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