Connection... they finally hear me.

Umm... can I just say how sweet and terribly humbling it is to finally feel like I connect to these peeps? In the last 8 months, I have never felt this wonderfully welcomed into their community like I felt last week at camp. They call me "siostra" now... that's polish for "sister".

Last week was camp. We took 40 IWCers and 30 Roma peeps and some other peeps to the mountains for family camp week. Food sucked. Not gonna lie. Even the Poles didn't like it and the Roma turned it down. So I feel that as the picky American that my opinion of the food should be noted.

I found out last week like 2 days before camp that I had been asked to be the official worship leader for this week. Apparently in January that topic during the nonmeeting thing time that I showed up for wasn't important enough to make it in my long term memory. However, since I'm not a planner (meaning it wouldn't have mattered how early in advance i found out about it i still wouldn't have thought much about it until it was time to do it), it was a great surprise and i actually loved every minute of it.

We sang as one group that song "Give Me Jesus" in all 3 languages--polish, roma and english. God totally picked out that song and one of the translators as tools for leading the group in worship and unifying them as one body of Christ. While singing at the top of my lungs, I would just smile because I could hear all the voices in the room singing together in different languages. The Creator of languages came and breathed his presence and spirit out into our souls creating a unifying language. Ewa (in my address book i have her name as "Ewa Bogu" meaning "God's Ewa") sang next to me. Usually the prayers are translated, but I asked her in advance not to translate the prayers. I told her that my prayers shouldn't be spoken for the people in the room but for God. So I asked her to pray in polish after I prayed. It was so incredibly freeing because I knew that I was talking to God and not trying to extend some kind of sermon on all those that could hear me "praying". It was truly a moment to talk to God. It doesn't matter what language you are praying in because you can just sense God's presence so close when you're near someone praying whether it be out loud or to themselves. Hearing some of the Roma pray humbled my heart and led me to just breathe out prayers to the same God.

One day I played taxis driver. It was so much fun. As we went flying past the hotel on this windy mountain 2 lane road and as Sheila, my passenger, exclaimed, "that's the hotel!", I said, "I've got something to show you." Ha we flew through mountain passes for about 20min in the big blue VW van and finally after having our breath knocked out by the beauty, we arrived in Slovakia. I parked on the side of the highway. We jumped out and ran to the border. Got a picture by the sign. Then ran back to the van to make it back just in time for Obiad (lunch). haha... I love Slovakia. So beautiful.

This past month has been a time where I've truly felt in my life like the writer of psalm 23 when they said, "My cup overflows."