Wednesday - Poland

Wednesday was a lovely day in Wroclaw, Poland! The sun was up before I was and that was just fine. At ten o'clock in the morning Ellen picked me up and after dropping Lenna off at pre-school, we drove to the old city of Wroclaw. Ellen parked the car at their church's office, which is located behind a wall of tall buildings close to the town's center... she turned right off the main street, drove through a narrow alley (yes, it was actually a two-way street) and parked the car. The Rock church rents a room in one of the buildings as an office and another much larger room for their church service once a week on Sunday afternoon at 4:30pm. Then from there we walked for a few minutes and arrived in old Wroclaw. It is a beautiful inner city with town squares, restaurants with terraces outside, umbrellas and all this surrounded by tall buildings with beautiful detail work on the walls and around the windows. Wroclaw has an old-fashioned old city center. It made me think of Amsterdam and Utrecht in Holland. Ellen had to run an errand in her bank and we spent just about an hour inside a very, very warm building, trying not to get too frustrated with the bureaucracy of forms and desks and people who were not as helpful as we had hoped for :-)... At around 11:45am we were let go from the bank environment and decided that we definitely needed some good coffee and how about lunch? We found a nice, sunny table on a terrace where we spent the next hour talking and eating and drinking a good cup of coffee. We walked back to the church office to find out that the narrow alley had now turned into a real parking lot; obviously double parking happens all the time in Poland and it was quite a puzzle to get out... one gentleman was helpful and said: "just honk your horn, somebody will come and move that nice looking BMW :-)". Ellen did honk the horn, but there was not much movement from any of the buildings and we decided to take our lives in our own hands. Ellen drove and I stood outside to be the buffer between her car and the other parked vehicles... Lo and behold, we got ourselves out of the pickle we were in and were on our way in no time!

We picked up Lenna from pre-school, did some grocery shopping and went home where I worked on my blog and where we made plans for Thursday when both older girls (Zoe and Noa) are off from school... I took a little nap on the couch and after dinner, Ellen and I went back to the church office where there was a small group meeting and Ellen wanted me to share my testimony. This small group meeting had been meeting for a quite some time, but not many more people than just the two twenty-something ladies who are leading the group came. Actually, for the last few times it had just been the two leaders. However, Wednesday evening there were six of us! The two leaders, one young man, another young woman and Ellen and I had a good time. All of the people attending understood English which was very helpful, and if they did not understand something they helped each other out. So I told them where and how I grew up, and how the Lord had brought healing and restoration to my heart and mind and spirit. Once again I am so grateful for how graciously the Lord has taken care of me, how He has lead me beside quiet waters, and how He will never forsake me or abandon me. Of course, after all was said and done, the usual questions came: "did I say it right?", "did they understand what I was saying?", "did I make them uncomfortable?" and a whole bunch more. I have noticed over the years that when I make myself vulnerable by talking about what my life has been like that afterwards those questions come, trying to make me worry about the things I said. In moments like that I say to the Lord that it is all now in His hands, I ask him to bless what was right and what He can use to change hearts, and to let the people forget what was not right. Yes, I am just a human, and yes, I want to be used in this ongoing growing-up business of the Lord's children. And more importantly, the Lord will cover that was lacking. Ellen brought me back to Ania's home around 10pm and I was very tired as you can imagine... I am excited about our girls outing tomorrow morning!