The past few weeks have for the most part gone very quickly as there have been quite a few events going on giving a break from the usual routine. There has also been quite a bit of time to relax to some national holidays allowing for long weekends.
Although Halloween is not a very big holiday in Poland it has became more popular in the past few years, so the church hosted an alternative Halloween party for the youth. It was a great night with the usual funny fancy dress costumes and party games and lots of dancing, everyone looked great in their costumes and seemed to have a great night!
The more popular holiday in Poland is the Catholic tradition of All saints day the day after Halloween. On this day everything is shut and no one has work as the families gather together travelling all over the country to remember and pray for family members who have passed away, with Catholics praying for the souls of those they believe to be in purgatory, while non catholic Christians do not believe in purgatory they often still visit to remember loved ones and pray prayer of thanks for that person. The cemeteries were filled with people visiting, decorating the graves with beautiful flowers and many many candles filing the cemeteries with colour and light, which was beautiful and interesting to see.
In the preschool children put on a concert for their parents singing songs they learnt in both Polish and English and there they each had a little initiation into their classes and were given a present. The concert went well and was incredibly cute to watch even if it was quite stressful transporting so many little kids and getting them to sit still for so long J
This weekend was the November 11th holiday, everything shut again on the Thursday as Poland celebrated independence. We took advantage of the long weekend and took the youth to a conference in Warsaw, with a large group of around 25 people going from our church. Though it was a few days of sleeping on the coldest most uncomfortable floor in a room with some of the loudest snorers ever it was a good time. Around 400 young people attended there were large group meetings and smaller optional seminars teaching on issues such as relationships, bible reading and serving others. At first i didn’t realise that one seminar was being led by a Welsh man from Cardiff, but when he suddenly switched from Polish to Welsh mid talk, it was a nice change for a few moments to be the only person in the room to understand and not need translation! J
I’ve been in Poland now for nearly two months. On training we learnt about something called the culture shock curve (must admit I wasn’t really listening so it’s probably called something else) but anyway it’s said that this is normally the time when living in a foreign culture becomes hard. And though I have been missing home a little bit and still struggling to get a hold of the language, this weekend I felt God has been encouraging me to remember that whether I’m in Wales or Warsaw he is unchanging, yesterday, today, tomorrow the same. While everything else; the climate (the cold and rain is like home but darkness by 4o’clock is just weird), surroundings, language and culture maybe different I know I can always find familiarity in God, which is a great help while here.
