Well, I got all checked in and said goodbye to my friends who dropped me off at the airport, only to then find out that the flight has been delayed two hours, for all you Polish speakers I'm thinking "daj mi spokoj". I'm not bitter or anything, just ready to see my family. I want to thank you for praying, I am heading back to Poland in great health, and no lingering medical problems with my kidney. We are excited about some ministry opportunities in the coming weeks. First, be in prayer for Tim Reid, he is flying to Poland as we speak to do his internship with us for the summer. Tim is going into his Jr. year of college and is quite interested in Poland. We can use all the missionaries we can get over here. Poor guy is stuck with me for 9 weeks though, so you can pray that he won't be immediately scared off, especially with the drive from Warsaw to Siedlce : ). We are planning to help in a Family Camp in June, also we are currently putting together a teen camp for the end of July. Summer break begins near the end of June in Poland and we will be having a "Teen Night" every Friday through the summer where we hope to see several teens from our neighborhood step into the doors of a Baptist Church for the first time. We would appreciate your prayers in these areas. Ginger and I are about half way through language school but excited to be able to begin ministering more directly.
One final note, you have to understand that language school is only half the battle for us. To really become fluent we need to use it constantly in everyday situations and have families over for lunch or dinner so we can be completely immersed in the language. But, with all the grammar and vocab we've learned to this point, and with all the conversations we've had our language is still almost entirely secular. Unfortunately, no curriculum has yet been developed in Polish to aid missionaries who desire to work cross-culturally. That means that there is an entire set of Christian vocabulary that we have not even begun to acquire. One of the ways I am looking to acquire this language is through opening the church service with a short 5-10 minute challenge completely in Polish. It is my hope that this will speed my acquisition of Polish as it pertains to ministry. I would appreciate your prayers as I take this step and I might even send a short video clip of the first message if you promise not to laugh. Well, you can laugh, but just don't tell me that you laughed at me. Ahh, I just typed this letter out and looked at the clock---I've still got about three hours til the plane boards. I guess I was kind of hoping that the update would take a little more time.
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