GENEralities

Word-sketches from a short-term mission trip to Poland (with a short detour to Prague on the way home):

• There is a 24 hour KFC at the railway station in Poznan, Poland!?!? I know because I sat outside it for most of a night.
• The magic of “Here I Am to Worship” and “Open the Eyes of My Heart” sung in Polish and English by a Polish lake in the dark on a warm summer night.
• Polish youngsters on the dock before morning prayer time with their Bibles open, reading and praying in silence…no-one there telling them to do so, no idle chatter.
• Seeing how God works through you in special and delightful ways you don’t expect when you’re a stranger from out-of-town (see Mark 6.4).
• Things that stick in my mind’s eye after a day at Auschwitz: a toddler’s dress with an exquisitely embroidered bodice the size my grand-daughter would wear; a beautiful but awful bolt of cloth made from human hair; the sheer size of the place; a brown leather suitcase, in a huge pile of suitcases, with the name and address of a 12 year old girl painted on it in white along with the sad, sad label: “Waisenkind,” orphan. Lord, have mercy on us all.
• Helping Bonnie Hole (of the Family Book Nook) celebrate her birthday in Prague.
• Two delightful and similar sounds: that of evening conversation among the strollers and sidewalk café patrons in the Krakow Market Square the Prague Old Town Square, and that of the Polish youngsters praying in a lovely mixture of Polish and tongues. Both sounded like the humming of bees.
• Hearing Jesus preached at St Clement’s Anglican Church in Prague (built in the 11th Century). Mozart never played the organ there, but Albert Schweitzer did and the present organist is the Professor of Improvisation at Charles University!

Like the man said at St Clement’s, when it comes to Jesus, we have little to bring and much to receive, all totally undeserved. That was certainly true of our wonderful trip.

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