Wednesday - Germany

After the early morning coffee and shower, Gisela and I were ready for action! This morning we were going to an Alpha Course breakfast meeting at the house of one of the ladies who is part of the Alpha group. It is hard to tell how many people will show up for any given meeting since many of them are just "checking it out", or there are sick children and the moms have to stay home with them, etc. For this particular Wednesday morning, the Lord had obviously something else in mind. After all the phone calls, arranging and re-arranging, Gisela and I went the home of a lady who had accepted Jesus one year ago and as it turned out, nobody else of the Alpha group came. To make a long story short (because it's really her story and not mine to tell), we prayed for her and we all prayed for her home that the dark forces would leave and the Lord would fill it with peace. Later in the afternoon, she called Gisela so very excited! It really is the most beautiful thing to see how the Lord arranges the cirucmstances of our life to bring healing and freedom to one individual. It makes me so happy!



Gisela and I went out to lunch and had good conversation and after lunch we went to the hospital to visit Aunt Traude. She was not doing well, the dose of pain medication was higher than before and she was rather incoherent. She knew that we were there but she was not able to communicate very much. So, we prayed for her and went back home after trying several bank's ATM machines, because I needed some cash... and everywhere we went my card was refused... which was quite disturbing, to be frank with you! Ultimately, after 4 different banks and talking to a bank employee, I figured I should call my bank and find out what was going on... Come to find out that I tried to take too much money out at one time... duh!!! Gisela and I had a good laugh about that and I will try again on Thursday :-).



We came home and both Gisela and I did some work on our computers with Gisela answering phone calls and what not. She is running a church as well as a world-wide missions organization and there are a lot of administrative tasks to take care of on a regular basis. As for me, I was grateful to just sit on the couch and be quiet... I find this traveling life to be great and awesome, and also all-consuming... all the new faces and corresponding names, the new landscapes, the traffic rules, the narrow streets, there is so much to take in and there really is limited space in the brain! So, I appreciate a few quiet hours here and there.



After dinner we left the house again to go to church for the weekly intercessory prayer meeting. There were four of us at the meeting; we prayed together for the church and people in the church, as well as people out in the mission field. Part of our time together we spent setting up tables and chairs for Thursday's Koffee Klatsch. Koffee Klatsch is sort of an impromptu gathering for women who get together in the afternoon for coffee and cake and conversation, and then someone of the group will teach. Yes, you guessed it: I will be speaking Thursday's Koffee Klatsch!

Monday and Tuesday - Germany

Again I woke up at 6 in the morning and did my bible and morning coffee routine. Rafal and Jagoda were up around 7; Rafal brings Jagoda to Kindergarten on his way to work. Karina was up and at it around 9 am and Jeremiah was fed and happy. He is a beautiful little boy and happy as a clam most of the time :-).

Karina and I had breakfast and another great conversation together. I am so amazed at what happens during a conversation sometimes. How open people are to listen and how words seem to go to a place where they are needed and wanted. Martijn came at 10 o'clock to pick me and my bags up to go the Wroclaw airport. On the way we stopped at the best looking McDonalds I have ever seen. We said our "see you later"s; I really would like to go back and continue building the relationship we started in such a short period of time. Martijn and Ellen are wonderful people who started, built and pastor a church of great people.

The two plane rides to Stuttgart were rather uneventful if you don't count the busrides from the gates all over the respective airport landing and parking strips to get to the planes. I did notice now though that there are people in reflective vests who are keeping an eye out for accidents and such. That made me slightly feel better.

Outside of the Stuttgart Airport Baggage Claim area I met Gisela Huyssen. Gisela and her late husband were (and she still is one) missionaries in several countries all over the world, most significantly in The Philippines where her 3 sons are all involved in church and leadership building. World Mission for Jesus is the organization her husband started (http://www.wmfj.org/) and where Gisela is the International President. She came back to the place in Germany where she was born and raised (Frickenhausen) and she started a church there which has now grown to about 40 people on average. She works closely with Jochen Geiselhart who is the Foursquare Regional Supervisor of Southern Germany and with Jurgen Zeeh, the pastor of the Foursquare church in the nearby town of Engstingen. She really is a dynamite woman who absolutely and whole-heartedly loves the Lord.

After we had exchanged introductions, she told me that her 77-year old and dearest Aunt Traude was in the hospital with serious health problems, things like blood cloths in her legs and longs, a discovery of pancreatic cancer, no blood circulation in the left leg and bad circulation in the right leg. As you can imagine, we were on our way to the hospital right away...

We visited with and prayed for Aunt Traude who is a lively, clear-eyed, silver haired woman, who now all of a sudden had to make an awful decision. With pancreatic cancer in her body, the doctors told her that she would not live longer than 2 months. No blood circulation in her left leg means that death is imminent because of blood poisoning. It was apparent to all of us (her daughter Gabi, her niece Gisela, and myself, the stranger from America) that this woman wants to live. Since the doctors were very insistent about the urgency of the condition of the left leg, Aunt Traude decided that the doctors should go ahead and the leg should be amputated. Doesn't that just sound absolutely unbelievable? So, today (Tuesday), she went in for surgery and when Gisela and I visited her again around 5:30 in the afternoon, she was awake and had an unbelievably positive attitude. She even said that she had told the Lord that He now had to be her left leg for her from now on. And she smiled! She reminded me of the woman in the bible who came to Jesus because she wanted him to heal her daughter. Jesus told her that He only came to help the children of Israel and since she was not one of them, He was not going to do anything for her. She kept on insisting: crumbs fall off the children's table all the time, and the dogs get to eat those, so how about I will get the crumbs of what the children don't eat? I have always had this feeling that Jesus smiled and that He liked her because she did not give up after the first refusal. And He gave her what she wanted. I pray that Jesus will give Aunt Traude what she wants: a good night's sleep, a fast and not-painful healing of the wound, and proper blood circulation in her right leg. And I also pray for a few more years added to her life so she can give God the glory and so she can be an example to a lot of women in Gisela's church.

After our hospital visit on Monday evening, we drove home, ate a quick dinner and went to Gisela's church where four ladies where waiting for my teaching :-)! During my time in Poland, I had spoken with one of the young men in Martijn's church who stated that he was not convinced that the bible had all the answers for our lives (he studied philosphy and mathmatics), and that he thought philosophers through the ages had better ideas than the bible... That discussion made me think why I think that the bible has all the answers, so I went on a search of why the bible is so important to me. There were many scriptures and reasons why I think the bible is so important, and so that is what I talked about to those ladies on Monday evening. Gisela translated me and we had a good time together!

Tuesday morning Gisela and I went to a bakery where they have the best bread pretzels in town, and devoured them when we came back home! Lovely stuff! At 9:30 we got in the car, drove to Gisela's brother's house and picked up a bucket with tools and off we went to Baden-Baden where Gisela's mother-in-law is buried. We were there to do the semi-annual grave site cleaning. Yes, one must be ready for anything on a mission trip! With the two of us it took about 15 minutes to make it presentable again for another while, and off we went from the cemetery to the home of Jochen and Brigit Geiselhart. As I mentioned above, Jochen is the Foursquare Regional Supervisor for Southern Germany, a good friend of Gisela's, pastor of the local Foursquare church and also the managing director of a nursing home that Gisela's late husband's father started back in the day. We had a lovely lunch together; it was great to be introduced to Jochen and his wife.

After lunch Gisela and I went back home, but not by means of the Auto Bahn (which is a dangerous place, believe me!). We took back roads and went up and down the Schwarzwaldhohestrasse. Yes, Gisela took me to Mummelsee where the local Berg Hotel serves the BEST Schwarzwalderkirshtorte I have ever tasted in my life! It was a beautiful ride through the mountains, over the rivers and through the woods. And on our way home we visited Aunt Traude as I told you before... we were all the way home by 7 with bread and meat and cheese on the table for dinner with no plans for the evening other than putting our lounge clothes on with Gisela answering and making phone calls and I working on my blog...

Saturday & Sunday - Poland

The day started out pretty good on Saturday. Lukas came over, I cooked breakfast (scrambled eggs with cheese and veggies) and we had a great time! Then I packed my bag and Lukas received a phonecall that a Polish airplane had crashed and not just any old airplane, but a plane on which the Polish president was traveling with his wife and several other government officials, about 88 total. The president was on his way to a memorial regarding "Katyn" which is the name of a town where during WWII Russian soldiers killed many thousands Polish civilians. When it became more clear what happened, it also became apparent that this was another incident in a long string of events that have caused lots of suspicion and skepticism between the Polish and the Russians. During the church service at The Rock on Sunday afternoon, Martijn spoke regarding the event and challenged his people to have a different attitude, to stay away from suspicion, speculation and debate, and to pray for the people in authority and for peace. It was indeed sobering to see the distraught and national mourning. Many stores were closed on Sunday and an impromptu memorial with votive candles was established on the town square in Wroclaw.

During all these unfolding events, I had the privilege of moving my things to another home. My last two nights in Poland, I stayed with a lovely family: Rafal and Karina and their 4-year old daughter Jagoda, and their 8-month old son Jeremiah. Rafal and Karina live in the old town of Wroclaw in a 120-year old apartment building, with a park in front and some busy streets around it. The building could use some tender love and care, and Karina has taken up the cause and she is now in the planning stages to beautify this old building. The staircase and landings are the first on the list. She really has a heart for the people in the building and wants to bring hope to this community by fixing the backyard and cleaning the staircase and maybe organizing some workshops for the children. Bringing hope where there seems to be no future, and where change is unimaginable... does that sound like God to you?

Martijn dropped me off at this family's home and after he had left, we sat down and talked over a nice cup of tea. Then Rafal took Jagoda out for a while and Karina asked if I would teach her something to cook, which I was delighted to do! So we peeled potatoes, cut chicken and threw a whole bunch of vegetables in a pot, seasoned it well and enjoyed a lovely lunch! The great part is that on Sunday Karina cooked the same kind of lunch by herself and it tasted better than my concoction; that made me happy!

Later on in the afternoon, they had invited people from church over (anybody, actually) to come to their home and play games. Patricia and Valdec came over with their 3 kids, but instead of playing games we decided to go to the water and feed the swans! Great idea if it weren't for the rain and the cold! As my mother would say: you are not made of sugar, so we wrapped ourselves in rain coats, hats, gloves and scarves and off we went. We got to the swans, fed them, and then it started pouring! So, in a hurry we took refuge in Hotel Plaza which was conveniently located very close. We took of the coats, gloves, scarves and hats and had a lovely time enjoying a coffee treat and great conversation about the Lord and what it means to put the bible into practice in our lives. I love this stuff!!!

The next day, on Sunday around 1pm I walked from the apartment to the town square (despite my sore calf) and enjoyed lunch with Martijn and Denise Johnson who is an American missionary supported by Foursquare. She was in town for the weekend and it was nice to meet her and hear about her work in the most conservative Catholic region in Poland. We sat around the table at Pizza Hut and talked until it was time to put all the raingear back on and walk the last little bit to get to church at 4:30pm. The Rock meets in a large room that is located in the same building where their office is. This room is rented out for different events during the week, which makes it a little tricky, because the church people never know what they will run into when they come in to set up for the service. There are many chairs around small square tables with little candles and tea lights, the table cloths have different colors and the back wall is orange! Isn't orange a great color, people?! After church, Rafal and Jagoda took me back home with them and by 10pm it was lights out and quiet.

Friday - Poland

Of course I remembered today two more things we did on Thursday... The first thing is that in between the bowling alley and the beauty salon, we found a place where they had video games and the girls were very intrigued by these motorcycles you could ride for a minute or two for a small fee. So we put some change in the machines and off they went... they did it like pros! The other thing was that when we walked from the church office to the city, we stopped at one of the many bakeries on the street towards the city center. It looked like one of those old-fashioned tea rooms with striped wall paper, small round tables and straight-back chairs... there were enough sweets there to get us on an all-time sugar high!

Anyhow, this morning after breakfast I went with Ania (the girl who I am staying with until Saturday morning) to her office. Ania works full-time for a non-profit organization which puts on an annual festival called "SLOT FEST". During this 5-day art festival, just about 5,000 people come to visit an old castle located about 1 hour from Wroclaw and are kept busy with concerts and 140 workshops. Ania is in charge of getting all the workshop speakers lined up and organized. As you can imagine, a lot of stuff needs to happen behind the scenes before everything is ready for all these 5,000 visitors. Martijn and Ellen are also involved in the festival; they are in charge of the pastoral care. The goal of this festival is to introduce people to Jesus, and I have heard several stories of people who came to know Him through attending the festival and making friends there and returning for more. Every Friday morning at 9, whoever is available of the organizing team is in the office for a meeting where they give status updates on their different areas, as well as pray together. It was wonderful to be with them and to encourage them to look at what they do not just as a job and work that needs to be done, but as an opportunity to make a place for people so they can be introduced to Jesus, and also to have eyes to see and a heart to notice what the Lord wants to do in them while putting this massive event together.

Martijn was also at the prayer meeting and after the meeting was done, he took me to a mall called "Magnolia Park" (yes, there are a lot of blooming magnolia trees in front of it). We found Ellen in a store and I spent the rest of the morning with her. We did some shopping and had a nice cup of coffee with cookies after good Dutch tradition. After we had said our good byes (she will be spending the weekend in The Netherlands), she went her way and I got on the tram and found my way to the city center, where I walked around a little bit in rather windy and not so sunny weather. The inner city is really pretty and I enjoyed my time! At 2pm I met with Ania at the fountain in the square and we went to lunch at a place called "Cegielnia". Don't ask me what the name means, the only thing I can tell you is that the food was great and the interior design was so very clever: all the light fixtures were surrounded by bunches of wooden spoons or forks or spatulas... Where do these people get their ideas, I ask!?

After lunch Ania took me to some art galleries and other fun places, and we ended up at "Afryka" which is a gorgeous coffee and tea room, decorated in white, red, orange and hot pink! How delightful is that! Ania told me that her boy friend has a little bit of trouble with the pink part, and I teased him about that when he came over later on in the evening... he is a very nice young man, and he passed my inspection :-).

After Ania and I finished talking about how she and her boyfriend got together and how she thinks about the future, we left and walked around some more in the city. Then we decided that it was time to get on the tram and go to the grocery store and get some stuff for me to cook breakfast on Saturday morning. By that time I was walking around without the usual bounce in my step. I think I tore a muscle in my right calf or something like that, so while at the store I bought some cream to help ease the pain. I may not be able to walk as much as I would want for the next few days...

In the evening, Ania went to a class while I stayed home and worked a little bit on emails, and I also spent time working on the second step of the Pastoral Licensing process, which is logging on to the Foursquare website, listening to information related to Foursquare's founder Aimee Semple McPherson, Foursquare Missions etc. etc. This step consists of 15 parts with 15 tests, and after I complete all 15, I will receive a binder with more materials to study and prepare for an interview later. I finished 9 out of the 15 parts this evening, and I felt pretty good about that! When Ania came home from her class, she made soup and Lucas (her boyfriend) came by to say hello to her. He works in a city about a 5 hour train ride away from Wroclaw, so they see each other only during the weekends. We sat around the table and ate soup and laughed until we almost cried. It was another great day!

Thursday - Poland

What a wonderful day it was, this Thursday! Ellen picked me up at 10 in the morning after dropping off Lenna at pre-school, and Zoe, Noa and Ellen and I piled up in the car and went to town! First we stopped a bowling alley which seemed to be closed according to the sign on the building, but when we went to check it out, it was open for business! We changed into the notorious bowling shoes and started rolling those heavy balls... It took a little bit to get the hang of it again, as it had been a long time for the four of us. We gave it all we had and Zoe took home the price. The price just was the knowledge that she beat us all :-)! We encouraged each other to keep the ball straight on the alley, and tried to change the path of the ball by telepathy... to no avail. And yes, Edna had recovered enough from jetlag that she wanted to be in the middle of the action!

After an hour of bowling and with broken nails and blisters on our thumbs and fingers, we walked across the street to a beauty salon where the receptionist was so happy to see four people walk in the door that she did not really know what language to speak with us... we are quite a confused bunch of people communicating in three different languages sometimes almost at the same time. It was quite funny! There was only one lady who did nails and we spent quite a bit of time with her since all four of us had our nails done. She did a marvelous job and was truly an artist... she did some seriously beautyful artwork on our nails, with little tiny brushes, and pins and an incredibly steady hand! Then Zoe and Noa got themselves a haircut and it was just a delight to see their pretty faces light up in all the attention and doting. We were in the beauty salon for probably two and a half hours... time so very well spend!!!

After we were all dolled up and relaxed watching all the hustle and bustle in the beauty salon, we got back in the car and drove to the church office where Martijn was trying to work on his sermon for Sunday and also was keeping little Lenna out of trouble. He had been so kind to pick her up from pre-school while we were all busy with nails and hair. We, five girls now, left the office and walked to the city center to go to Ellen's bank and follow up on some business she needed to take care of. It was as if the people now really had gotten the message: Spring is on its way! The sun was out, the temperature was nice and most of the chairs on the terraces around the town squares were taken... people were smiling, having a good old time, and the street musicians came out to make some money! It was just delightful! After the bank business was done, the three younger girls went back to the church office and the two older ones explored some more of the really old town city center. We crossed some rivers and walked through very old streets with very old cobble stones and tried not to wreck our ankles. We came upon an old church with two towers, one of which we went up, some of it by stairs and most of it by an elevator (I was grateful for that:-)). Gorgeous views from the observatory deck around the steeple of the tower... we couldn't figure out though in which direction Martijn and Ellen's flat was located. In the mean time, Ellen and I talked about the meeting at church last night where I gave my testimony and how she had had conversations with some of the girls who were there and how it had spoken to their hearts. That made me so very grateful! Just the little bit that I have and that I am willing to give, the Lord can use and multiply and make fruitful.

When Ellen and I returned to the church office to get everybody and the car, it was about 5 o'clock in the afternoon. We were all tired, we did not have the energy to make plans for Friday, my feet were hurting and it had been a great and fabulous day!

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!

Monday and Tuesday - Poland

Yes, Edna and I are on our way! We arrived in San Francisco just after four thirty on Monday morning (John was so kind to offer to pick me up at home by three thirty: even for early birds that's EARLY)... As I am typing this, I am waiting for the boarding of my connecting flight (from Atlanta to Munich) to start. I am hoping that this plane has wi-fi so I can check my email and such and then you will be able to read this before I set foot in Germany... that would make me feel so computer savvy :-)!

It turns out that there is no wi-fi available above the ocean... oh well... I am typing this sitting at the gate in Munich while waiting for boarding for the last leg of today's travel. This part was a bit nerve-wrecking because I did not have much time; fortunately the arrival from Atlant was a little bit early so I had a few more minutes to find my way around another big airport. And really, I don't speak any German at all... I understand a little bit, but that's it! I am so grateful that all the people I asked for help, spoke English! It is now 9 o'clock in the morning on Tuesday in Germany, and midnight on Monday in California...

All the passengers for flight 368 with LOT to Wroclaw went on a little adventure... everybody went through the gate check-in, and we walked down several flights of stairs until we came to the door that went out to where the planes were parked on large slabs of cement and we all got on a bus and were driven around the planes and over large amounts of open spaces where there did not seem to be any valid traffic rules... if you know what I mean... it was quite funny! And then we stopped next to a rather small plane (I think it holds no more than 60 people) and all the passengers got themselves situated, climbing up the little ladder with their stuff and maneuvering about in a relavitely small space, and off we went into the wild blue yonder. My seat was in the 4th row from the front of the plane by the window where I saw a very large propeller that made a lot of noise after it was turned on. However, that decibel level wass nothing compared to what it was like when we were up in the air, as was the vibrating factor... I know that my teeth are really attached to my jaws after this one hour and 20 minute plane ride! Deafening. Very, very loud, really!!! I put my earplugs in just to get some relief... It was not only noisy, but it also made me think about the fragility of machinery like this...

And then we arrived in Wroclaw where we all got out of the plan, on the bus and to the one and only luggage carrousel to get my bag. Nobody asked to see my passport or anything like that, and outside was my friend Ellen! It was so good to see her and Martijn! They had brought their youngest daughter Lenna for the pick up round and it was really strange to speak Dutch in Poland! They took me to their home and gave me coffee and bread and cheese, and convinced me that I needed a nap to be able to function the rest of the day as it was only 12 noon when they picked me up. And of course, they were so right! I took a nap on their couch and felt much better after! After dinner they brought me over to the home of Ania, who is a member of The Rock, Martijn and Ellen's church and I will be staying with her until Friday. Ania and I had a lovely evening; we sat and talked over a cup of tea, we went across the street to do a little grocery shopping, and prayed together for The Rock church. Ania leads the intercessory prayer group and on Tuesday evening a few ladies come together in her flat to pray. This evening the other ladies could not make it; it was just Ania and myself and we had a great time!

It is now Wednesday morning; I had a great night sleep on Ania's couch and there is a new day ahead of me! How wonderful...