Tag: Poland

An Unexpected Walk in Poland

Post author By Shay
Post date October 18, 2014
1 Comment on An Unexpected Walk in Poland

This morning Bethany had plans to be at a baby shower for our friends John and Erin. Their son, Shade, was born about three months ago and some of the missionary women around here decided to through Erin a little shower and bless her. Bethany made a couple breakfast quiche dishes and off she went around 10:30am. I didn’t have any serious plans with the kids until I got a text from Casey who’s house the shower was at, “Hey, what are you doing today? I have to leave my house for 3 hours…do you want to go to the park?” Casey has two boys who are friends with our kids (all of them shown above) so I said, “Sure, let’s meet at 11.”

The park was a bit soggy from rain last night but the kids were having fun. Casey and I were just talking and hanging until he said, “Hey, have you been over to the castle?” “Nope,” I replied, “How far is it?” Casey said we could practically throw a rock to it and said we would really like it. As soon as I told the kids we were going to a castle Avery got really excited and said, “A castle?! Princesses live in castles!” With that kind of excitement we had to go so off we went.

We’ve said before we live on a border town of Czech and Poland–literally on the border. When we left the park we crossed the river and went right into Poland where the castle is. I guess it’s like a castle ruins of sorts with lots of cool structures in a beautiful park-like environment. It was built in the 13th century! It’s all free to walk around in and explore, and apparently you can go to the top of one of the castle towers but it costs so we didn’t do it today. Everything was majestic because of all the leaves on the ground and the kids were having fun dropping leaves in to this huge, I mean huge, dungeon like whole thing. I don’t how to describe it and I don’t have a photo, but when I read the plaque they said it was for prisoners. Let me just tell you…you would not want to be a prisoner in that thing.

Here’s a few photos of the leaves and the one remaining castle tower (of the original 4):

After the castle we decided to walk further into the town square. Our town is a lot like Kansas City in the states, a city that spans two states. In our case it’s two countries. On the Polish side it really feels like Europe. Small streets, little sidewalks, cobblestone, and just a little more charm. Don’t get me wrong, the Czech side is great, but it feels a lot different on the other side of the river. Casey knew of a little place to get food that was kid-friendly so we grabbed lunch right on the town square. Everyone was pretty hungry from all the fun. Here are the kids chomping away.

This is a shot of the town square (below). The kids enjoyed chasing the pigeons around and making noises at them. I’m never sure how we look to the nationals, but I guarantee our kids are the loudest ones around.

Even though we had a great time, there was a lot of walking so by the time we started to head home the kid’s energy was starting to fade. Below is a photo of us heading back towards our house on the Polish side. Shortly after this photo we were walking down some stairs and Avery stepped in doggy doo-doo…and it wasn’t a small amount. I was helping her get it off but she was wearing her Crocs which just spread the mess inside her shoe. A nice Polish lady saw my trying to scrape it all off and offered me her little bag of tissues–it as really kind of her. After a few minutes I got it figured out but Avery was not happy about her foot having doo-doo on it and was sad about it most of the walk home. I was proud of her though because despite all the walking she didn’t really want me to hold her and did it all on her own. When we got home I gave her a bath just to make sure we got her all clean!

Start to finish we were gone for about two and a half hours. We got home around the same time Bethany was getting back from the baby shower. Our kids took a nice long nap this afternoon, but I’m glad we got them outside and the weather was nice enough to walk around. I’m super thankful for Casey showing us around Poland and I’m excited to take Bethany over there at some point. I really don’t have any excuse when we can just walk there!

Tags castle, Europe, kids, Poland, walk

365 Czech Republic

Hanging With the Millers In Poland

Post author By Shay
Post date October 10, 2014
3 Comments on Hanging With the Millers In Poland

The Miller family is a blast. Bethany and I first met Korban and Tanya at Josiah Venture orientation in October 2012 where we spent a week together in Wheaton, IL. There’s a fun connection with them because their senior pastor in Indiana was roommates in college with Scott Ardavanis, our pastor at PBC for many years. They asked if we could drive out to Poland and take some family photos and we were excited about the opportunity. We saw them briefly back on the fourth of July but today we got to spend the afternoon and dinner together which was just a great time to catch up.

Our afternoon started with the photos in the downtown area of where they live. There were some fun brick buildings and the weather was great so we snapped a few shots. The photo above is them walking right through this very long street where many people are walking and trains and busses travel through. You would never see anything really like it in the States, but we made use of it for a nice walking photo. When we finished there the kids all got suckers for doing such a good job. Here’s a little shot of all them.

After the downtown area we headed over to a park just a few blocks away. I don’t know why I didn’t get a picture of the giant tower in the middle. Not joking, I think it was like a 10 story sun dial. The play area had like a twenty foot climbing net that would never be legal in the States. Our kids loved it! But the sunlight was great at that time of day so I grabbed the Millers for a few more shots. Here’s one I really liked.

Behind them is an old fire station and really nice cafe/restaurant area. Bethany walked over there with Avery to use the restroom and she said it really felt like she in Europe and said it was very nice. I’m bummed I didn’t go check it out. We let the kids play a little longer and packed up the vans and headed for the Millers house.

We had a wonderful, American style dinner! Cheeseburgers, homemade mac-n-cheese, and veggies were all part of the spread. It was delicious and I’m not gonna lie, I had two burgers. It was fun to hear from their daughters about their school experience as they have all only been in Poland for about ten months. Language is obviously still hard but their girls are getting along pretty well in school. It’s encouraging to see another family walking through the same kinds of things that we will be experiencing very soon. After dinner we enjoyed some fun desserts: rice crispy treats and frozen bananas with chocolate and nuts! Mmmmm…

Before we left we had a short time of prayer for each of our families which was a blessing. As we were walking out the door, Titus kept saying, “Goodbye! Thanks for everything!” which we had never really heard him say before. It was hilarious and cute. He’s right though. Thanks, Millers, for a great day together and for having us over for dinner. Let’s do it again sometime!

Tags food, friends, fun, photos, Poland

365

To Poland We Go

One of the joys of living in a border town is that you can cross the border and head into Poland! You would think you’d have to go through some kind of border guard, but there are actually wide open borders here and you can drive in like you’re crossing a state line in America. Today we had the pleasure of visiting our friends the Carlsons and kind of unexpectedly spending the entire day with them. It’s pretty great when you have friends that live in another country but are only a 20 minute drive from you! As a double blessing we got to spend time with two of our other teammates, Daniel Reimer and Jacob Hash. Those guys are currently traveling around all of Eastern Europe working on video stuff and I’m excited to see what kind of footage they get when they’re all done.

Heidi and Greg (Carlson) were so hospitable and we’re super thankful for their kindness to us. We basically called them last minute and said, “Hey, we wanna come to Poland today! Are you around?!” Thankfully they didn’t turn us away, but were even kind enough to cook us breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I was especially excited about breakfast because we had pancakes. There’s just something about pancakes that screams “home” and Greg knew we would enjoy a little taste of home.

It rained a good amount today. We’ve been surprised about just how much rain they get here, even in summer. We were even told that the area where we live gets more rain than Portland, Oregon which just seems weird. Right now the change in weather is really great, but I do wonder how we’ll feel about it in the future.

I don’t have a photo of it, but we had our first team “meeting” today with all of the Josiah Venture Communications Team staff. I’m putting “meeting” in quotes because it was a video conference with the entire team. There are still a lot of staff out of the country right now and one day we’ll all be in the same office together. It’s exciting to begin to think about some of our upcoming projects and see how the Lord will use those things to change lives!

I couldn’t help but post this photo (below). During the afternoon Bethany and Avery fell asleep on the recliner and Titus was playing games on Bethany’s iPhone. Our sleep schedules have just been all over the place and I know I haven’t slept past 4am since we arrived. Nevertheless, we’re thankful to the Lord for a fun day in Poland and a great time with brothers and sisters in the Lord. We are serving alongside some incredible people and it’s a pleasure to join this work with them.

Tags Carlsons, friends, Poland