zaczek

ahoj friends and family. i found this picture on flickr of the hostel we stayed at in krakow. our beloved zaczek. and since i havent uploaded any pics yet ill have to pirate this one. anyhoo there wont be proper punctuation in this post bc im lazy. we just got back from a gypsy outreach today and i was in heaven. by the way, we are in slovakia now for the second full day. yesterday we had church and it was incredible. Gods spirit moved in powerful ways as always. my slovak is improving in leaps and bounds. people talk to me as if im a native and i have to stop them and remind them to speak slowly. today we had a powerful time of devotions in the church. we had worship and prayed together then the pastor told us his vision for his church and also a little about the gypsy people. i couldnt believe it as God recounted the events in my mind of the past year. He gave me a dream a year ago to partner with a woman named stanya who is a gypsy woman who got saved through our ministry in banovce three years ago. i sent a support letter to peter telling him about this dream i had but i thought it would be far, far into the future. i am not very good at dreaming. then as i sat and listened to pastor Rasto speak God showed me that He gave me this dream, then last year in sk during worship He told me He wanted me to spend this whole summer in sk. then i found out i couldnt stay with sara since she is moving to greece with the slovak missionaries. then i found out the my friend majo will go to ireland for the summer which allowed me to stay with daska, his mom. rasto said that stanya is a gift from God and that she now works with about 15 gypsy kids doing bible studies etc. i wept as i saw my dream coming into fruition and everyone is already excited and thankful that i am here to help. tonight i saw the need once again firsthand. they need Jesus. so, so much.

Meet Sylvia

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Sylvia. Ths is her playing violin for the children at the orphanage in Tijuana in 2004. She studied here at the U of M for a year, and it was great having her as a part of Chi Alpha. Right now she is with the team over in Poland.

If you want to read a different angle on the trip, you should check out her blog.

Scott's Euro Missions Journal #3

hello everyone:

I partied until 5am!!! A girl named Anka that i met on the missions trip to Poland last year, invited me to be her date for the wedding of her brother. I got to witness first hand a traditional Polish wedding. There was the beautiful Catholic church, lots of gifts, the Polka Band, tons of food (that just keep coming no matter how full you became), and the party literally goes all night long...the sun was coming up as i finally made it back to the student hotel where our team was staying.

I had an amazing time! It is not too often that you can fully experience something in another culture as important as a wedding from such a close position. All of Anka's family and friends were very kind to me, speaking to me often in whatever english they knew, and many knew quite a bit.

When I got back to the Zaczek hotel I only had three hours of sleep until i had to wake up...i had to go preach :)

Half the team came with me to a pentecostal/evangelical church in a small suburb of krakow called skovina. I was actually quite awake and excited to preach...my lack of sleep acting like a rush of adrenaline for me.

I preached about the need for us to be continually filled with Holy Spirit throughout our life...so that we can have his POWER, LOVE, and SELF-DISCIPLINE in our life, all our life. The prayer time afterward was really good, and many shared with us that this message was very timely for them as a church.

The last two days we have been doing music/skit outreach at a group of dorms in the eastern part of krakow. I sing most of the songs, but since we have more musicians than ever before, some of the others get a chance to sing a few songs as well. When we our done with our music and dramas (usually about 90 minutes) then we play sports and talk with anyone who is outside. Through this we have met many people and invited them to our university meeting on Thursday, called "Impact."

Tomorrow we will finish our last day at these dorms. Please pray for the students we've met and the students we will meet tomorrow, that many of them will come to the "Impact" Service on thursday night. I think I will be preaching...it will be a great opportunity to see many come of the people we've met to know Christ and to inspire the polish university believers.

One last story...we visited a homeless shelter for men last night. We had a full worship service with all the guys. We shared some music and then I preached a message about "wrestling with God". Afterward we offered to pray with anyone who wanted prayer. Many men stayed afterward to be prayed for.

The last man I prayed for was a guy named Andre. He said he wanted to serve Jesus better. When I asked him what was his biggest barrier to following Christ, his answer was, "I am the biggest barrier." So I began to pray the God would fill Andre with His Holy Spirit so that Andre could know him and know His love.

As I was praying for this...I had one of those moments, when the incredible beauty of this thing God is doing became so clear and powerful for me. The reality that the CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE, THE HOLY AND PERFECT ONE puts His very Spirit into man...screwed up, sinful, rebellious man...and that through this amazing gift we are made into men of God...beautiful, righteous and pleasing to God settled on my soul in a very profound way. It is truly amazing!!!!!!

When I finished praying for Andre, I was so filled up with the Holy Spirit, i needed someone else to pray for, but there were no more homeless guys to pray for...so i looked around and grabbed one of the polish university age believers there named Gregori and told him, "I've got to pray for someone...and you are going to have to be the one that gets all of the benefit of this extra filling of the Holy Spirit I just got!!!" :)

It just makes me loves Jesus so much, that He gives me these moments...these moments when He re-romances my heart to this incredible divine dance that He has invited us all into. I am so thankful that He called me and filled me...and that now He gives me the opportunity to be a part of Him calling and filling others!!

Thank you for all your prayers!!!!

Scott

Scott's Euro Journal #2

Hello Everyone,

Jet Lag hurts!!!! We have been moving around a lot these last two days. But each day around 8pm an extreme tiredness pores over our bodies. We are 8 hours ahead of Montana time, and with the 24 hours of constant travel, coupled with the time change all of us are struggling with jet lag. Today i feel asleep on the tram we were riding and luckily someone woke me up barely in time to get off, or else i would have kept going on down the line :)

The past two days here in Krakow, we have settled into our rooms in a student hotel near the city center. We have also been practicing our skits, our outreach music and our testimonies. We will all of these later in the missions trip when we start doing more street ministry.

The first night we joined with a bunch of polish university age believers that have a group like Chi Alpha called Impact. We met with them...but we did not do any ministry, we just joined in with them for their worship service. Afterward we all went out to eat together. Our hope is that by meeting them early in the trip, many of them will join us for the outreaches we will be doing later next week.

Tonight we met with some other university believers from another church in Krakow, but this time we led in worship, performed one skit, and had a student give his testimony. I finished by preaching the sermon. I spoke about Adam and Eve and how they hid from God when they sinned and tried to fix themselves with fig leaves, and how we follow in their footsteps, hiding from God when we sin, and trying to fix ourselves to please Him.

I said we need to be more like David, who in Psalm 51, runs to God for His mercy and grace. David trusts the heart of God...that He truly wants to have continued relationship with David and he lets God fix him instead of trying to fix himself. I think the message was very well received, and i hope it is timely for them as well. There is a strong Catholic culture here, almost 97% of the population. While there are some born-again believers in the Catholic church, many times people buy into the lie of trying to please God by being religious to fix themselves. Our prayer is that every Polish person will desire to enter into a deep relationship with a God who loves us enough to fix us from the inside out, and is was not afraid to use the death and resurrection of His only Son, to allow us to be called His sons and daughters as well!!!!

Speaking of the Catholic church, the new pope Benedict XVI will be visiting Krakow next Sunday. It will be a very big event here. We are praying for the Spirit of God to really break out among the Polish people when the pope will be here. Unfortunately by next Sunday we will already be in Slovakia.

Lastly please pray for a Polish girl named Barbara, she joined our worship time yesterday morning, as we were doing our morning devotions. She was just walking by and she said that she "saw a light coming from our group" as we worshipped. She liked the music and so she sat down and entered in to what we were doing for about 1/2 hour. She said she will join us in the future as well. That is pretty amazing that on the very first morning God brings people to us to allow us to share with them about His incredible love!!!!

Scott

Scott's Euro Missions Journal #1

Like last year, we'll post Scott's emails here for everyone to read. Enjoy.

Hello Friends and Family,

It is 2:50 am, early on Monday morning. I am busy packing and getting all my last minute details locked down. I am about to embark on a month long missions trip to Central Europe. This email is sent to keep all of you who helped support this trip connected to what is happening on our trip.

Tomorrow all 22 students and staff going on this missions trip will travel to Bozeman, Montana. While we are in Bozeman for a day we will get to know everyone, receive our first week's schedule and pray together for God's blessing on our trip.

I hope to round up all the musicians as well. Hopefully we can get a small practice in. This year our music outreach should be more than just me singing my guts out while beating on my guitar :) We have three other guitar players, two other singers and one very excellent violin player. So our music should be much more pleasant to the ear than last year's :)

Well my next email will probably come once we have made it to Europe; we will be in Krakow, Poland for the first leg of our outreach. Please pray for our safe travel, for our team to gel with personalities and giftings, and for God to prepare the hearts of the people who we will be speaking with during our time there.

Thanks for joining the journey with me!!!!!!

Scott

Jamey In Russia

Jamey made it safely to St. Petersburg, Russia where she'll be helping out the local missionaries for eleven months. You can follow her adventures on her very own blog. Check it out!

let it rain

IMG_4172
Originally uploaded by lafalda.

"And God said, 'This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.'"