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Casey's Poland Journal - July 2008

Friday, June 13, 2008

Well, I finally arrived in Poland today at 3:35pm. I left Atlanta at 6:30pm on the 12th. It was a pretty good flight as far as international flying goes….but I’m unable to sleep on the plane….I’m too squirmy for my own good and so, I’ve been awake for well over 24 hours now.

We are at our hotel in a little town called something with a P and many consonants that honestly do not belong together without vowels interceding. It’s history is one of mafia, alcoholism, drugs and violence. There are only 2 known believers in the entire city. We will have orientation tomorrow on the city, the Nehemiah project in the Jewish cemetery and the hope the missionary, Steven Reece, has of planting a church in this completely unreached city. We have the honor of being the first team into this area ever to begin a work like this. It’s ground zero, so to speak.

In the hotel, our rooms do not have bathrooms. In fact, in the entire hotel, there are only two showers….period. This presents a situation that is not pretty given there are 10 women on our team, not to mention those men who like to wash occasionally and the other guests. The Lord will have to miraculously stretch the showers!

There is also no internet access, my cell phone doesn’t work and there is no ice, no air conditioning and etc. But, I remember the work I’m here to do, and it’s not about me, although I am gifted in kvetching (whining).

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Last night’s dinner was very good but to some, the borsht was frightening to behold. I personally love borsht but it’s bright purple color, including the purple potatoes (beet juice) could be off putting. Our dessert? Strawberries in a wonderful creamy sauce over corkscrew pasta! I know this sounds strange but it was really good!

This morning’s shocker was hotdogs for breakfast….none for me thanks.

I make light now, but in truth, I need to just say that already the emotions of this country: it’s pain, the blood curse upon the land, the spiritual implications of the work we are to do and the vast spiritual darkness is overwhelming me. And, they (the emotions) leak out of my eyes.

The Jewish community considers caring for the dead to be the highest level of mitzvot (good deeds) because the dead cannot thank you….and here, where there have been such horrific numbers of innocent blood shed….caring for the dead takes on a whole new meaning. The work we will be doing is a physical act….but the actual results are taking place in the heavenlies….righting a grievous wrong…and bringing reconciliation to the land and people so that the people themselves can become reconciled to God. And how can this be accomplished doing cemetery restoration? It’s a God thing….that’s all I can say. I saw it happen before my eyes last year and I know I’ll see it again. And…it’s the right thing to do. The condition of the spiritual soil here is so tainted by bloodguilt that unless and until that is righted, no amount of sowing of seed will result in a harvest. Cleansing the land and righting the wrongs can go far in paving the way to cleansing of the hearts of the people.

It’s later in the evening now. The alarm clock I’m using refuses to ring at the appointed hours. I asked this wonderful girl named Karla to set it for me and it worked for her, but now, I am looking at it and it no longer has numbers…. just a big glowing red screen. I wonder if the alarm can work if the numbers can no longer be read?

Orientation was interesting and informative. Then we prayerwalked the city for an hour and a half, as well as the cemetery we will be working in. It’s in much better shape than the cemetery in Otwock, so I imagine we will see physical results far quicker than last year.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Ok….I’m about to exercise once again my spiritual gift of kvetching…..I’m a city girl, ok? Never even went to camp….yes, I was raised on a farm, and yet, I’m still a city girl at heart. So, this 2 communal showers situation is stretching me a bit. “I love Luci meets missionary Barbie” is not handling it well! Today, I was in the one shower where the door won’t stay closed and is flanked by a lovely large picture window with no curtains….the shower head was laying across the hot and cold handles. Not a good sign. Sigh. I could discuss our bath towels that are the size of postage stamps, but why open that wound?

I promise, I won’t share any more of my shower story with you. Sorry. Some things one just has to get out….”better out than in”, as my hero Shrek likes to say.

Let’s move on to my borrowed (and now ruined, sorry Karla) evil red glowing alarm clock. It had a complete meltdown during the night, involving a good deal of burning plastic smell. I had nightmares about glowing red things chasing me.

The sun rises in Poland from every direction at once at about 3 am. The curtains in our room are nearly transparent. I think we could do x-rays in our room from the light….perhaps we could advertise our room as having tanning beds and charge for minutes. Normally I would not wish to perform x-rays nor tan at 3 am….but, as our leader Steven likes us to remember “TINA has a TIP for you…” This Is Not America, This Is POLAND…..

I think I will remember that always. Honestly though, I love it here! Isn’t that incredibly bi-polar of me? When I’m not tanning at 3 am….I’m usually going to be working in an overgrown cemetery, covered in stinging nettles and spider webs….hauling rocks and crying at the same time over the pain in the land and the horrors that have happened here….(this is what it was like last year anyways), craving ice and cold drinks and yet somehow, being irrevocably changed inside….my heart more tender….my passion for the lost more pronounced….who can explain how God does these things?

So, on to my more spiritual side….this morning we held the first known worship service in this city in our small hotel. And Jesus showed up big time. We sang accapella (sp?) and badly at that…..we prayed with many tears….we shared scriptures as the Lord led and then Steven taught us on the parable of the fig tree and repentance. Later in the afternoon, we held our prayer and consecration service. I felt strongly that we should anoint and pray over each team member and so Steven and Keith did so. It was a first for many and so, while it may have seemed strange or foreign to them, it was precious and felt like holy ground in there.

We finished our training and orientation today, except for the specifics according to Jewish traditions and laws regarding care of the dead. I went through this last year so I already know, but there are only 4 of us who have been through it before so everyone needs to hear it. And frankly, as this is not a skill most of us use on a daily basis, a refresher is always a good thing.

Tonight, we all went out for some Polish ice cream and I had this wonderful flavor that I could not pronounce nor reproduce by spelling although it had many s’s, k’s, w’s and z’s in the name. It tasted exactly like birthday cake and icing…..only it was ice cream….some things are just too miraculous to describe adequately. This was one of those things.

Monday, June 16, 2008

I’d like to take a moment to ponder Jesus and the way He is able to alter perspectives. Perspective…..maybe it will be a theme for the day. At any rate, He has a hysterical sense of humor and He and I had a quite a sheepish chuckle this morning in the shower….yes. I’m back to the shower again. Remember my whining about the size of our towels? Well, that tiny towel became like the holy grail this morning and something I was seeking after with nearly all my heart….when after my shower in the nicer of the 2 showers (the one without the window, the one that the door closes and the shower head is attached to the wall)….I discovered to my deep chagrin that I’d left that tiny towel in my room….when one has to towel off with a pajama top, a tiny towel is like a gift from heaven itself. I came back to my room with my hair streaming into my eyes….and my clothing sticking to my entire body….to see that glorious tiny towel literally GLOWING in the sunlight streaming through our transparent curtains this morning….it was waiting there for me, nice and toasty and warmed by the sunlight….a towel from a spa could not have been more welcome. So, you see? It’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it? Jesus teaches some amazing lessons to me, which I will in great humility (as most likely it will have come from a humiliating situation) share with all of you.

I could share of the lesson I learned in Polish symbols for male and female on the restrooms, but this is a moment that will forever be burned into Bruce and my shattered memories forever….it’s amazing how men can scream just as much as a girl can, under the right circumstances. It’s probably best to say no more.

This is much later today. My entire body hurts. We worked for 7 hours in the cemetery today. I managed to scrape my arm on a gate…..cut down a small thorn tree directly onto my face (oh so painful)….and stick myself in numerous other places all over my filthy, sweaty body today. I have a cut on my upper lip, split my lower lip and scratched my face up from that thorn tree. But what hurts the most is my heart. First, we had a very wonderful Jewish man by the name of Alex teach us about Jewish death practices and I have to say he broke my heart. The veil over our people’s eyes, in my opinion, is their utter dependence upon the Talmud (Rabbinical commentary on the Torah-the first 5 books of the Bible) and Rabbinic traditions. Sometimes that veil seems impenetrable. He told us that all the Jewish people are buried with their feet towards Jerusalem, so that when Messiah comes, they will come up out of their graves and go to Jerusalem to Him. How close to seeing and yet how blind still….it’s true and yet they don’t see Who the Messiah is!

Later, as we were clearing in one section….not even in the mass grave area, we began to find bones….everywhere. In fact, in one area, we found a great many bones of a tiny child. We have to mark the area for Alex and they will be given proper re-burial….but as I held those tiny little vertebrates and tiny little rib bones and tiny little leg bones….so frail and delicate…..I wanted to cry and scream at the horrific injustice at the same time. I sang the kaddish (mourners prayer) for them, especially those tiny baby bones. I realize that it should be a man…and that according to Alex it should be with a minion (10 Jewish men)….but I couldn’t just leave them there….so fragile, exposed and not even offer up a prayer for them. Who can do such things….steal grave markers, use them as road pavings, or worse, bullet practice….who can dig up a tiny child’s bones and just scatter them or allow them to be ravaged by time and the elements, with no remorse at all? I realize anew the utter annihilation that Hitler wanted for the Jews….not only to steal their lives, and their belongings, but their very humanity…their dignity…..to erase their very existence from the face of the earth. It sickens me to my core.

It’s no wonder that this land is suffering….that hearts are calloused over towards the gospel. Innocent blood was shed in ways and to extents that we really cannot imagine or grasp even with all the knowledge we have of what happened here. “Your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground…” I would say that here, their blood screams from the ground. You can feel it and you can hear it….if you have ears to hear.

We made great progress today though and I think we are ahead of where we thought we would be. Some of the team is out this evening drumming up prospects for a potential English club that we would hold along with coffee houses in the evenings after working in the cemetery. I would love to have helped advertise it, but I find that my back is not cooperating with me and I really have to lie down. Tomorrow though, I look forward to helping with it. That’s right up my alley since I teach ESOL at home. Oh, and one other thing….I really can understand a lot of what they are saying in Polish here. The language is so similar to Russian that I find that I can get along pretty well….I can figure things out in the grocery store and listening is great. Speaking is a whole other story.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Oh my goodness. There are so many places in my body where I am in pain….regular places like my back, my feet, shoulders….and odd places like the bones between the knuckles on my right hand and the middle joint of the finger….weird, yes? I think that is from working the hand clippers for hours on end. The section of the cemetery we are clearing is looking great. We got a start on taking down the remaining wall sections and cleaning bricks as well, for the wall to be re-built. We found so many more bones yesterday. So many bones. We flag them and then Steven asked Karla and I to tear off plastic sheeting to cover them until today, so that Alex can rebury them. I’m hoping Alex will allow me to be with him for the reburial process. I want to see it….to pray during that time….for Alex.

Yesterday when I was sitting on the ground, sweaty hot and with a hammer and a chisel in hand (this is not one of my usual skills) I felt a great kinship to the Hebrew slaves in Egypt….in fact I kept teasing Steven about making more bricks for Pharoah…bricks without straw. It was kind of amazing to think of all the ways bricks have been significant to the Jewish people throughout the generations. Bricks in Egypt. Bricks in the walls of Jerusalem (Nehemiah). Bricks in the destruction of the temple. Bricks at the Wailing Wall. Bricks in the Warsaw Ghetto . Bricks in the concentration camps….the gas chambers. Bricks with bullet holes and mortar shells…. Bricks covered in ashes from the fiery ovens….Cleaning bricks to rebuild a wall in a cemetery destroyed in Warsaw Poland….and even beyond. Someday, maybe I will do a study on bricks and the Jewish people.

I have to teach a little devotion in chapel today. I’m nervous as always. I hope that Jesus manages to show a little bit of Himself today to encourage the others…despite the one who is teaching it.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

It’s 6:46am here in Poland, and I’m all dressed and ready for another day of brick dust. Today, I think we will have masks, which will be such a blessing. I awakened feeling sick this morning…and I’m sure all that brick dust is probably the culprit. Because I’ve not been able to have access to any phones or internet, I’ve been out of touch completely with my family. I’ve been managing to deal pretty well with that so far…but I find today, when I’m feeling weak, that I’m not dealing as well with it, and my mind is conjuring up all sorts of fearful happenings and no one can reach me. I will ask everyone to pray about it for me today at chapel.

I spent some time with Alex yesterday….just briefly. He’s a wonderful man and so terribly without hope. He spends all his days amongst the dead….and he shared with me that it’s so wonderful for him to have some living people to talk to. He said he likes spending time with us more than spending time with his Jewish people!!! He can see God at work in all our lives. I’m so hopeful. Steven has a great opportunity with him and I pray so much for Jesus to be at work in Alex’s heart so that he can find His Messiah.

Chapel went pretty well yesterday I guess. Not anything to do with my little teaching, but I do know how to play to strengths, so I put together a power point of our work here to illustrate what I was saying, and it really seems to help develop the point you are trying to make. Jesus was faithful to me and to all of us.

Gosh. I really don’t feel well at all today. I pray all is well at home. Usually I have some form of contact…this is the first time I can’t make contact at all and I’m feeling it keenly. Sigh.

Last night some native Poles came in to our hotel for a small English club and coffee house. The coffee houses are a way to begin forming relationships with the natives of the area (not like wild people natives!) so that a church plant will become possible. There are just NO believers in this area! God wants to change that. And I believe He will. The prayerwalk time yesterday was with Robin and myself. We prayerwalked so many many miles…covering a psych hospital, a regular hospital, various train stations (where the Jews of Warsaw were loaded up to go to Treblinka), a huge Mary shrine which had a statue of Mary standing on a serpent’s head (which is directly at odds with scripture) and several places of witchcraft. In one location, outside their home, the people had chained to a gate a huge offering of bones….it was chilling to look at. This land is filled with idolatry. There are places we prayerwalked where the heaviness and fear and danger still hangs in the air like lead. Some areas “felt” as though we had made a breakthrough, while others remained stubbornly dark.

I’m going to stop now and try to lie back down for a few minutes.

It’s later. Long day, much back breaking work. The wall is completely down and we worked on brick cleaning all afternoon. My hand is cramped into a claw! Yikes. I feel better, and I think we may have discovered an internet café to walk to, so hopefully I can get in touch with the world back home tonight!

Tomorrow, we have been invited by the Jewish community to attend Shabbat at the only remaining synagogue in the city. It’s orthodox. And, they have invited us to the oneg Shabbat (dinner….sorry) afterwards. It will be chance to interact with a great many of the Jewish community of Warsaw and we’re all very excited for the chance.

Even later…we found the internet café, but they didn’t have wireless so I couldn’t use my laptop to send off journal entries. However, I did get to communicate with loved ones so that I could assure them of my safe arrival and see how they were doing. Thank God for that.

Friday, June 20, 2008

I keep waking up each morning, looking in the mirror and wondering why my face is so impossibly red each day…..and then I realized that while I joked about it, I’m getting sunburned in my sleep! Good night nurse! We keep our windows open because there is no air conditioning….and there are no screens and our curtains are transparent, so they’re shoved off to one side to allow any tiny breeze in…..and I lie in my bed under my covers where, apparently, my face is being burned to a crisp from about 3-4 am on. I guess I’m going to have to wear SPF 60 or something to sleep in.

Then of course there is the exfoliating factor of the brick dust all day long in the cemetery. Some people pay big bucks for the facial treatments I’m getting!!!

Today is the last day for us to work in the cemetery. I’m hoping for some more time to talk with Alex today. Lord, I pray for that time. Then tonight, we will be with nearly the entire Jewish community (the living ones) in Warsaw, and during the dinner time, I pray Lord for many questions and a time of great fellowship and bridge building. It’s unprecedented here for the Jewish community to have a meal with the “Christian” community. To begin with, there are few Christians as it is, but even with the ones they perceive as Christian, there has been such unforgiveness, distrust and even hatred that sharing a meal would be unthinkable. God’s principles regarding the soil and sowing have worked supernaturally here….back to another parable of Jesus, we have the field owner angry that tree has no fruit….and the gardener asks for another year, to dig around the roots and fertilize the soil…..and our physical labors in the natural have seemed to be doing a spiritual stimulating of the root of the olive tree here in Poland…. May we begin to see a harvest, Lord….please. There are so few Jewish people left alive in Poland. I would dearly and desperately love to see those Jewish people here find their Messiah and find eternal life in Him. That’s my prayer. It’s the only healing that will matter.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

I woke up screaming in the night last night. I was dreaming of children…being horribly tortured. Most likely it’s my subconscious trying to deal with the time in the ghetto last night and the fact that today I will be prayerwalking Treblinka.

Before we went to Shabbat services last night, we had about 30 minutes time to spare, so Steven took us to the “little ghetto”. I had never been there… last year I saw the remnants of the “big ghetto”. The little ghetto was for the well educated and wealthy Jews of Warsaw. And….it was liquidated first.

The walls of brick….close in on you…. and you feel claustrophobic even though the outer walls are no longer there. The bullet holes are just everywhere you look, in those bricks. I can’t imagine how many bullet holes and what they scream to me….what they represent….executions…..cold blooded murder. I was weeping the instant I stepped into that dark place. And it was so dark….like the light of day could not penetrate the darkness there. In the windows (that used to be) were now hung pictures of different Jewish people who died in the ghetto….in the liquidation….or in Treblinka. We found an inner gate that was open, and went inside a tiny brick courtyard where the little children tried to play, in that ghetto. It’s like you can still hear them….trying to be children in that horrible place…when they weren’t risking their very lives being scavengers for food for their families.

I found my way inside one of those buildings, into a stairwell that was chipped and peeling and honestly I felt like surely I had stepped onto a movie set of some sort…like the Pianist or something. But it was real…and I was there….and for those people….it wasn’t a movie or a story. It was hellishly and fatally real.

I can’t write of it anymore right now.

The Shabbat service was typical of just about anywhere in the world, really. This was an orthodox service and entirely in Hebrew. However, I assured everyone in our group that they understood as much as probably 75% of the rest of those attending. It always gives me a headache sitting there. I feel such overwhelming, impossible love for our people….and as I watch them and pray, I also feel such despair over their blindness to the gospel’s truth and hope for their lives.

The rabbi extended Steven a very great honor in that he was recognized in the service and called up to the bema.

We then shared Shabbat dinner with most of the congregation. Accidently, I ended up seated by the gentleman who led our dinner….a teacher in the Jewish school and very orthodox….a kind, lovely man and his wife and son Yacov. His wife was extremely uncomfortable, you could see….but the man was gracious and sweet. Hebrew was chanted from the bencher (like a song book) and it was really a cool cultural experience for everyone, although I fear that it was somewhat long and boring to some. It’s hard when you can’t understand the Hebrew….but again, I assured them that many were in the same situation, and how hard would it be to worship and learn the things of God if every single worship service you attended, you could not understand and it didn’t seem real enough to try to figure out for yourself….in fact, you were discouraged to try to figure things out yourself.

At any rate, there were 14 believers in that synagogue last night, praying for and fellowshipping with the Warsaw Jewish community…..talk about a bridge of reconciliation being built! Can you imagine such a thing ever happening?

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Today is my last full day here….at least for this year. I do not know what next summer holds, outside of Israel again….Lord willing. The second praise and worship service in this city will be held today….and once again, the Word of the Lord will go forth. Hopefully it will penetrate the prevalent darkness just a bit more.

And now…on to darkness. Yesterday, we prayerwalked Treblinka death camp. I’ve not done a more difficult thing in my life…at least thus far.

Oh, I don’t know if I can even write of it….I’ll try, but even still, I doubt I will be able to convey the many emotions in that journey.

To begin with, having been to the synagogue and then the little ghetto the previous evening….I then took the same journey that those fated Jewish people took at the liquidation of the ghetto. For me, however, instead of standing in a sea of people so thick that no one could move inside a cattle car, and feeling the terror of what might be happening to me, I was riding in a nice little bus, with a bottle of water. The guilt I felt over that was hard to explain.
Then, the closer we got to the death camp, the angrier I became as I saw the little houses dotting the area, up until about 3 miles out. There were people who LIVED nearby….and yet no one stopped what was happening! How….how can that be? Even if they weren’t sure, the stench of the burning bodies….20,000 or so a day….day after day….had to FILL the air they breathed…..the ashes and the smoke from those bodies being obliterated had to fill the skies over their heads….and yet nobody stopped it. The trains came in daily, filled with people….oh, I can’t explain really how angry that makes me….and how impossibly sad.

So, the Germans tried to destroy most of the evidence that their big killing machine even existed….they didn’t succeed however. After the 800,000 plus Jews from Warsaw and the surrounding cities, like Pruszkow and Otwock and on and on arrived….it is estimated that they were stripped of their belongings and clothing, and forced to walk down the black road made of the tombstones of their kinsmen…..walking naked through the “gateway to heaven”…..into the gas chamber. It took all of about 15-20 minutes I’m told….with no time to even say goodbye to their loved ones….their friends….their children…..and they were dead. From the gas chamber, their bodies were piled onto these cremation grids and burned by the thousands and their ashes spread into pits nearby, specially dug for this purpose. The elderly and sick were taken a different route into a building disguised as a hospital, and exterminated there…..having been led to believe the entire time that they were being taken to be cared for…..can you feel it yet? The horror? The fierce anger? The shock and unbelief that man could do such things to another human being?

I walked the railroad ties that are now commemorated by large stone blocks….onto the ramp. I walked the black road to the gateway to heaven. I placed memorial stones there….and I collapsed beside it because the despair was so huge inside me. I walked to the cremation grid….I walked to the ash piles now covered over with asphalt to try to protect what lies beneath. The sad thing is….it cannot keep the ash and bone shards down. The earth is bringing them up. I sat with others to pray there, and in the cracks in the asphalt there you see ash coming up….and in it….we found bones….pieces of ribs….pieces of skull fragments….evidence of the life and death of someone dearly loved by God Himself….created in His image….and who most likely died without knowing their Messiah yet. They went from hell on earth to eternal death more than likely….put there by men with “God is with us” on their belt buckles.

We each held those dry, charred bone fragments and cried out to God in prayer. We read from the passage of Ezekiel….laying those dry bones onto the pages of the Word of God, where He speaks to them….speaks of breathing life into the valley of dry bones.

Israel came back to the Jewish people at the end of this terrible saga….but oh the cost.

We re-buried those bone shards, but I will never forget who they represent. The camp was prayed over and anointed with oil….the Word of God and the promises of God were proclaimed.

Meanwhile, the sun still shone….the birds still sang…..and flowers grew….in a place whose entire purpose was death.

In my heart I pray so much that Jesus was the 4th man in those gas chambers….their fiery furnace experience….that the angel of the Lord revealed Himself in that terrible place to them and that at least some were saved from eternal death. I will not know until heaven….but my heart aches for that to be true. I pray that I see the one’s whose bones I held and wept over, there in heaven and that they know that in some small way, I loved them and I remembered them….that I knew that they were….that they lived and that they died in a hellish way….that I mourned them.

I hope to see Alex there….and Stanislaw….and Leon and Malcha and the many many others we met during this time and last time here….I pray that they may be saved.

As I said earlier this week….Jesus is a miracle worker on perspectives. 2 showers and tiny towels don’t even matter when faced with the work before us…..and beyond into eternity. My perspective is….thank God those showers don’t hold death for us. And who cares if one is filthy and sweaty, and sunburned in their sleep….because there is work to be done….and people need to hear of their Messiah and Savior….because He desires that none should perish. My perspective is even more so determined to do my part in that work. Too many are perishing without hope of eternity with their God…..

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