Trip to Poland

Jack attends a youth group at the base chapel called Club Beyond. The middle schoolers for this club were having a Service Project to go to Poland and help there with some manual labor for some Christian centers. We decided that this would be a wonderful thing for Jack to be involved with and that Debbie would get to go to help chaperone and Tom took leave to stay home with the kids for this 4-day weekend trip. The Club Beyond Leaders are in contact with a couple who run a youth group in Poland. They recently purchased a "resort" for very cheap that they are trying to turn in to a Christian camp/conference center in the next two years. We helped rake, sweep, clean, move dirt & trash to help clean up the place for them. We all had sweatshirts that said "Live. Love. Serve." on the front and tried to get the kids to focus on those themes. We were there to live, love & serve - people that we will probably never meet, but that we helped in a small way by our contribution. Here's Jack the first night eating dinner (Polish food was wonderful!):

Here's Jack with his favorite high school leader as they were digging/moving dirt from one place to another:

Here's half of the group - we are the ones that were at this new center they purchased - this building we're standing in will be the main reception/conference building:

Here are all of the girls - we were sweeping and raking to clean up a parking lot area:

This is me with Yola, who runs the youth group and will be working at this new Christian center. She was wonderful to talk to - she spoke English very well!

I did forget to mention the most interesting part of this service project. We were originally flying to Poland, but the numbers of kids that wanted to attend grew too big to get seats on the plane, so we rode a double-decker bus to Poland. The estimated time that it was supposed to take us to get there was 16 hours, but in actuality it took 27 hours just to get there and 24 to get back. Lots of bus time - at least it was a big bus that allowed us to stretch out and move around some! That was the majority of the time - we were really only in Poland for 24 hours. We were all flexible and adapting to these challenges and thankful to get off the bus when we returned! Great memories and I'm glad that I went on the trip! Here Jack & I are in front of the bus: