Historical archives  from way back to right now

Floods, faith-building and fellowship, followed by elections, electrical problems and evangelism sums up the past few weeks!

After the tragic death of the president, his wife and top officials a few weeks ago now, the next tradegy hit Poland. From mid May until now, we've had severe rainfall causing massive flooding. In Nowy Sacz itself, a railway bridge collapsed a some people fell into the water, other rivers burst their banks and roads have been closed almost cutting of the town. Floods have brought electrical problems too with many houses being without power for many hours. Homes and basements, including of those in the the church, have been affected. As a church we are working together with local agencies to provide practical and financial help, including food, clothing and moral support.

Despite the downpour, there has been some very hot sunshine in between (!) so we continued with our twice-yearly church weekend away where we were taught and inspired by Wojtech Szczerba, the dean of a Polish bible college. As ever, it was an excellent time of building fellowship and getting to know new people. Unfortunately, due to the flooded river, we were unable to baptise around 5 people waiting - but we'll postpone that to the summer, which we hope will be drier!

We were also delighted to once again host Pastor Mike Beaumont from Oxford Community Church UK, who spend a week teaching at our Warszawa Bible College before travellingdown to Nowy Sacz to build up the faith of the leader and members of the church here.  As usual, all the English-speaking sermons can be listened to or downloaded on-line from www.kzns.pl

After the death of the president, the 20th June 2010 will see the presidential elections take place. All in all it is has of course been a very strange election in abnormal circumstances, but we now pray for stability and wisdom in the coutries leadership. Locally elections will take place in the building we rent for church meetings, so that means once again, we cannot meet on a Sunday! Pray that we can raise the funds for our own building to be renovated!

Finally, we are now preparing for a summer of evangelism. Join us in prayer and support! We will be in Limanowa, Stary Sacz and Krynica as a church with other teams from other churches invited to work with us. Importantly too, Pastor Jacek Orlowski and deacon Zbyszek Kusion will be travelling to Russia in August to build up a church there in a largely muslim area. They too need your prayer and support as they reach out to the east. We plan to take some practical aid, finance and other materials too as well as preach the Word.

Thankyou all for your condolences and messages of support after the shocking and tragic plane crash which killed our President, his wife, many military heads and top politicians. It is so wonderful to be part of God's loving family!  Please continue to pray for our nation and our particular work here in Nowy Sacz as we minister to people during this time.

March was a month of prayer, passover and prophecy. We started with the 'International Day of Prayer' where, amid deep snow we met in an unheated old wooden church with our Catholic and Lutheren brothers and sisters and prayed for over an hour and a half for suffering and persecuted Christians all over the world.

We followed this up by a refreshing weekend conference on 'Spiritual and Physical Healing' with Pastor Roger Cole (sessions on the website). Many people received specific prophetic words and testified to miraculous healing, as well as feeling more confident about praying for healing of others too.

At the end of March we invited a Messianic Jewish Christian to speak to us on the meaning of the Passover Meal.  He described the elements of the traditional meal as well as the prophetic meaning - of each part pointing to Jesus. (Pictures on website) We had a great number of visitors too who we are keeping in contact with. The 2.5 hour meeting was accompanied by a Jewish-style Christian music band and traditional passover food and refreshments.

After 6 months of snow (!) we are finally heading for some great sunshine, so are planning to get out on the streets and parks spreading the Gospel and serving the community.. watch this space!

January is always a very busy time in God's Glory Church:

We had a successful 'Children's Carnival' day, inviting children from the church as well as guests to a day of fancy dress, games, competitions, face-painting etc.

The annual 'Winter break' fell in January this year too, so a horse-drawn sleigh ride was organised, to which we invited a number of guests. The two sleighs pulled us up into the snowy forest where we enjoyed a barbecue over an open fire, and a much needed hot cup of tea. A video can be seen here .

Pastor Jack also filmed a new 'Welcome from the Pastor' video as well as another three  '3-minute answers' (in polish) which can also be found in our video section or '3-minute answers' section.

We then planned to have a more 'academic' open seminar on the subject of 'Can the New Testament be trusted' but unfortunately the speaker, Dr. Wojciech Szczerba, was involved in a car accident, so it will be postponed until April.

Tomasz Skórnog (an elder) and his wife Ula (overseeing the sunday school for children) have committed themselves to taking on the challenge of pastoring a church plant in the town of Krynica, not far from Nowy Sacz, so we laid hands on them a commissioned them for that service.  It is a very difficult place to establish a church and full of challenges, but it is a strategic part of our network of churches we envision across the county.

Our 'Operation Christmas Child' (Samaritan's Purse) ministry this month has already delivered many hundreds of shoe-box presents to the poorest children in hospital, schools and homes.

During the colder months especially we tend to get a larger number of homeless visitors on Sundays (!), so after the meetings finish, we organise for them hot drinks and soup in a room we rent.

These and all the other ministries we continue, do need financial help to continue to flourish, so please pray and give as you can. Likewise, our building project fund in January saw some very generous donations for which we are very grateful. Please continue to support the work here in Southern Poland.

Our 'Christmas eve' meal and meeting for the homeless was a great success this year. Not only did we deeply touch the hearts and lives of those attending, while also providing for the physical and emotional needs, but it also touched the owner of the Railway Station restaurant in which we hosted the event. They offered to cover all the costs! God's timing was perfect here at a financially difficult time!

Our Christmas day family meeting saw lots of visitors too, with our 'resident' Santa bring joy to not only the children but the whole Church too. (See pictures here) .

At the end of December our music teams released a compilation album of a collection of songs written by our own members throughout the year. The 14 tracks ranged from corporate worship songs, hymns, through intrumentals, rap and hip hop! The music team gave this as a Christmas gift to the members of the church and was included in the weekly news buletin. Hear it on-line here!  

This year, as a Church, we had a number of New Year's parties: Some of the youth group met up with another church group from Warsaw; Over 20 other church members met in one appartment, and the elders and deacons and wives met for a party in another house. While the world outside was getting drunk, we committed our time to praying the new year in, and worshipping and thanking God for his rich blessing throughout 2009. We also shared our hopes and dreams for this new decade.

Throughout Jan and Feb we start our main 'Samaritan's Purse' / 'Operation Christmas Child' ministry.  It is also a time where we intensify our work with the homeless in this particularly cold climate. It is now very difficult to continue this ministry without a physical building in which to meet, so please pray and support the ministries in any way you can.

Each year we take a moment to remember how in October/November 1517, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany  - a moment that started a movement - a wave of reformation across the Church. We call it Protestant Culture Day and in previous years we've celebrated with 3 days of concerts, gospel choirs , theatre, talks and special meetings which have brought in dozens of visitors, and new birth. This year, due to lack of funds and not yet having our own building to use, we needed to cut back, so instead, our own worship group put on a concert, our youth group a drama and a bible college lecturer spoke on the impact of the reformation today. We followed this by a special sunday service. This year we probably had just a handful of guests, but they are friends/relatives of members, so we are especially hopeful they will continue to seek the Lord.

At the same time, two of our members, Bernadette and Iwona were invited to visit some churches in London UK for 6 days, to present the Samartian's Purse 'Operation Christmas Child' ministry to poor children.This fruitful visit was to inspire and encourage the Uk churches with the end result of their 'shoebox' ministry and raise the profile of the work here. Jan 2010 may see some visitors from the UK visiting Poland to see the work first-hand.