A Beautiful Sunday in Poland

What a beautiful Sunday it has been. We woke up and went downstairs to church to get acquainted with the congregation. The church has about 30 attendees including families and members of all ages. As mentioned, Franic, someone we would consider a Chair of the Deacons at our own church, is now leading the church as an interim pastor. He spoke a couple times and presented the communion to the congregation. The church has a great worship band with singers, piano players and guitar players and they did a great job with the worship service. We actually recognized most of the songs they sang, mostly contemporary Christian, and struggled to sing along in Enlgish. How quickly you forget the words when you are hearing other people sing in a different language. Diana translated most of the service to those who could hear around here so that we at least knew what was being talked about and when we were supposed to go up in front of the congregation. The team went up together and each of us introduced ourselves, told them what we do for a living and what we would each be doing in the day camps. We also told them how long we had been preparing for the trip and everything that was involved in preparation such as group training meetings and fundraisers. At the end we sang "God is so Good" in English and then surprised them by singing in Polish. The church members were so responsive to us and so welcoming and it really warmed our hearts to see how much they wanted us here. We were very thankful for God placing us in this church. After church, the whole congregation stayed to eat lunch and have fellowship, just like a Baptist lunch. We were able to play with some of the children that would be attending day camp and get to know the families of the community a little more.

The church's worship team...Our group in the church sanctuary...

Meeting the church families after the service...

In the afternoon, we started with last minute planning, knowing that Tom and Beata would be there with us very late in the evening to stay through Tuesday and get us started for the week. Debbie met with the young leaders of the church to go over some details and we took a short trip downtown to see what the square was like. Every town here seems to have a town square and they are generally a lot older buildings filled with stores, restaurants and banks. Even though it was Sunday and most things were closed, the square was still filled with people, sitting outside and usually eating some Lody (Ice Cream). We headed back to the church that evening and started decorating the sanctuary and rooms used for English lessons and Bible study. It was a lot of fun decorating and we filled the halls and rooms with lots of color for the kids!

Decorating the sanctuary...