can produce tears; she cried that day during our meeting and discussion about God’s gift of Love.
I still learn to deal with my emotions when I am there. Two weeks ago I couldn’t put two sentences together because one of the women (Danka) shared her story and her journey (she is in Alcoholics Anonymous and her two kids aged 3 and 8 are in the orphanage and her boyfriend is in prison as well). I pray that God will help me balance compassion with my ability to talk to them, to study the Word with them, to help them.
-Renata
the photos below show Renata translating some teaching and a puppet play into Polish and kids playing games with their parents for Children's Day at the prison (this was the first time the organization has ever been allowed to bring cameras into the prison)
There are a lot of things going on now that the warm weather is upon us. And the last two Sundays we have done a couple of things for the very first time. Last Sunday we went to the airshow and spent some time with our good friends Luke and Marisa and their son Alex. Some some really cool stuff. Looking forward to seeing more next year (we had to leave early for church and missed the MIG-29). Yesterday though we went to a Knights' Tournament at a castle south of the city. Kaleb, of course, LOVED that. Seeing knights battle with swords and full armor, watching archers on horseback ride by only a couple of feet from us. And they had some great food. That's what I love. I'll put some photos up to our album in a bit so you can see all this stuff.
We can't believe that it is already summer again. Not that we're disappointed. It just seems as though the last school year went by way too quickly. At times it feels as though time has slowed to a crawl. The next thing you know, you are down the road 10 months and wondering where the time went. But here we are, enjoying the warm sunshine that we have been enjoying intermittently for the last month and half or more. Things are alway moving along here. We continue to "press buttons" and "whack the bushes". I am trying to be more intentional about meeting with some of the guys with greater regularity. It's hard to schedule time with most of them each week or even doing the same thing each time. But I am seeing what I can do and what kind of response I get. Renata has really found some ministerial rhythm with her two newest ventures. She's in a teaching rotation at a moms group at one of the Polish churches here AND she goes to a women's prison each Friday morning. Both of these have really breathed new life into her desire to teach and work with women. It's a gift she's always felt she had, but never had a chance to use or develop it. Now she does. Very exciting. A more detailed update is ready to go out today. So stay tuned. I'll close this catch-up post so I can get back to a regular post. (-:
I figured I'd jumpstart my long-desired return to blogger today. Renata and I keep talking about it, but never get back to it. I met a new guy in the park today. He's been in Warsaw now for about a year with his Polish wife. He seems really cool. He's an artist (painter) and was out in the park to take pictures of his art to post online. We talked for a while about where we are each from, what we're doing here, and all the cross-cultural things that people like us talk about. We exchanged numbers and I hope we get together with him and his wife soon as they live pretty close (hence the advantage to meeting people in the aforementioned park). Funny thing is he heard me talking on the phone to my friend R who was asking me if he could come to our church to have communion. His church is not having communion til next week (as Easter is so early in the month) and he's going to be out of town. He's divorced and is "not welcome" in the Catholic Church, much less partake of the Eucharist. Attending church is important to him, but hasn't yet really been introduced to Christ. He often has spiritual questions and it's fun to engage with him on those. I am finding that people have questions, they just don't feel they have access to anyone with answers or to help them find the answers themselves. I'm loving our playground in the park.
This is A park near us. Not our playground park where we seem to meet people all the time. This is what the park should look like in a few weeks. Beautiful day.
We are in Toronto for the next month. We are trying to expand our support base and also spend time with family and friends. We've had some good fun so far and had chances to connect with a few people. The next 4 weeks will be more intense that way though. Two days after we arrived I went on a roadtrip with my brothers and my dad to celebrate his birthday. We spend the better part of 5 days driving around upstate New York, Vermont, and even a little bit of New Hampshire. We had a really good time on our first trip all together as adults. So now we are busy scheduling the rest of our time here and getting things we need for the kids and ourselves (that we can't get in Poland-- or at least at a good price).
One thing I wanted to draw to people's attention just in case this would be convenient for you is a way of making financial donations to Christian Associates online via credit card. You can go to www.canadahelps.org to make a donation. The thing to keep in mind if you choose to use this method is that 3% is deducted before CAI receives the donation. Christian Associates deducts 10% for administration after that.
We have been back in Warsaw for about 3 hours now. We had a fantastic week in Sopron, Hungary for our annual Christian Associates staff conference. This was our first one since the summer of 2005, so we were very excited to get there this year. First, we had a terrific time driving down there. We stayed for one night in the mountains of southwestern Poland (to which I had never been) in a town called Ustron. While asking for directions, our family was invited to a "garden party" at a restaurant/pub. So after finding our hotel (driving halfway up a mountain) and settling in, we headed back down the mountain for some food. I sampled a bean stew called grochowka (gro-hoove-kuh). Absolutely fantastic! Renata said it was the best she ever had too. I like food. The next day, after breakfast, we headed back down the mountain and into the Czech Republic (normally just called Czech over here. Sort of like saying "France" rather than "Republic of France"), then Slovakia, then Austria, then Hungary. It was a really refreshing, rejuvenating, relaxing week (the three R's). It always feels great to be with people that are doing the same thing as you and are often dealing with many of the same life and ministry issues for that reason. Greg Boyd really challenged us on the fundamentals of how we act towards the world around us and therefore how we do ministry. You can listen yourself to some of the talks we had by clicking here . It was encouraging for us also in sharing with others what is going on in Warsaw. I told Renata that I was getting excited listening to myself talk about it all. I was thinking "wow! this is pretty cool stuff that's going on." We felt very affirmed by those we talked with. It was a fantastic week for Kaleb in Kids Club. He was there 3 times a day on most days. A group of volunteers (mainly high school and college age) came over from Maryland to look after our kids while we were in sessions. They were terrific!! We never worried about whether he was having a good time or whether he was taken care of. We also knew that he was receiving a good dose of biblical learning. Each day had a different story and scripture they would work from (Good Samaritan, Samson, etc.). So the week is over. We ended sessions on Friday night, packed up yesterday morning and headed for the Austrian border. We stayed in Ustron again last night and then finished the drive home this morning and afternoon. We are glad to be home although we already miss our friends. At least now our kids won't be waking up at 5:30am cuz they're sleeping in the same room. Separate rooms. Divide and conquer. maybe we can get a bit more rest now too.
We had a good trip on Sunday to complete our journey to Hungary for our staff conference. We travelled through 5 countries in one day. Only in Europe can you do that by car. Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary. The amazing thing too is that, as of last December, all of those countries are part of the Schengen Zone--meaning that we did not go through any Customs or Passport control the entire trip down here. Much fun. We did discover, unfortunately, that McDonalds is much most countries other than Slovakia. We passed one as we entered the country and passed another on the way out a couple hours later. Disappointing when you depend on McDonalds stops to keep the kids happy and fed while travelling. Oh well, it was a gorgeous drive anyway--with lovely low rolling mountains and a decent speed limit.
