Sunday, September 18, 2005
my time in lithuania...and housing fiascos...
i didn't realize just long it's been since i've last blogged. lots has happened. we went to lithuania for about 10days and it was a bit of a love/hate experience for me. i'd been there two and a half years ago but my memories of it was scattered. i remembered bits and pieces. it was nice to see former CPers (Saul and Sanna Karosas) again as well as an American pastor I worked with last time who's now been in Lithuania for 11 years. (Pastor Davis and his wife have 8 kids!!!) at saul's church there was also a really nice guy named val who we spent alot of time with. it was a lot of fun hanging out w/ people in ministry somewhat near our age group. oh and here's something crazy: my hosts in Klaipeda, Lithuania (Kim and Mark Hoelterhoff) used to go to Mosaic and my cousin Clarice who's a dentist, looked at their kids teeth before they moved to Klaipeda!!! they were really wonderful people. i liked them so much and it was nice to be around californians again. californians are really friendly, you know?
i also got to perform a short play in Lithuanian. a totally new language/experience for me. it went quite well, i think. oh and i also got to see another CPer, Martyna Uljanova and her friend Violeta. Violeta is thinking about joining CP and she spent the past summer with us in training in Germany.
so that's the part i loved about lithuania. the not so nice part is that i felt so attacked spiritually. the first morning i walked around the town in Klaipeda, i felt such a heaviness. i just felt like the spiritual oppression/darkness was so strong. later, without even asking, saul told me quite a bit about the very hard facts about lithuania. depression and alcoholism are such huge issues. people feel like they don't have anything to live for and consequently, lithuania has one of the top 5 suicide rates in the whole world. just this past year, three people from his church have lost immediate family members with suicide being the cause. it makes it very hard for me to be there because i feel the spiritual atmosphere around me so much. but it made it all the more important for us to be there. lithuania needs the Lord so much (as we all do).
so that's lithuania. it's been great to be back in Poland. i missed it so much even though it was less than two weeks we were gone. it's been a hard week being back though. we've had a lot of problems with housing this week. we ended up staying in a youth hostel sort of place and then a friend of my friend Darek (who's now become a friend of ours) invited us back. we stayed there earlier this tour. his name is Andrzej and he's a very young Lutheran pastor who's super funny but also very deep. anyway, he took us in the very night he heard we were having housing problems -- without any hesitation-- and that really blessed me. i had been feeling so homeless. i don't think i've ever had to stay in a youth hostel because of lack of housing.
anyway, it was kind of a crazy situation leading up to it. our travel path didn't make any sense and we ended up going a different direction and wasting time/petrol and i kept kicking myself trying to figure out if i had just made really bad decisions but finally, i had to drop all that guilt. it wasn't helping. even if i did make a bad decision somewhere, God is bigger than that. decision making is one of the hardest parts about being a leader, i think. and i'm always so consumed with trying to make "the right" decision. but sometimes any decision is better than no decision.
i didn't realize just long it's been since i've last blogged. lots has happened. we went to lithuania for about 10days and it was a bit of a love/hate experience for me. i'd been there two and a half years ago but my memories of it was scattered. i remembered bits and pieces. it was nice to see former CPers (Saul and Sanna Karosas) again as well as an American pastor I worked with last time who's now been in Lithuania for 11 years. (Pastor Davis and his wife have 8 kids!!!) at saul's church there was also a really nice guy named val who we spent alot of time with. it was a lot of fun hanging out w/ people in ministry somewhat near our age group. oh and here's something crazy: my hosts in Klaipeda, Lithuania (Kim and Mark Hoelterhoff) used to go to Mosaic and my cousin Clarice who's a dentist, looked at their kids teeth before they moved to Klaipeda!!! they were really wonderful people. i liked them so much and it was nice to be around californians again. californians are really friendly, you know?
i also got to perform a short play in Lithuanian. a totally new language/experience for me. it went quite well, i think. oh and i also got to see another CPer, Martyna Uljanova and her friend Violeta. Violeta is thinking about joining CP and she spent the past summer with us in training in Germany.
so that's the part i loved about lithuania. the not so nice part is that i felt so attacked spiritually. the first morning i walked around the town in Klaipeda, i felt such a heaviness. i just felt like the spiritual oppression/darkness was so strong. later, without even asking, saul told me quite a bit about the very hard facts about lithuania. depression and alcoholism are such huge issues. people feel like they don't have anything to live for and consequently, lithuania has one of the top 5 suicide rates in the whole world. just this past year, three people from his church have lost immediate family members with suicide being the cause. it makes it very hard for me to be there because i feel the spiritual atmosphere around me so much. but it made it all the more important for us to be there. lithuania needs the Lord so much (as we all do).
so that's lithuania. it's been great to be back in Poland. i missed it so much even though it was less than two weeks we were gone. it's been a hard week being back though. we've had a lot of problems with housing this week. we ended up staying in a youth hostel sort of place and then a friend of my friend Darek (who's now become a friend of ours) invited us back. we stayed there earlier this tour. his name is Andrzej and he's a very young Lutheran pastor who's super funny but also very deep. anyway, he took us in the very night he heard we were having housing problems -- without any hesitation-- and that really blessed me. i had been feeling so homeless. i don't think i've ever had to stay in a youth hostel because of lack of housing.
anyway, it was kind of a crazy situation leading up to it. our travel path didn't make any sense and we ended up going a different direction and wasting time/petrol and i kept kicking myself trying to figure out if i had just made really bad decisions but finally, i had to drop all that guilt. it wasn't helping. even if i did make a bad decision somewhere, God is bigger than that. decision making is one of the hardest parts about being a leader, i think. and i'm always so consumed with trying to make "the right" decision. but sometimes any decision is better than no decision.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
a wonderful start to this mission...
we're now in our second week of mission. we've had a great start. our first playdate was at a Pentecostal church in Torun (north Central Poland) and it went well. they were very receptive and asked us to come back to do street theatre in October. the following day we went to a town called Mragowo where an Evangelical Lutheran based ministry which translates to Missions and Evangelization Center was holding an evangelization week. We did an all-Polish program on Monday night and the following days we led drama workshops with translation. they also asked me to share my testimony and to sing a song and the Lord really blessed that time. I guess what I shared (about having gone through some hard times even in ministry and turning away from him at a point in my life and then having to go back to the Lord to learn to seek His face rather than His hands) really touched several people. one young lady asked me to meet with her the next day and she shared her struggles with me and we had a rich time of prayer.
the conference was really special to me for several reasons. the first being that it was just such a wonderful and appropriate way to start off mission. my teamates and i really desire to grow in our hunger for the Lord and want to stay focused on Him and this helped provide additional impetus. secondly, the people there were so fervent in their vision for furthering the Lord's Kingdom that it couldn't help but touch you. thirdly, this was the ministry one of my good friends (Darek) served with here in Poland and the people here are very special to him. to me, there's something really special about friends connecting friends and different worlds connecting with one another and melding with one another.
anyway, we'll be working with this ministry some more in the near future. they've already invited us to be part of their evangelization events in late september and mid october.
now all we have to do is book up the empty weeks we have immediately coming up. we head to lithuania tomorrow and still haven't heard back from places that we supposedly have bookings with. hopefully everything will work out and we'll actually get to do some performing. i hate going to different areas and not being used while there. plus, we also need to survive and if we don't have performances, we don't have any way of paying for petrol, food, etc. (other than relying on the donations and support we receive personally). thank the Lord I have a very giving and generous church.
time to go. gotta get some sleep. (it's 2:04am here in Poland.)
we're now in our second week of mission. we've had a great start. our first playdate was at a Pentecostal church in Torun (north Central Poland) and it went well. they were very receptive and asked us to come back to do street theatre in October. the following day we went to a town called Mragowo where an Evangelical Lutheran based ministry which translates to Missions and Evangelization Center was holding an evangelization week. We did an all-Polish program on Monday night and the following days we led drama workshops with translation. they also asked me to share my testimony and to sing a song and the Lord really blessed that time. I guess what I shared (about having gone through some hard times even in ministry and turning away from him at a point in my life and then having to go back to the Lord to learn to seek His face rather than His hands) really touched several people. one young lady asked me to meet with her the next day and she shared her struggles with me and we had a rich time of prayer.
the conference was really special to me for several reasons. the first being that it was just such a wonderful and appropriate way to start off mission. my teamates and i really desire to grow in our hunger for the Lord and want to stay focused on Him and this helped provide additional impetus. secondly, the people there were so fervent in their vision for furthering the Lord's Kingdom that it couldn't help but touch you. thirdly, this was the ministry one of my good friends (Darek) served with here in Poland and the people here are very special to him. to me, there's something really special about friends connecting friends and different worlds connecting with one another and melding with one another.
anyway, we'll be working with this ministry some more in the near future. they've already invited us to be part of their evangelization events in late september and mid october.
now all we have to do is book up the empty weeks we have immediately coming up. we head to lithuania tomorrow and still haven't heard back from places that we supposedly have bookings with. hopefully everything will work out and we'll actually get to do some performing. i hate going to different areas and not being used while there. plus, we also need to survive and if we don't have performances, we don't have any way of paying for petrol, food, etc. (other than relying on the donations and support we receive personally). thank the Lord I have a very giving and generous church.
time to go. gotta get some sleep. (it's 2:04am here in Poland.)
