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Camp Is Over... But Ministry Keeps Going (Andy Abramson)

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 01:19:29 +0200

What an incredible week of camp and ministry! The last couple of days were very tiring for me. For some.... when camp was over the wind down process begins... for others of us we don’t get to do that for a few more days.... here are a few things that I got to be apart of over the last couple of days....

SATURDAY NIGHT
** We had a debriefing time with the leaders for camp. Which turned into an opportunity to speak future leaders of this youth ministry. They needed our encouragement and help walking through how it looks for them to lead. I was praising God for an incredible night.

SUNDAY MORNING
** I had the opportunity to preach in church. It was very difficult after a long week of camp and speaking so many times over the last week but it was a great opportunity!!

SUNDAY AFTERNOON
** Josh and I had a lunch meeting with the former youth leaders of this group. We talked through the passing of leadership... discipleship... and their role in training up future leaders for this youth ministry there.

SUNDAY LATE AFTERNOON
** A debriefing time with the Polish Youth Group. For this year because of some of the dynamics I did it by myself. It was a good meeting but some hard things had to be said about some things that I saw during the course of the week. It was good but very emotionally tiring!!

A couple more days then I will get a chance to slow down for a few days.

Andy

The hardest part of the trip.... saying goodbye (Thomas Ruttger)

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 16:22:30 +0200

Djen Dobre! Today was our last day of english camp. After another late night and early morning we started our 25 minute hike to the church. Our breakfast consisted of an apple and rice dessert thingy which even the Polish people said was really strange! Looking around today you can definitely tell that everyone is quite tired. Jon just slept through another message and now we’re about to break for lunch. This week has been pretty dang awesome, to put it lightly.
Last night was the gospel message and many people both in our group and the Polish Youth Group had the opportunities to pray with students. We have many new brothers and sisters!!! We are slowly shifting leadership over to the youth group. For example, today Skotty led one of the best devotions I’ve ever heard despite being nervous as heck. I had the very cool opportunity last night to play guitar around the campfire with a Polish student. We were singing worships songs in both polish and english. I remember looking at the people gathered around us and seeing kids that i knew weren’t believers at last years camp that had done a complete 180. They were praising and worshiping God for the awesome work that he has done in their life! It was very cool to see. After six months of more of preparations falling into place it has been fun to watch God work in crazy, exciting, and creative ways that we can’t fathom. This afternoon i had the incredible chance to sit down with a boy who gave his life to christ just last night who is very talented with the guitar. We played for almost an hour and all he wanted to do was to learn worship song after worship song. There is so much potential here! Once again it will be very hard to say goodbye to the students (about 30 minutes from now) and even harder to say goodbye to the youth group kids whom i have grown so close to these last two years. It was very hard packing our bags this morning. But... we are all excited for the future of this church and the future of Koszalin!!!

God’s Movement (Andy Abramson)

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 12:16:00 +0200

So.... what an amazing team meeting this morning.... We had an opportunity to sit and talk with our team and the Polish team about some of the conversations that went on last night. Several people gave their life to the Lord last night in the midst of conversations with us. Even some of our American team got to be apart of these! AMAZING!! God is good! We continue to pray for several more that are really wrestling with truth. We pray that they would give their hearts over to God and surrender their lives!

Well last day of camp. 10 more minutes of English Classes! Pretty crazy we are winding down!! More to come later!!

Andy

Random thoughts from Jenn :) (Jenn Abramson)

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 21:51:53 +0200

Some thoughts....
I am honored to be working with this group from Lakewood!! They have made me so proud on so many occasions! We are a family and it is so wonderful to see how each of us fills a different need as we minister here in Poland.

I am tired... we have been going non stop for the entire week.. I am amazed that I am as aware of what is going on around me as I am.

My English class is the best, today was our Health/ Wellness unit and we got into a discussion about death and the fact that everyone dies... it was quit intense and I believe that God will and did use it to get some of them thinking.

Ryleigh is amazing... she is already ministering to people at 6 months old.. I can’t wait to tell her that when she is older. So many doors have been opened by her tenderness and her radiant smile.

I am also reminded of what God has done in my life over the past 14 or so years! I can not imagine where I would be if it hadn’t been for God stepping in an rescuing me from myself!! I pray that God will continue to use what I shared tonight in the lives of these young people!!

I enjoy Thomas Ruttger we had a great talk yesterday on the 4 hour bus ride home... “thank you Tom”!!

And Asia says “hi” to America... she made a decision to give her entire life to Jesus last year at camp and this year helped to plan it and is a leader in the group... I know incredible!!

This is pretty random but this is what is in my head!! Thank you for listening!! We are all preparing ourselves for the goodbyes we face in the next few days... so hard!!

Oh and I miss my girls and pray that they are so totally blessed as they spend this special time with grandma and grandpa!!

the 3 hour castle tour? (Nick Hoffmann)

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 22:09:14 +0200

Last year (on our camp field trip) we were fortunate enough to see the longest plank in the world (no really the LONGEST plank in the world) so this year our expectations were very high. Well, this year we went to the largest castle in Poland. We were treated to the “greatest” english speaking tour guide at the castle who we could barely understand, who didn’t let us speak, and seemed somewhat annoyed with us. After 5 days in row with less than 6 hours of sleep each night we were all a little tired and worn out so a long castle tour wasn’t really what the doctor ordered. However, we were able to make the best of it and after a little food we jumped back on the bus and many of us had awesome conversations with the campers which resulted in a good base for friday night (gospel night). I also had a good conversation with one of the youth group kids and challenged him in his leadership role. Now I go to sleep.

Turning Point (Andy Abramson)

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:08:07 +0200

Historically today is always the interesting day.... WEDNESDAY!! Usually Wednesday is low energy because of a couple of theme nights. The day is long and sometimes people are a bit moody. It’s hard because Wednesday is a long day as well that usually will last till about 10:30pm at night. Then tomorrow we will roll again because we have the day trip planned, which is always a good change of pace! It mixes things up enough to get us back on track and finish the rest of the week strong.

This morning, Nick gave a great devotional! He talked about how easy it is to become idol in our lives and in our ministry. It was a challenging reminder to how we need to look at today! We need to continue to step out and follow what God is calling us to do. We need to continue to build relationships with the students and continue to ask the questions that need to be asked!

I’m excited to see how today will go. I’m excited for relationships to continue to develop. I’m excited about tomorrow.... all the “talking time” we will get! I think these are a crucial couple of days!

Discussion groups have been going well! The polish youth group is in charge of these discussion groups and it seems that good conversation is going on (you can only tell so much when you can’t understand what they are saying). Today is very important in leading up to Gospel Night on Friday night. Tonight we talk about the stories of Isaac and Moses. We will talk about the exchange that we saw as Isaac was about to be sacrificed and also the passover and deliverance of the Hebrews. Both very important stories when we get to talking about Christ and what he did on the cross!

Well that is it for now. I will try to get some others to write today. Our team has been working VERY HARD and I’m so proud of them!

Andy

Man was that a long day (Andy Abramson)

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:35:31 +0200

Well.... camp hit us in the face full bore!! The fun is over and the long days begin! Today was 16 hours of ministry, and the next two days should be very similar! Tomorrow may even be later! We have another theme night tomorrow and it’s ending with a movie that could put us back at the boarding apartments at 11:30pm or 12am and then a quick team meeting will make it a bit longer! Well.... bed right now is a must!!

Andy

Curry, goofiness, and the first day of camp (Nick Hoffmann)

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 19:31:13 +0200

So today we woke up to get prepared for the first day of camp....but before that started we ate an interesting breakfast. At first glance the breakfast looked kind of like an egg bake, but after dishing it up, it was noticeably not comprised of eggs or any of the regular egg bake ingredients. Instead it was rice, corn, peppers, pickles, curry, and some other ingredients and it was bright yellow and served cold. It was interesting and fairly good but just a word to the wise...I wouldn’t serve it to Andy anytime too soon. After breakfast we went to church and like last year we were hooked up to headphones and the message was then translated to us. Then around 2pm the campers started to arrive...first they got to test their knowledge of English (by taking an English Test for class placement) and they were all very thrilled about this...ha ha. After the test we gathered together for the first time as a whole group by playing “i have never” we found some interesting things about people like who has worn a dress and which guys have kissed other guys! Then it was off to the camp theme song where we put our dancing skills to the test. After this Josh introduced the camp by acting quite goofy...lets just say I hope we have it on Video! Then Andy gave a good intro message and we found out our groups for English camp. Sara and I have the best class...enough said. Well that is all for know, I am currently living on about 4.5 hours of sleep a night and I don’t think I will be catching up anytime soon....hopefully I will start getting closer to 7? well good night!

5 Things To Know About Polish Bathrooms (Jordan Walker)

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 20:12:17 +0200

5 things to know about Polish bathrooms:

1. Unlike many traditional American bathrooms, where privacy is important, the door to the bathroom itself and many stalls have a small window. With this small window one can see into the stall/bathroom and find out what is going on inside.

1. Most toilets have a small shelf inside the bowl, with witch one can see the produce of ones labor.

1. Instead of flushing using a small lever on the side of the toilet, there is a small button on top or the toilet which you need to push down ( this took me a while).

1. It is not unusual to find a guy in a girl’s bathroom...

1. Most bathrooms here are very small.

I think one of the biggest lessons we can learn about intercultural differences is that just because it is totally different and completely weird from the way we know, doesn't mean its totally undoable. Our polish team has seemed to adapt to these weird differences with not to much complaint, which is good. :) Plus, it is kinda’ fun finding out what else there is to learn and seeing new surprises that we have to deal with, (HAHAHA).

Preparation Day (Sara Connoy)

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 20:00:40 +0200

So today was lots of preparing! We spent most of the day getting ready for English camp to begin tomorrow and hanging out with the kids in the youth group. We also got to go to a second hand store to get some outfits for the theme nights “rockstar” and “polish farmer”. So now everyone has super crazy outfits for them! Yatzick, one of the polish students, taught us origami, so we are pretty much pros now! :) Just kidding..we struggled at it! We are excited for tomorrow,. so excited to see the campers! Please pray for good conversations with them, for energy, and for a continual focus on loving on and ministering to the campers! -Sara