Witaj (it means "hello" in Polish)

Once again, aplogies for my absence from the blogosphere. I can't claim the excuse of being terribly busy, just lazy and consumed with trying to watch the entire first season of Lost before Sept. 5 (when season 2 is released). I have a whole series of thoughts on Lost, but I'll save those for another post.
I've been waiting until I received my "official" assignment in the mail to post about Poland, but I received it late last week, so here we go!
Shortly before I graduated from college I began to sense that the Lord was calling my life into some sort of ministry as a career and I freaked out, to say the least. I absolutely shot down the idea, said "forget it!" and got myself a job and moved to Huron. To me, ministry as a career seemed way too insecure and scary and not at all what I had planned for my life. While the Lord has been so gracious and has really done some awesome things these past four years, He continued to change my heart and draw me closer to Himself, to a place where I began to truly know Him and trust Him. Even as I think back on this right now, I'm amazed at His grace and kindness to me to patiently show me that I could trust Him and believe Him. I definitely didn't deserve it! Anyways, throughout the past four years He continued to lead towards spending some time overseas serving Him, but I never really thought about actually acting on this. I just assumed I'd wake up one day in another country and there you go! However, back in early January, He really made it clear that this was the time. I began the application process to be a part of a program called the Journeyman Program through the Southern Baptist International Mission Board. The program is for people who have graduated from college, are single, and are not yet 30 and is a term of two years spent overseas. The application process in and of itself was awful in a great way. There were lots of steps including an intensive and extensive health questionaire, VERY personal questions to answer (the Board says they know more about you than your mom, and they're probably right!), references, and lots of other information. Honestly, after finishing the application process, I figured "if I still get accepted, then I know it's the Lord!" Well, I did get accepted and went to a Screening Conference the beginning of August where the Lord really seemed to be opening a place for me in Poland. I got to spend a week last summer in Poland with the man, Sean Stevenson, and his family who started my church here in Huron. So, I will be living in the same town and working with him and his family, as well as another girl about my age (Amber) and a retired woman named Patsy. There is a university in the town we're in, so Amber and I will primarily be working with college students. The young people in Poland are a lot like young people here in that they are tired of "religion" that doesn't have any real meaning in their lives and are hungry for something that is real and that applies to their daily lives. We'll be doing lots of building relationships and just loving on them that way and hopefully pointing them to a real, living relationship with God through Christ.
Let's see...other details that you might want to know...I've been able to take a leave of absence from school; the name of the town is Olsztyn and it's in North Eastern Poland; the family I'll be working with has three daughters named Abby, Cara, and Becca; I'll most likely live in an apartment with Amber; I leave October 24 for training down in Virginia, will be home Dec. 14-28 and will fly out for Poland on Dec.28 for two years; I'll get about three months of survival Polish language training, but most of the college students will want to practice English with us and that will be a big way we'll get to meet people; yes, it's very cold in Poland; no, I don't think they appreciate dumb Polock jokes; I don't know if they tell dumb American jokes...hmmmm, if there's anything else, feel free to ask, but that's all I can think of right now.
So, there you go! That's what's going on in a nutshell. For right now, I'm just working on getting things situated and tied off here and spending time with people. Oh, and watching my new best friends on Lost.
Here is a link for the Northeast Poland website. It's not been updated for quite a while, but at least it may give you an idea!