It's been too long since I last updated my blog. I really didn't have much to say or time to say it over the summer with work. It was a long and challenging summer. It was tough to go from working straight into working another job. Luckily the next job was different and came with different challenges. But I am back now in Poland. I had a break for a few weeks to get situated and adjust to the time zone and and the quirks of being back in another culture. In the middle of the summer I felt myself adjust to American culture. It was like a switch and I cringed when it happened because I knew I'd have to adjust even more when I come back here. With the buffer of some time it has really helped. There were a few tough days but working through with patience and grace for myself I was able to work through it all.
While there are numerous things that I could talk about from this first week of school...I'm gonna talk about something that happened yesterday. Early yesterday morning I woke up to sounds outside my window of my bedroom. I have a small balcony there. I hear things all the time and throughout the night so I didn't think much of it at first. Then I heard sirens stopping and not continuing on. Even in my sleep I remember hearing something but couldn't tell you what it was. Well, upon getting up and going to the balcony it was chaos. Two fire trucks, police cars, and ambulance, and a big tanker all sitting right there in the tiny intersection. It was scary. In the end come to find out it was an old man who was on a bike was hit by this tanker. I have to say that I hate this intersection. I see so many accidents happen on this street and people speeding down this road. We really need a stop light here!!
For a moment in the chaos my friend couldn't find her dad (a good friend of mine). And even when they loaded the body into the ambulance it looked like her dad so tensions rose even more. Thankfully it wasn't her dad we found out. It was weird to watch the police and firemen clear the intersection and everything go back to normal. This morning I was sitting on my balcony for my quiet time and something stuck out to me. It might be nothing but I thought it was interesting. So often I see little vigils for people when someone has died. I realized this morning that here, there is nothing. No candles and no flowers. It makes me wonder...did he have a family? Do they know yet? What was his life like? I guess what hits me is that in this work as a missionary we talk and think of the eternal. And as I think about this guys life I'm reminded how finite our time here on earth is. Chances are this guy didn't know God in a personal and real way.
In church back home we are studying Matthew and this morning I was reading Matthew 5. We are the salt of the world. How flavorful am I in the world? That might seem like a weird question, but bare with me. :) When I was teaching in the states I worked with a teacher who LOVES salt. We always made jokes about how much she liked salt. This summer she told me a story of how she had gotten sick this year and had been drinking too much water and her body didn't have enough sodium (salt). After the fact we could all laugh at the irony. I mean even our bodies need salt to be healthy. I may be going on a tangent and stretching this analogy too much...sorry for that. But if our bodies don't have enough salt (God's word) we can't be flavorful for the world or impact our worlds. So again I ask myself this morning how flavorful am I in my world around me in light of eternity.
While there are numerous things that I could talk about from this first week of school...I'm gonna talk about something that happened yesterday. Early yesterday morning I woke up to sounds outside my window of my bedroom. I have a small balcony there. I hear things all the time and throughout the night so I didn't think much of it at first. Then I heard sirens stopping and not continuing on. Even in my sleep I remember hearing something but couldn't tell you what it was. Well, upon getting up and going to the balcony it was chaos. Two fire trucks, police cars, and ambulance, and a big tanker all sitting right there in the tiny intersection. It was scary. In the end come to find out it was an old man who was on a bike was hit by this tanker. I have to say that I hate this intersection. I see so many accidents happen on this street and people speeding down this road. We really need a stop light here!!
For a moment in the chaos my friend couldn't find her dad (a good friend of mine). And even when they loaded the body into the ambulance it looked like her dad so tensions rose even more. Thankfully it wasn't her dad we found out. It was weird to watch the police and firemen clear the intersection and everything go back to normal. This morning I was sitting on my balcony for my quiet time and something stuck out to me. It might be nothing but I thought it was interesting. So often I see little vigils for people when someone has died. I realized this morning that here, there is nothing. No candles and no flowers. It makes me wonder...did he have a family? Do they know yet? What was his life like? I guess what hits me is that in this work as a missionary we talk and think of the eternal. And as I think about this guys life I'm reminded how finite our time here on earth is. Chances are this guy didn't know God in a personal and real way.
In church back home we are studying Matthew and this morning I was reading Matthew 5. We are the salt of the world. How flavorful am I in the world? That might seem like a weird question, but bare with me. :) When I was teaching in the states I worked with a teacher who LOVES salt. We always made jokes about how much she liked salt. This summer she told me a story of how she had gotten sick this year and had been drinking too much water and her body didn't have enough sodium (salt). After the fact we could all laugh at the irony. I mean even our bodies need salt to be healthy. I may be going on a tangent and stretching this analogy too much...sorry for that. But if our bodies don't have enough salt (God's word) we can't be flavorful for the world or impact our worlds. So again I ask myself this morning how flavorful am I in my world around me in light of eternity.
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