From Kevin Bausman:

When on mission trips, I always keep my eyes open for a defining moment in the mission, a moment produced by the activity of God’s presence in the mission. Last night, Maciek Moryn delivered the testimony of the difficulty of his life to his walk to Jesus provided through the love of his new wife, Adrienne. Today an event was noted as historic by the pastor of the Tomy Church during a visit to High School No. 2 in Tomaszow. This high school is noted for excellence in education in Tomaszow.

For the past few years, the mission team from Mount Pleasant had been denied a visit to the high school. However, this year, through the efforts of Tomy Church, the Poland mission team was permitted to visit a combined meeting of two english language classes.

The meeting began with general introductions and a question and answer ice breaking session. It was followed by a short break and shortly thereafter reconvened.

A decision had been rendered to embark on a debate within the class. There were many hot topics that could have been discussed, and some VERY hot topics were also available. There seemed to be an air of caution in the selection of THE topic to be debated. The topic…? Gun ownership in Poland, currently a very restricted prerogative in the country.

With the help of Stephanie Guzda, the class was divided into two camps. David Whitlow organized those advocating ownership of guns, and Blair Schier organized those opposing ownership. Ground rules were established to maintain control over the debate process and with me as the moderator, the debate began.

The rapport was very lively and engaging. Friends were respectfully disagreeing with friends in heated debate. As the debate began to swing toward summarization from the two camps, the class suddenly ended, leaving a sort of void in the process.

It’s worthy to note that the english spoken in the class was very good… even great. These students exercised the language very well.

Later, one of the teachers of the two classes commented that she would appreciate even more time to be offered in a single visit. Not just the two hours afforded today, but more like four or five hours. The engagement of the students with the ministry team left a longing in this teacher for more interactions between the ministry team and the students of these classes.

Before the ministry team left the school, the principal of the school warmly received ministry gifts. To our wonderment, the teacher asked us to return to the school, asking if we might return this upcoming Friday. And not just for a couple of hours, but for most of the school day.

Rafal Piekarski, the pastor of the Tomy Church, considers the request for an additional visit a historical milestone in the ability of an evangelical church to reach further to the people of Poland. Not just for a subsequent visit, but a visit of increasing magnitude through a longer visit.

This is, yet again, another testament to the power of God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit at work in the fields of missionaries. Through the work of the Spirit, doors had been set before us to be opened for the work of Jesus Christ. Those doors were opened and, although undetected by them, these students began to encounter a living and loving God in their lives.

From Derric Hicks:

Good Day, everyone. Or in Polish, "Dzien dobry!".

Today, John Baker, Robert Mason, Ron All, Shannon Thompson, marle Stanifer and myself (Derric Hicks) have been working at the Tomy Church in Tomaszow. We have been there all week! We're working on cleaning up a side lot with a garage, and painting a wall across the street from the church.

In today's work, we swept down the walls a nd ceiling of the garage and swept out the garage floor. Then we sgtarted to move big 4x4 beams and plank boards from the basement. We put them into the newly cleaned garage.

Also, today, we started to sand down the wall across the street and put on a paint primer coat to dry. When dried, we painted the wall; different banded shades of brown, one each for the top and bottom, and yellow in the middle.



Tomorrow, we will put on a second coat of yellow paint and continue to clean out a couple of rooms in the church used for storage, placing the contents of supplies from those rooms into the garage.

It's been hard work all week, but when we're done, the people of Tomaszow will have a beautiful church to worship in.

In Christ-
-Derric Hicks