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.
