Tomasz & Monika in Poland

Police, October 2009

Dear friends in our Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you all for all your prayers, phone calls, cards,e-mails or any other way that you expressed your interest and care for our family. We really appreciate that and get very encouraged every time we hear from you. We apologize that we are not as good in writing letters as we would like to be. Now, at last (we made such attempts earlier in the year but never managed to finish the letters) we have made ourselves sit at the computer and write a few words to you.

Quite a lot has happend since the last time you heard from us so I do not know where to start. I think the best will be to start with the head of the family, my beloved husband Tomasz. As you all know, he has always wanted to be involved in church ministry, in preaching Christ and Him crucified.

His desire has become reality and since June he has been pastoring a church in Chociwel, a small town 80 km east of Szczecin. He is not doing it full time as the church is not able to support him, so he preaches there every other week or three Sundays a month. On the one hand he is enjoying the ministry very much, but on the other hand he finds it rather difficult to be involved in the ministry and to work full time.

Besides, the distance (it takes an hour and a half to get to Chociwel) makes it impossible to really pastor the church, and his work which is very demanding and involves quite a lot of travelling (he travels to the south of Poland for a day or two almost every week) causes that even preparing a sermon for every other week is not an easy task. Besides me and the children we also need Tomasz to spend time with us, and we do not really want him to destressed all the time.

When he became a pastor of that church we were considering moving nearer Chociwel, but that would mean that Tomasz would have to drive a long way to work every day and now being a few months in the ministry we are not so sure about the idea. At the moment we are leaning towards resignation from the ministry as we realize it is too much for Tomasz and all of us as a family.

We have to decide by December whether we continue the ministry or not. So we stand at the crossroads and do not know which way to choose. We would appreciate your prayer in that matter as we still do not know what to do.

Now a few words about myself. I am still a full time mother and I find it tiring at times and I would be quite happy to go away somewhere (most preferably to the mountains) for a few days only with Tomasz without the children. I had a chance to go to on a church holiday in August only with the girls (it is not the same as with Tomasz) and I really rested there as the girls are far less demanding than Mateusz. I enjoyed the time with other Christians (that was a church holiday of our former church) and the very good lectures by an Englishman Richard Lee on the Beatitudes.

His preaching was veryclear and Christ-centred and I benefited from it a lot. The girls also loved the teaching and activities for the children and they were very happy to make new friends.

I hope I will be able to go on a church camp next summer and hopefully Tomasz and Mateusz will go with us.

I mentioned about changes in our life and the next quite important change is that I am starting a Masters course in English philology at the Szczecin University in October. It is a two year course and the lectures are on every other weekend. It is going to be a busy year and I am a bit worried how I am going to cope with the studies. I am also a bit excited and I hope I will enjoy the studies.

That would be all about myself and now a few words about our children. Mateusz (10 in December) has been finally diagnosed with ADHD and the fact that he is also emotionally immature makes his problem even worse. Because of all the problems he had last year the psychiatrist decided that he needs individual learning for this school year. So from September he has not been going to school, but the teachers has been coming to our flat to teach him. He has got only 10 lessons a week as the law permits only that amount of hours for individual learning. He is also allowed to have sports at school (three hours a week) but he is so stressed every time we are at school that so far has not taken part in the sports activities with his class. He still has the fear of separation and we are still coming through a lot of stress when we are at school (twice a week he has got individual lessons at the school building). Apart from the school problems we have got a lot of problems with his behaviour. He is a challenge! We have got books to read on ADHD which help us to understand the problem and to deal with it somehow. Do pray for us in this matter as we really need a lot of God’s wisdom and patience in that situation.

Fortunately in all this he is very intelligent and is doing very well at school and he likes the individual learning as all the attention is focused on him.

Julia (8) is in her second year at school and she still enjoys it. She is very conscentious and I do not have to nag her to do her homework. She is very sociable and loves playing with her friends and her sister, of course. She continues her violin lessons but this year she has got a newlove that overshadows the instrument. The new love is horses. We have agreed this year for her to go horse riding. Every other Saturday we take her to a stud farm nearby where she spends 7 hours learning to groom the horses and to ride on them. The love for horses probably began in the books for children I read to her.

Bogusia (6) started her preschool in September. Unfortunately we have to walk a bit further as this year they closed down the preschool class Julia was going to (which was very near our flat ). But still it is only 15 minutes walk and what is important Bogusia loves it. She is a very well behaved child and loves doing any manual work like drawing, painting, creating things from paper or anything else she finds interesting. She is very shy but slowly makes new friends in her preschool.

I am glad I managed to finish that letter!

Thank you once more for your prayers and your support. We would love to see you one day again but we do not know when we will be able to visit you.

The kids every summer say they would love to go to Wales (only Bogusia does not remember her visit to Wales) so we must come there one day.

Hope you are well and walk closely with the Lord.

Yours in Christ’s service

Tomasz Monika

Mateusz Julia and Bogumila