Merry 2nd Day of Christmas!!!!

Today is officially the 2nd Day of Christmas here in Poland. Today has been fun as well. We spent the morning sleeping in and then headed over to our friends' Jason & Anna to spend an evening with them. It was great! We had a WONDERFUL Italian dinner and homemade Tiramisu for dessert. :) Then we sat around, played with Emi, the baby and played Cranium for a while. Lots of good fun. I dread the day we'll have to say bye to our friends...they've become like family to us. But we at least have a few more months before we have to think about that. Now, we'll just enjoy the candy canes & hershey kisses that Jason sent home with us!!! :)

Merry Christmas Everyone!!!!

Merry Christmas!!!!!

It's been a good one so far! :) Granted, not being at home with the fam is always tough...even more so at Christmas, but we've been very blessed despite the tough stuff. Yesterday we spent a WONDERFUL day/evening with Wojtek, Aga, Dawidek, Wojtek's dad - Bogoslaw (Bogo-suave), and Aga's mom & sister - Bozena & Basia. It was wonderful. Though she doesn't speak a word of English Bozena & I cooked in the kitchen, Basia helped me ice cookies, while Aga took care of the baby, Bogoslaw watched TV and Scott and Wojtek did...I'm not sure what they did. ;) Dinner started at 5pm with prayer, sharing Christmas "wafers" and giving Christmas wishes to one another. A beautiful tradition that we'll be adopting. We started the meal with hot beet root soup with mushroom-filled pasta. Then tore into the 11 other dishes that were prepared. :) Scott tried traditional Christmas carp and herring. After dinner we opened gifts from one another and had dessert. :)

Scott and I came home around 11pm and then had Christmas with my family! It was SO MUCH FUN! They gathered around the tree in their traditional circle and sat us (the computer) between two of them so we could both have a turn in opening gifts. :) It wasn't EXACTLY like being home...but pretty darn close! What a blessing! :) Thanks guys...you made Christmas away from home much easier for us. :) NEXT YEAR.....PARTY!!!!!!

We finally went to bed around 2:30 this morning and slept in until 11:00am. :) Then we opened gifts from one another. :) After gifts I made a nice Christmas breakfast: Scrambled eggs, fried ham, and biscuits. YUUUUMMM!!!

I suspect that any moment now, we'll be opening gifts with Scott's family. Hopefully again in the circle! That was so much fun! :)

Today our plans are to stay home, play with our new toys, and watch movies! :) A good day. Tomorrow we'll be spending the 2nd day of Christmas with Jason & his family. :)

It's been a good one...but I'm definitely ready to spend the next one at home. :)

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!! Please take today to remember the TRUE meaning of Christmas! "Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord."

May you be blessed with the closeness of family and may you feel the love of Jesus Christ and cling to the hope that we have in Him. Glory to God in the Highest!!

Frosty Wroclaw

Saturday, we went out shopping for each other's Christmas gifts. I left earlier than Scott that morning and when I went outside I immediately called Scott to tell him to bring the camera when he came out. It was BEAUTIFUL! The night before we were over at a friends' house and left around 10:30pm. It was very cold, but REALLY foggy that night. She began to tell us about a weather condition that Wroclaw experiences in the winter...freezing fog. As soon as she told us about it, I felt a very very cold mist hitting my face. I looked up toward a street light and there were tiny tiny ice crystals everywhere. It looked like the air was full of glitter! The next morning when I went out, there was absolutely no snow, but all of the trees were covered white with frost! It was beautiful! I'll let Scott's pictures speak for themselves.

Dinner with Family :)

The other night we went over to the house of one of our youth's parents. Gosia & Artur. Michał is their son. :) We LOVE this family. We loved getting to know them last year, and this year...they have officially become family to us. "Rodzinki" is the word. Actually, while we were there Gosia made a traditional Polish Christmas dessert for us and she was having us guess the ingredients. I was trying to say them in Polish and one of the ingredients were raisins. The word for raisin is "rodzynki"...one letter difference. So, I said the word for family instead of raisin. They got a kick out of it and asked me to repeat it over and over before they told me what I was really saying, but they liked hearing it. :) And they are...they are definitely family. Anyway, we always LOVE when Gosia & Artur invite us over...Gosia makes some GOOOOD pierogi! That night she made traditional Christmas pierogi for us. Dumplings filled with sour cabbage & mushrooms. Very Polish. We also had hot barszcz (beet root soup) to drink and a nice salad to go along with it. :) Plus, poppy seed & raisin dessert. :) We stayed there for about 4 hours...they practiced their English, we practiced our Polish. :) It was a pretty great evening. :)

Ears

Yesterday I was walking down the street and I thought my ears were going to fall off. It's cold here.

Christmas Cafe

A week ago tomorrow, we had a "Christmas Cafe." I've not written about it yet because I've been waiting on pictures and a video. Well, I got the video today! Thanks Ivy! :) That Thursday started out to be quite a day! On Thursdays we have classes with our dear American friend & professor. He has an 8am class every Thursday and this class wears us out every week! There are only 7 or 8 students in the class but each (minus one sweet, quiet gal) is VERY opinionated...even at 8am in the morning! Well, this week the student's presentation was on the topic of "Fate & Destiny." With this class inparticular, the student who is presenting usually starts off by going around the room and asking each individual person their opinion about something. This week the question to start was "What is your opinion about destiny & fate...do you believe in it....etc etc." So we went around the classroom and each gave his or her opinion. This gave Scott and myself a great opportunity to openly tell the classroom that we both believed in a very very personal and loving God who is very much still working in our lives but who gives us the free will to make our own decisions...etc etc. :) Later on during the class we were split up into groups and given topics such as "horoscopes, I Ching, tarrot cards." I was in a group with two great ladies...our topic was "terrot cards." Again, I had the chance to give my opinion, they gave theirs, and then one of the girls returned to the opening question on fate & destiny and asked me a few questions about my answer to that question. For example..."You say that God is active in your life, but you also say that He gives you free will...how is that possible?" GRAND question at 8:00 in the morning...but thankfully as it tells us in the book of Matthew when Jesus is speaking to his disciples, He says "...do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you." (Matt 10:19-20) Now, I understand that in this passage Jesus is speaking about being thrown in jail & whatnot...BUT I've known this promise to be true in many situations...and this 8am class happened to be one of them. I went on sharing specific examples of how the Lord works in my life from a day to day basis and she asked more difficult questions and somehow I ended up sharing a bit of testimony about my brother and that one of the differences in being a Christian is that when terrible situations, unpredictable situations, unstoppable situations befall us...I still have a joy that overpowers all of my sorrow. Though it doesn't take away our pain...I can still find joy in my Father...I have, I do, and I will. When the presenter cut us off, my student had tears in her eyes. I had nothing to do with it, praise the Lord. :) It's like they soaked up every word I said...at 8am! I KNOW I had nothing to do with that. I'm suprised that I was even able to say their names at 8 in the morning. haha

So....that was a good class. I even noticed that Scott was chatting with his partner (another VERY opinionated, proclaimed athiest) about Protestants, what we're doing here, and how he "admired" the joy that Protestants seem to have. Makes me mad at myself for sometimes "not feeling like" going to that class because it's so early.

Now! The concert that night....SO FUN! Here's a pic of our friend Jason at the concert. Really, this guy is one of our closest friends here and he and his family are very very dear to us. It was such a blessing to have so much fun with him. Here he is with a Christmas gift that my parents sent him in the mail...he was very very very thankful.

Jason LOVES Oreos. :) (That's Scott trying to steal them from him!) This concert also allowed several students to come to our church who had never been there before. They all LOVED the atmosphere and some even chatted with Wojtek (pastor) and Bev (our friend & Sunday morning translator) about the church services. We're hoping to see some of them in church soon! :) (This is me & one of my favorite students, "Matt"...he is ALWAYS smiling and so happy to talk to Scott & me. We were very suprised to see him show up at the church to attend our coffeehouse. :) Not real sure what he's doing in this picture though. haha

So....here are a couple of AWESOME videos from the concert. The first one is of me & Jason and Scott singing "The Peace Carol." Jason wanted to sing this song...he remembered it from the Muppet Christmas with John Denver so we practiced for a couple weeks and here's the result! The second one is an "encore" for two late students fcoming in who missed the first go at it....I like the second one. :) Enjoy!

Christmas Concert