Legal Ridiculousness...Please Pray

Hey everyone! Well, for those of you who were with us last year during our journey...you may remember all of the mess that we went around this time last year. Getting stuck in the Wroclaw airport for 2 hours...waiting to see if they were going to let us back in the country. Well folks...once again (and again at Christmas) we have another potential roadblock in our midst. Obviously the devil doesn't want us here!

So, the law in Poland has changed once again that if a "visitor" is here for 90 days, then they must leave the country for 90 days before they're admitted back into the country. We are in the process of applying for temporary residence. Anyway...to make a very long story short we have been in Poland 65 days. They need at least 35 days to process our card and whatnot so that would put us over the 90 day mark. PLEASE HELP US PRAY THAT THIS WILL NOT BE A BIG DEAL.

I'm confident in the Lord and know that He's sent us here for a purpose, so I have no worries. But I am a strong believer in the power of prayer and I know with prayer...this could be much easier than it's looking right now.

We're going on Monday....PLEASE PRAY FOR US! :-) :-) :-)

YAY!!!

Who has the cutest sister in the world!??!?! I DO!!!

Kell I just got the CUTEST APRON EVER in my mailbox today!!! (Not to mention ADORABLE coasters and napkins as well!) It goes with the colors in our apartment PERFECTLY! YAY! I'm so excited! I wish you were here to see how perfect everything goes! :) I love it! It's perfect!

Thanks sis! I'll take homemade gifts over store-bought anytime! ;) They're much more special. :)

Love you!

Our Thanksgiving

I am so stuffed full of turkey and pumpkin pie that I can hardly function...so tonight, I probably won't. Just lay on the couch/bed and watch "Elf"....I think that's the plan for tonight. :) It was a great day! First let me tell you something fun about yesterday!

So, our friend from Turkey, "Tuba" came over yesterday. Tuba has a roommate in her dormroom who is from the States! They planned to make a small Thanksgiving dinner yesterday and Tuba wanted to suprise her roommate with a homemade pumpkin roll! Tuba had come to our Thanksgiving English Club last week and LOVED the pumpkin roll, so she asked us afterwards if she could come over this week and make one for her American roommate since she loved pumpkin and was missing home. So, Tuba came over yesterday and we helped her make a pumpkin roll for her roommate. She just sent me an email and said that her roomie was suprised to tears! :) We were very excited that we could help her out. :) We also had a chance to share with her about what we do here and a bit about our faith...we were waiting for the cake to cool ;) Here's Tuba and Scott preparing the icing for the cake...

Yesterday was a pretty full day...classes at 8am, baking from 10:00-12:30, class again until 3:00 and my mind is kind of a blank after that...I don't really remember what we did. :) OH! No, we talked to our families over Skype....while they were eating Thanksgiving dinners...talk about not fair! :P

So, TODAY was OUR day to have Thanksgiving! So, we got up this morning around 8:00 and headed out to our new mall with other American missionary friends, Lauren & Jennifer for some good 'old "Day After Thanksgiving" shopping! However, it wasn't quite as exciting as I'm sure it was for you all who ventured out at 4:30 this morning to Best Buy or Wally-World. BUT for the sake of tradition...it was a lot of fun and we did have lunch at BURGER-KING!! YAY! Our first Burger King in Poland! (That we know of) And it was pretty dern good! After our shopping spree (well not really shopping spree...we bought things to cook for dinner) we came back to our flat and cooked up a storm!

We made turkey & HOMEMADE stuffing...that's right...stuffing from scratch...it was pretty yummy if I may say so myself. We made mashed potatoes, and a pumpkin roll, Lauren made brown-sugared carrots, and Jenn brought some pumpkin pie and corn souffle! To top it off we had hot apple cider. Again, for the sake of tradition we stuffed ourselves silly until we could hardly move...laid around for a while, and then ate some more dessert. :) (All while watching the

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade!)

So, after dinner & dessert we watched "Miracle on 34th Street" and "It's Christmas Charlie Brown!" while putting up Christmas decorations. :)

To be away from friends and family hasn't been the easiest thing...but the Lord has definitely brought us comfort in the little things we can get excited about over here. Spending time with friends who've just sort of become our "family." Today was a blessing...talking with family over Skype, spending this holiday with friends who are in the same boat as we are, shopping, a great meal, good fellowship, and the Christmas story told byLinus....considering the obvious....I'd say it was a pretty good Thanksgiving and we definitely have MUCH to be thankful for!

(You can see all of our pictures here :) http://picasaweb.google.com/ScottandJackieNewman

Thanksgiving English Club Pictures!

Hey all! Hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving! Today Scott, Lauren, another missionary friend Jen, and myself are celebrating Thanksgiving today since we all had to work yesterday! We're so excited! We're going out for a mini shopping trip...you know, it is the day after Thanksgiving! Then we're coming back for a little Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas decorating, and the Macy's Day Parade! (We recorded it! YAY!) It's been tough to be away from our families during the holiday...but having other American friends around to celebrate with makes up for it a little. :)

Anyway! Here is a link to our pictures from our Thanksgiving English Club!

http://picasaweb.google.com/ScottandJackieNewman

ENJOY!!! :)

The Feeding of the College Students

So, I know so many of you are chomping at the bit to know how our Thanksgiving Dinner turned out! :) On the edge of your seats, right? ;)

We started cooking at 10am on Thursday...5:00 comes and we're still running around like crazy people trying to finish this Thanksgiving feast. "Can you run and get this?" "When does the corn go in the oven!?" "I still gotta cut the cake!" "We forgot to put a trash bag in the bathroom!" "AAHH! There's the door!"

So at 5pm, the doorbell rang and our first group of 8 or 9 showed up. After that the door rang again...and again...and again...and again (aaaaannndd knitting aaaaahhhaaahhhaaanndd knitting - for all of you who would get that) until there were at least 23 of us in our tiny little apartment.

YEP...23 hungry students. After we assumed that most of our guests were here we (Scott) gave a little "Thanksgiving speech," welcomed them to our home, explained the rules of a "buffet!" They definitely dug the Hot Apple Cider. Everyone had a plateful (or two) and we still had enough food for our lunch with Wojtek & Aga the next day! They LOVED the pumpkin roll too, and the baked corn, and the cream cheese & ham dip! We even have one of those students coming over on Thursday of this week to show her how to make a pumpkin roll. :) So, after dinner we socialized a bit more and then watched the Thanksgiving episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond"...classic! They LOVED it! :)

We sat around some more & talked with our students, tried to get to know the new ones. Some stayed until 10:30pm! It was great...we couldn't have asked for a better night! We were pretty exhausted by the end of it though. Right now, we only have a couple pics of the food and one of some students who were here. I'm planning on developing my pictures this week so I'll have them posted within a couple of days.

The Feast!

Today's The Day!!!

Okay...so it's exactly 9:22am on Thursday, November 15. Yesterday evening we began our cooking venture. We started with a trip to Carrefour (our closest thing to Wal-Mart). But we couldn't proceed on an empty stomach so we stopped at the "Fast Food" place for some pierogi!



















After about an hour or less in Carrefour (we went in on a mission!) we came out with all the things we needed to get on the stick! So we started with the pumpkin roll and the process went a little something like this:




















And so we have 2 finished pumpkin rolls! (They'll be much prettier when they're cut! :) We also made two batches of pecan pralines....yyuuummm!!!

Today, we tackle the bird & the rest! Here's how it looks...

The Menu:
Hot Apple Cider
Cream Cheese Ham & Garlic Dip w/ Crackers
Deviled Eggs
Fruit Salad
Turkey & Stuffing
Mashed Potatoes
Baked Corn
Cornbread & Whitebread (We only have one package of cornbread mix *lol*)
Pralines
Pumpkin Roll!


We've got the roll & the pralines done...which means we have a heck of a lot more to do! PLUS clean our flat!

Last night, we got several emails in a row of people who are definitely coming. So where we thought we had 16...we KNOW of 23.....23 students who are DEFINITELY coming! Not to mention the 7 that "may" come and WHO KNOWS if students will show up without letting us know! So that's potentially 30....30 students in our one room flat!

Holy cow. I've gotta get busy!

Tomorrow...it's go time.

So...here's the skinny.

Our Thanksgiving English Club is THIS THURSDAY. So far, we KNOW of 16 students who are attending...who knows how many will show up without letting us know in advance. We are cooking...for all of them.

Tomorrow...it's go time.

Our goal is to turn this

Into this...

I'm ready.....bring it on.