The Unexpected

So little and so much is going on all at the same time! Even though this is a down time for the camp I still feel like I'm running around 90 mph with everything being new. God is so good as always though! There's a church right down the street from camp in Zako that is about 1,000 yrs. old. Zakosciele actually means "town behind the church", because that is where the town was built. After my run this morning I was walking around the churches cemetary, which is obviously similar to ours in America, except for the tombstones are COVERED with fresh flowers and lanters. Many of you probably know this already, but Poland is primarily catholic and they believe that flowers and such will help the person who has passed away to be release from purgatory quicker. It broke my heart to see all of these graves and realize that their families were still trying to help them work their way to heaven, but it also gave me a greater burden for the people of poland and those that I know that don't have a personal relationship with Christ. The great thing is God is an awesome and mighty God, that can save anyone, anywhere, from anything. Even when the circumstances seem may seem unlikely, my God can do anything. There are many challenges to working in a foreign country, not knowing the language or the culture and just the general adjustment, but God will help me within and through these challeges. When I am weak, His glory shines.

The Latest and Greatest

Somewhere between Wednesday and Thursday I made it to Poland safe and sound with all of my blessed luggage! Praise the Lord! (during the retreat I forgot my bag, it was worse than the where did I put my keys game). We got stuck in traffic on our way out of Warsaw for a couple extra hours, where I caught up on some extra sleep, which I ended up losing again when I woke up @ 1:30 this morning... lol... Jet Lag you're the bestest!
Today I spent most of the day in the grade school and preschool with Rachel, one of the teachers. Fit camp starts next week Wednesday, which i'll be helping with and a couple instructors are coming in also. There's probably more, but I'm gonna try to get some of that sleep back :). Good night world!

Back it up... to the Retreat

Last Saturday the Kenya (2 Mollys, 2 Katie's, 1 Sam, 1 Nicole, and 1 Elise) and Poland ( Team Jo) Mi2 teams met and went on a retreat to... actually none of us know for sure, but it was a lil' bit of TN/GA/NC all mixed together. After we got to the first cabin we unpacked the van then put everything back in the it because we realized that this cabin was at the beginning of the road and not the end, where we were supposed to be :). After we unpacked for real our first team building experience took place at the always amazing Food Lion, which again we're not really sure what state that was in. The Food Lion was also where we met Manager Jack, the ex-sniper who loves to talk about how being a store manager pays better than being a sniper & what state everything is in. Food Lion wouldn't have been the same without him. The next couple days were filled with legistics and other necessary directives things, like white water rafting and funyaking ;). The first day of rafting was in Ducktown,TN where the 1996 Olympic Rafting was held. It was awesome and body numbing cold... lol... the second day was colder, but we all stayed nice and toasty in our full body wetsuits, rubbers boots and splash jackets (Yes, there will be pictures to come). I really don't know what we would have done without all that gear though, besides shiver intensely since the warmest the water got was 45F. The rafting went well minus that time that I steered one of the Mollys and I into a tree, that was right after I told her I had done this in Canada and she should trust me... lol... and we had another slight mishap @ the end our journey. We got a little to excited about our success with the 2nd to last rapid that we totally wiped on the last rapid. All you could see of Molly as we went down were her legs sticking verically in the air... lol again pictures to come... All that to say we had a great, safe retreat and the Mi2 2011 group is amazing. It's gonna be a good summer...