Polska Part 4 - The Middle

As English Camp progressed throughout the week, it brought challenges.

The second full day in particular was hard. Logistically, we had started to figure out a lot of the bugs, but in doing so, there had been some tension among the leadership of the American and Polish teams. But we met together for prayer even before walking over for the morning meeting. When we got there, it was amazing how the Spirit filled our meeting room, independently laid the same verse on the leaders' hearts, and opened the channels of communication and understanding. One of the most amazing aspects of this trip was just seeing the immediacy of our need for prayer and staying connected to the Holy Spirit. The camp absolutely would not have worked without it. 

The day itself went smooth enough. We started with another round of English lessons, still trying to find the balance between staying true to the curriculum, but having the beginning students feel challenged and have a chance to use their English. 

Then came lunch. It was pasta. It claimed to be gluten-free. It lied.

So, I had to miss the second day of bubble balls and the team leader tournament because I was throwing up in the bathroom. It actually turned out okay though because I got most of it out of my system so the reaction wasn't as bad. 

It wasn't really the stomach pain that bothered me so much; I'm used to it, it's just something I have to deal with. More than anything, it discouraged me. The self-doubt kept creeping in, "You're broken. You're not fit for this kind of work. You're just making it harder on everyone else. You're more a burden than a help. This is why you don't travel." Meanwhile, everyone was so kind, making sure I was okay, going out and buying me tea to settle my stomach, promising to make me special food the rest of the week just to make sure it didn't happen again - and all I could feel was guilt for having them go out of their way for me, even though they were more than happy to do it. Sometimes I don't understand why I feel things the way I do. But all I can say now is that my Polish family showed me so much love and grace and I am inexpressibly thankful for it. 

I felt okay enough to lead the camp dance, and luckily I didn't have any other responsibilities for the evening program that night. After that, we had a special concert put on by Exit, another program run by JosiahVenture. The show was excellent and the kids seemed to have a lot of fun with it. I tried to power through the stomach evils, and maybe did a little too much dancing and bouncing around, but I was going to feel sick anyway, and I'm glad I had that opportunity to bond with a few of the kids.

When all the campers left, our team stayed and ate dinner. They were all talking and laughing, but I just felt drained. All I wanted was to be by myself somewhere, not have to eat anything, and get some emotion off my chest, but of course there was no way to do that. The walk back to the hotel was good though, and I was holding on to the prospect of a little break in the routine the following day. 

We spent the better part of Wednesday at a horse ranch about a 30-minute drive from the church. There was horseback riding, (very dirty) bareback pony racing, kayaking, running obstacle courses (which I ended up doing barefoot because there is ZERO tread left on my old tennis shoes), roasting kiełbasa (Polish sausage) and s'mores over a bonfire, and playing all kinds of outdoor games I'm terrible at! It was fantastic. No, really, don't read that last statement with any sarcasm LOOK AT THESE PICTURES IT WAS SO FREAKING GREAT. And exactly what I needed :) It was wonderful to just let loose, be out in nature, and connect in smaller groups with some of the kids. Zosia and Justyna were my red team team, and though we maybe weren't the best at the games that involved flying projectiles, we made up for it in team spirit, and it was absolutely wonderful getting to know their lovely, silly, brilliant personalities. I also got to spend some time with Leszek and Wojtek from my beginner class talking about Star Wars and Lord of the Rings!

Ironically enough, I had no problems with allergies that day, but Tracie's hay fever really acted up, and Grace found out she's allergic to ponies...good thing I always carry benadryl!

When we got back, all we had to do were the evening program and the theme night. The evening program went the smoothest it ever had, the worship was really tight and powerful, and Łukasz' testimony was very poignant and relatable for me and probably a lot of the kids there, too. Sammie, Skylar, and Kate also did a fantastic job with the evening talk, speaking about the birth and life of Jesus, with Sky and Kate stepping in and performing the roles of Mary, the Angel, and all the other characters. 

The theme night was Hipster and it was ridiculous and wonderful. There were hipster outfits, fake mustaches, hipster dancing, yarn beards made by committee, and shaving cream/cheeto hairdos. This was definitely a youth camp. By the end of the day, I was completely physically exhausted and everything hurt, but my heart was rejuvenated.  

The next day was back to business, and the start was again a little rough because of miscommunication and misunderstanding within the team. There were hurt feelings on both sides. On the walk over I prayed hard over the situation, and throughout the day, I really tried to be intentional about making everyone feel heard and included. It was a challenge, but we got through it by God's grace.

The first night of camp, the evening program was supposed to be followed by a theme night - baseball night - but that was one of the logistical bugs we needed to work out. The evening program took longer than we thought, so baseball night didn't happen. But Alva had poured so much work into the preparation for it, so we decided to replace afternoon sports on Thursday with baseball. We all learned the rules of the game and got to play against the other color teams. All the Poles sang their national anthem before we began, and they all stood just a little bit taller. You never really see Americans singing our national anthem with quite that level of pride. It was neat to see. Then, I sang the American national anthem to a backing track whose key was way up in the stratosphere, so that was embarrassing. Oh well. The game was fun! And everyone else ate peanuts and cracker jacks. Since we were outside, I did pretty okay allergy-wise. We also played steal-the-hat-off-Adam, which must have been pretty terrifying for him... 

Over the meals and snacks, I really felt like I was starting to form deeper connections with some of the girls and we had great talks about religion, hypocrisy in the church, what it means for God to be relational and not just conceptual, and share some of our personal experience and thoughts on life in general. These kids amazed me more and more every day.

Again, the evening program went great. We did both worship songs in Polish and I even learned a new one on the fly. I love music.

We had another insane theme night - Hawaiian. We had the same kinds of silly dancing, games, and costumes and everyone had a blast.

We stayed after all the kids had left and watched the football match, but Poland lost to Portugal and it was heartbreaking.  

Polska Part 3 - The Beginning

In spite of all my apprehensions, Sunday finally arrived. We started the day off with the regular service at the church, and my first time playing an entirely Polish worship set (not to mention it was also my first time playing an entire worship set on mandolin). Not a lot of Poles have ever even heard of mandolin, being a more American folk instrument, so I think it was a lot of fun for them to see it. It was certainly fun for me!

Once the service was over, we hurriedly cleaned and prepped our classrooms, then anxiously awaited the campers. As the arrived and registered, they were taken back to an oral English exam for class placement. Once finished with that, they came out to us to play some icebreaker games. We had to keep adjusting since there were constantly new people joining us.

Large groups of new people is usually a situation I avoid. Being an introvert, I generally prefer talking to one or two people at a time, and I tend to take a long time to warm up to them and show any trace of the crazier sides of my personality. But camp is different. Especially when you're a leader at said camp. If you're going to get these students (who are probably also apprehensive about being around so many new people) excited about anything, you have to be EXCITED. I was thus flung completely out of my comfort zone, and I'm so glad for it.

Once everyone had gone through the oral exam, the color teams were established. Nancy, Filip (our tech guy, nicknamed FiFi WiFi), and I were designated Red Team leaders. We all broke off into our teams with the task of designing our team banner and coming up with our team cheer. Our team decided we would be the Awesome Red...Apples. I said, "So...just so we're clear - you guys are going to be cheering for this when we do sports and everything. You want to be cheering for the Awesome Red Apples?" In reply, a resounding "YEEEAAAAHHH!!!" Ok then! Sweet!

Our cheer:
What are we??
-AWESOME!!!!
What color are we???
-RED!!!!
WHAT DOES THAT MAKE US?!?!?!
-AWESOME. RED. APPLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And we were glorious.

After that, we ran the first Evening Program. The theme of this year's camp was "Did You Get My Message?" centering around social media. The Evening Program began with ice breakers and announcements, then Tracie and I taught the first half of the camp dance to Lecrae's "Calling all the Messengers." It went pretty okay in spite of the whiteness of my dancing. But we were in Poland so...

The Evening Program is where the evangelistic element of the camp mainly comes through. After the dance, Tracie, Adam, and I led a couple worship songs in English, which was also crazy fun. They're both extremely talented people. Then, the whole thing wrapped up with Kelly's testimony and the campers were dismissed home.

It had already been a very long day, and it wasn't even a full day of camp. I wasn't sure how I was going to make it through an entire week, but I was excited. A few of us went out to dinner in Market Square in Piotrków. I accidentally ate some salmon and my throat started to swell, but I took some benadryl and I was fine. But I completely crashed when we finally got back to the hotel.



The first full day of camp was a doozy. There were still a few kinks that needed to be worked out in the staff meeting beforehand, but we got through it. After a few morning announcements, we started English classes. Peggy and I were in charge of the Beginning class, with Naomi serving as our translator. The curriculum was provided by JosiahVenture, but was a little confusing and unclear in places. Peggy had done a lot of preparation, but there were still some things that it had us doing that then didn't have an activity to go with it, and the kids seemed pretty bored. But they weren't talking. Because they weren't talking, we initially assumed that they were at a lower level than many of them were actually at. However, Naomi talked to a few of them during the break, so we adjusted the activities for the second half of class, and they opened up a lot more, we got them talking and using their English, and they seemed to be much more engaged.



After English lessons were sports! The first couple days, we had bubble balls. They're these intense inflatable balls that you crawl inside and support with your shoulders. Then you run around, get knocked over, and sweat a lot. It's crazy fun, but exhausting and it bruises your shoulders. We played football (soccer, aka REAL football), and I was actually better at it than I thought I would be!

 

The Evening Program ended up basically being the Tracie and Ellie show. We taught the rest of the camp dance and were supposed to lead worship, but Ron's testimony took more time than expected, which was fine because it was really powerful. Then, Tracie and I gave the evening talk, all about creation and the fall and what it meant when sin entered the world.



I gave my first sermon. In Poland. With a translator. Booyah.

I was actually really surprised at how not-nervous I was. I got a little flustered towards the end, but other than that it went really smoothly and I wasn't shaking at all!

After the campers went home, the older girls and I went out to the mall for ice cream and then McDonald's with Adam and Łukasz. It was great just hanging out and not having to talk about anything camp-related for a little bit. They're all just fantastic people, and have become some of my dearest friends.

 

 

Polska Part 2 - The Preparation

We had been in Poland about 3 days, but had barely begun to experience it. We'd still been surrounded by Americans. So when we got on the 4-hour bus ride from the h2o training facility to the church we would be serving at in Piotrków, we still had no idea what we were in for.

For me, the first real taste of being in a foreign country actually hit me when we took a pit stop at McDonald's. The menu was in Polish, everyone was speaking Polish, and everyone was staring at our group of loud Americans. By this point, I was feeling a lot of anxiety about teaching and the language barrier, having no idea what level the kids would be at or if I'd be competent enough to teach them anything. But I tried to push past it and just remember that if we're having fun, they'll have fun. 

After we got settled into our hotel, we met the assistant pastor, Mark, and his family. Mark and his wife Naomi were originally from the US, but have been serving in Poland for over 23 years. Their youngest daughters, Lydia and Jessica, were both born in Poland. The family took our team out to pizza about a block from our hotel. The pizza was MASSIVE. I admired it from a distance and had some very tasty baked chicken. It was a great time of everyone getting to know each other.

The following day, we set out on the first walk that we would come to know and love in the coming week, the walk to the church. The church itself was not what I had expected in a lot of ways. The ground floor was largely unfinished, but it had 3 more floors above ground for extra housing. The main part of the church where the operation mostly takes place is in the basement, with seemingly endless halls and extra rooms every way you turn.

    

There was a lot of cleaning up that needed to be done to prepare for the arrival of the campers, mainly on the ground floor. I actually kind of love that kind of work, especially with a group of other enthusiastic people. We made really good progress!

   

That afternoon, our team split up into groups to go to various Polish team members' homes for dinner to strengthen the connection between the teams and to really get to know Polish culture. Peggy, Alva, Tracie, and I went to Mark and Naomi's. They have a beautiful home, delicious food, and hanging out with the girls was a blast!

That evening, a group of us got to go watch Lydia run in a half marathon in Old Town Piotrków. And she finished! Yay!!! Before the race, there were these historical reenactment people doing medieval fighting, and several of us got to use a mace! It was great being in the middle of this big town event, and it was the first time I really started to feel connected with the city. I also got to use a few Polish phrases I'd picked up! (Mainly przepraszam - sorry :P )

  

 

The following day was described in my journal as "STRESS but also AMAAAAAZE!!!" The morning was spent in the first formal meeting between the American and Polish teams, and there were a lot of things we still had to plan and coordinate and not a lot of time until the campers would arrive. But, somehow, through the din of different voices and ideas being tossed back and forth, we managed to get a road map of what the camp was going to look like.

That was the stress part, and with that over, came all the amaze.

Lydia, and Pastor Daniel's daughter, Marta invited me to play my mandolin with them for their church's worship service, and we got to practice after the meeting. It already sounded great, and it was beyond cool to be able to play along with them singing in Polish.

Our team once again split up to go to various Polish homes for dinner. Tracie, Ron, Nancy, and I went to Pastor Daniel's home. We were able to catch the last few minutes of a very important Polish football match, and they won! Yay!!! His wife, Anja, made an absolutely delicious meal, and we learned a new card game called Dobble with Marta and Łukasz, which I was not terribly good at, but it was buckets of fun. Lovely doesn't even begin to describe their home, their food, and all their hearts. 

  

I was still pretty anxious about what the next day would hold when we'd finally meet the campers, but after that day I felt more and more excited.

Polska Part 1 - The Training

From June 20th to July 16th, 2016, I had the opportunity to join with a team from my church to go serve as a teacher for a youth English camp in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland. Going into it, I had no idea what I was getting myself into and just how much the experience,  and especially the people, would change my life.

I'm still just starting to process everything, and I'm hoping this series of blogs will help me do that. Plus, I get to share what happened with all of my incredible support team back on the US. Without you guys, your financial, emotional, and prayer support, there's no way I would have been able to do this. So, from the depths of my heart, thank you.

Now we get to the fun part ^_^

We met at the church at 4am to ride the church van over to LAX where we would board the first of 3 planes. Several of us didn't sleep the night before in the hopes that we would be sufficiently exhausted enough to get a little sleep on the plane from Boston to Munich, and that our body clocks would then be confused enough to adjust quickly to being 9 hours ahead in Poland. It actually seemed to work pretty well!

 

One of the younger girls had issues with a head/toothache, but handled it like a pro and powered through. Other than that, our looooong travel day went very smooth. It was also interesting to see how quick and easy it is to get through customs in every other place but LAX...

5 hours from LA to Boston, 7 hours from Boston to Munich, and another hour from Munich to Wrocław, and we were finally in Poland!!! Aaaaaaand had another 3 hour bus ride to the h2o training facility.

After travelling for approximately 29 hours straight, we arrived bedraggled and exhausted. The Josiah Venture interns were there to enthusiastically welcome us, get us settled in for the next couple days, feed us real food, and prepare us for the week ahead.

 

Once we'd all eaten, we perked up and decided to explore the facility - a gorgeous fairytale forest land of magic and wonder. Plus, the sun doesn't set until around 9:30pm in the summer.

The next day was significantly less crazy than the travel days, and I actually managed to get a decent amount of sleep that first night. The day was filled with training - how to present the gospel, how to run the English camp, how to teach the English lessons, and more about Polish culture. Apparently a lot of my mannerisms are very Polish. For instance, they generally have to be asked several times to join in an activity before they'll say yes, even if they really want to. Also, if you ask them a question that requires more than a simple yes or no answer, they usually need time to process and actually figure out their thoughts. If you promise something to a Pole, they will take it very seriously and will expect you to follow through.

During the culture presentation, they showed a video about Auschwitz. It's always hard to watch anything about the holocaust, and the weight of it started to sink in in a different way than it had before now that we were actually in the country where it happened. But, this video also showed the prisoners who stubbornly clung to their humanity by creating art and showing love in spite of everything. The whole thing put everything in perspective, and reminded us that Poles are so much stronger than they often get credit for. Their joy and human spirit would go on to amaze me in the coming weeks in ways I couldn't have imagined.  

There were also team-building exercises where we had to name and use each other's strengths. Our team: an older couple, a former teacher/missionary, an actress, a costumer, a computer science student, a mom and dad, a 13-going-on-30-year-old, a 10-year-old, and me - an English major working at Disneyland who has no idea what she's doing with her life. No one would have put that team together and expected it to accomplish anything worthwhile. But God did.

During free time, Alva, Sammie, and I walked along the river behind the camp, braving the hoards of bugs for the sake of the abundance of green gorgeousness. Alva and I got delicious ice creams and bonded by the lake. 

Dinner was followed by a mock Evening Program like the ones we would be expected to present at the camps. I was incredibly nervous about that part, because I'd committed to giving the evening talk the second night even though public speaking is only just above sticking my head into a fire anthill on my list of things I like to do. More on how that turned out in subsequent blogs. 

There was a concert of cover songs put on by the Exit team, but we were all too worn out and I had to write the correspondence letter back to the church. When I finished, I went out to find the other girls, and they were all playing basketball. I don't sports, so I awkwardly played my mandolin for background music and it was a really lovely time. 

The next day there were a couple more talks and a big commissioning of all the teams who would be going out to various cities in Poland to conduct their English camps. The commissioning was really powerful to be a part of. You could really feel the passion and power in the room, and everyone was so excited to see what God was going to do through all of us. It was also very humbling to have people you barely knew lay their hands on you and pray over you.

After we packed we had some time just waiting around before our bus to Piotrkow. Alva and I found an old bicycle. It had a very tall seat, and luckily, I am very tall, so I rode around on it for a bit. We had more girl bonding time with Tracie as well, and it was just a really great time where we were all able to encourage each other, reassuring one another that though we've each been through a lot of pain and hurt, God can use those things to help us connect, love, and heal the little corners of the world we occupy. 

Tired, but so excited and encouraged, we pressed onward to Piotrkow, having no idea what challenges, but also what great rewards lay ahead.