A River Runs through It - Mission Log
Summer 2004 in Poland
Greetings from Orlando!!! We will be writing a current news log on the run as we minister and are working full time in the ministry ever since our return from Poland. Here are only some highlights from the summer 2004 tour in Poland. We have just come back from an 18 city tour where we met and ministered to 1500 Poles in dozens of meetings. Requests to come back are already coming in. At Zakopane where we stayed for the first week in Poland - at the Campus Crusade for Christ Staff Training Conference There were about 200 of us in the mountains of Southern Poland, praying about and holding planning meetings to reach the leaders of Poland who in turn will be able to impact the entire nation. Millions have already been reached in Poland over the past 30 years. We spoke to all the Campus Crusade for Christ staff in Poland and held private meetings with many ministry leaders, including: Robert Boryczko who led the Polish Mission team to Rostov, Russia for years and is now starting a missionary training school in Cracow which will send Poles to foreign fields - The Apostle Paul Missionary Training School; Robert Kosciuszko who organized Campus ministries in cities without staff; Henryk Knapik who ministers closely to the Catholic religious establishment, Wieslaw Grabowski of Family Life; Anton Tompolski of Community Outreach in Krakow; Andrzej Zabolotny of the Professors ministry; Zdzichu Miara of Executive ministries in Poland; Marek Wyrzykowski, the National Director of Campus Crusade; Wieslaw Chalupnik - head of Campus Crusade's Correspondence Bible School; Janusz Sylwestrowicz, the Director of the Jesus Film ministry, Athletes in Action Staff in Poland, Campus Directors and other special ministries. We also met with many of the original American Staff who came to remember God's blessing on Poland and to be honored for their sacrifice of 7 to 23 years of their lives to build the strongest evangelistic organization in Poland. Most of them worked right through Communism, the rise of Solidarity, Martial Law and the Round Table Agreements which set the stage for today's Poland. They were under great pressure and danger for most of those years and their story is one of the great stories of Mission History in the 20th century. The Grabowski's and the Kosciuszko's are pictured below.
Our second stop is in Northern Poland in Olsztyn, where Monika and Mirek Wierenko live and work. Monika is Anna's sister and also served full time on Campus Crusade staff for three years. Today Monika is making headlines in her city of 500,000 people for her work with poor children and families in Olsztyn - also sharing the Gospel and giving Bibles to all of them during their meetings. This week in Poland Monika led another soul to Christ.
Our next stop is to speak at the Bialystok Baptist Church on Sunday Morning, which has been one of the two largest Baptist churches in Poland. There we will also meet with the President ( Pastor Andrzej Seweryn ) of all the Baptist Churches in Poland. In Bialystok we also have a meeting with students from the University of Bialystok whom we worked with three years ago and helped to start Campus Crusade's newest Campus Ministry in Poland. Pictured below is the Baptist Church and next to them the original Campus Crusade student leaders who have grown to forty after we left and have already covered their Bialystok University Campus with the Gospel.
On July 27 we met for four hours with the student leaders of Campus Crusade for Christ in Bialystok who we help to start three years ago. Pictured above are Ewa Lupinska, Justynka Plonka and Krzysztof Lupinski. Since we have been together they have grown to forty and have reached their entire Campus of 25,000 with the Gospel in the face of apathy from the churches. We met again on July 29 and Anna spoke to the students for over an hour. This fall they will have another major outreach to all 2000 of the new freshman. On July 27 and 29 we also had a very important meeting with the Pastor of Poland's largest Baptist Church - Irek Dawidowicz and will continue our discussions on reaching his city for Christ on July 29 both of our families met for a wonderful family dinner; We also met with some of our friends at the church, including Stanislaw Siwicki who was led to the Lord in Chicago by Ted Tomal. On July 28 we will be had an important meeting with the leaders of the Olsztyn Baptist Church and Shawn Stephenson of the IMB. We have been in Pabianice to meet Christians there led by Marian Szukalski and in Namyslow for evangelistic meetings with the whole town led by the Pentacostal Church Cannan and Pastors Mariusz and Mariola Antoszczuk. In Namyslow our first new birth was witnessed as up to now we have mainly met with Christians. A young man in his twenties accepted the Lord as Savior after we spoke for 45 minutes in the morning service. This week we will meet with Three major Roman Catholic organizations and leaders to faithfully present the Gospel. August 4: I'm writing to you from Kroscienko where I just spoke to a number of priests for one hour and then gave the salvation message to the oaza group of twenty who were in residence. Here in Kroscienko, I was given the opportunity to speak several times.This kind of opportunity only comes at their request. The topic was chosen for me " Jesus our only mediator ". So far as of August 18, we have spoken to over 1300 Poles in fourteen cities and we have three cities to go. August 8: I spoke at the Sunday Service of the Pojednanie Church in Lublin and in the afternoon met with leaders in the Catholic renewal movement for many hours. Anna and the children came down with a virus and stayed in Krakow, fortunatly as the car we were using broke down as I was going to the next meetings late at night. For more info on that and our future - Click on What's New in the left hand column for more info on that. The Camp Pastor is coming to get me on August 10 as I wait in Konin - a city of 100,000 where I was able to rest up. study and speak to several about becoming true believers and servants. I was the speaker for 75 adult believers at this Camp for the whole week.
Aug. 14 : This week started in Lublin where Joe spoke for a few minutes at the morning service to the Pojednanie Church which started 15 years ago with born again Catholic Theologians. In the afternoon we went to their friends who decided to remain in the Catholic Church and to serve there by bring Biblical truth to the many open doors they still have. We spent 8 hours talking aver a two day period. On Monday I spent 3 hours with a seeking professor of Bible from the Lublin Catholic University and was able to leave him the Gospel. I also dropped in on the Erie Alliance Mission to Poland of 27 workers from America who came to help 35 Poles learn English and to lead them to Christ. Last year Anna and I had a part in helping to prepare this group. Anna and the Children caught a virus and remained in the Krakow area for the week in Bed. On Monday I drove across country to Camp Eden ( on a lake with a beautiful hotel for 100 campers ) where I was the speaker for a camp of 75 evangelical adult believers for the whole week in Ocwieka, Poland.
On Friday we all went to the Catholic gathering of 2000 Catholic campers in the southern mountains in Kroscienko. We met two wonderful believers who were Born again in 1976 when we first came and who have been praying for our return. They are lay people who are caretakers of this Camping center and they gave us the report that the Gospel is no longer being preached here as it once was when groups of evangelicals from America came in the seventies and became for at least two years their primary teachers. They are today responsible government leaders in their county and keen observers of the Catholic Church in Poland. They gave us the best assessment of the state of the Catholic Church as Catholics themselves who know their church has taken many wrong turns which are soon to come to a head in Poland. many others have told us of hundreds of groups meeting as disenfrancised believers.
In a few hours I will pick up Dr. Harold O.J. Brown at the Krakow Airport and go on a six city tour with him. We have a car for the next three days, but will need another one for our final 8 days. We wiil vist Brethern, Baptists, Evangelical Free, Church of Christ, an Independent Bible church and finally two Catholic Renewal centers where Dr. Brown and I will speak. On Sat. Aug. 22 our final Sunday I will speak at the Free Christian Church in Jaworzno ( 50 miles west of Krakow ) . Several surrounding churches will cancel their services to be there and we are inviting many others also. I will be speaking on how we can reach Poland for Christ in our time and on the message Poland needs to hear. August 18 - Lublin: We have been to five cities with Dr. Brown as of today and have held six great meetings as scheduled. We have one more city and one more very important meeting. The meetings we already had were meetings which are historically significant with Poles who are being greatly used by the Lord and others we hope will be greatly used to change Poland forever. August 23 - Bochnia: Today on Monday we are packing in the Krakow area and on Tuesday will be driving to Warsaw as our flight leaves on Wednesday morning at 7:40AM from Warsaw. We are due to land in Orlando at 2:40PM on Wednesday August 25 from Dusseldorf. As soon as we get back we plan on getting back to making tents for the rest of this year to help reach our annual budget for our personal needs. It will take us a few weeks to get paid and we are praying for funds even as we return to pay rent, utilities and food in our first week back. These funds will simply be part of our annual budget which is listed on our web pages. We really do thank the Lord for all you have done in prayer and giving.
Our last meeting was in Jaworzno, Poland August 22 where the Free Christian Church greeted us with great love and allowed me to speak as the main speaker for over one hour about our faith given to us by the Lord Himself in His Holy Word to the 200 plus in attendance. All together we met with over 1500 Poles in 18 cities during these vacation months and are now praying to meet with thousands more in the future when we return. I will give you the great details later in our future Newsletters, but in brief I will just say that Poland is getting ready to explode spiritually. We are coming back to officially represent four of the most important hub churches in Poland as well a to encourage hundreds to go to Poland to help reach the 3500 communities which do not have even one official evangelical outreach stationed among them. seeds sown even 30 years ago are still growing and bearing fruit. We are hoping to come back for two months at the end of 2005 for a national evangelistic campaign in seven cities.
Here are three prayer requests:
1. That we would be faithful in presenting the Gospel in every city !
2. That we would fearlessly call all believers to all out service for our Lord!
3. We want to praise God for His goodness to us by raising 100% of all the funds needed for this trip. Please pray for our remaining annual budget.