This is a picture of the girls standing in front of the Operation Christmas Child boxes last week. About 100 kids came to receive presents. The girls helped stack the boxes and had a good time watching the kids receive their presents. It was really neat for us to see this program from this end where the kids get the presents! 

Here is a picture of some of the folks from our Tuesday night English club. This picture was take on Friday at the Christmas Party. 

A fishy adventure

Well, I ate my first sledz tonight! We had our Christmas party with our students from English Club, and one family brought sledz. It's raw herring in sour cream. It was interesting. I was able to swallow it and I was very thankful for that! The party was lots of fun. We had 9 Poles come and we played games, ate lots of food and talked. They are such a fun group of people and so interesting. It's fun to see how different cultures spend Christmas! Check out the video of this adventure at http://www.kevin-emily-brooks.org/sledz.wmv

November Newsletter

Sunday in Olsztyn, there was a tree dressing ceremony in the town square. Different children from the public schools were invited to put ornaments on the tree. We went with the Brooks and our whole family. When we arrived, the director of the preschool where our two youngest daughters attend recognized us and asked if our girls would put ornaments on the tree! We said yes. Lydia and our two youngest daughters ended up on stage to show off the ornaments for Preschool number 14! Then, they got to go to the tree and hang the ornaments around the bottom. It was great fun! Something unexpected always seems to happen to us. Here is a picture of our daughter with the director (principal). 

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we went out into the community and shared the abundance of our meal with some who have much less than us. We put together 15 meals with turkey, rolls, mashed potatoes, mandarin oranges, and an orange juice. On the outside of the box was a message to the recipient and a scripture. I think that for all of us helping some needy folks was much better than any leftover turkey sandwich we could have ever eaten.
 

This man was sleeping in the train station and woke up to find a box of hot food lying next to him. He immediately opened the box and dug in.
 

Here I am talking to a man named Greg. I gave him one of the meal boxes and then got a chance with talk to him a little. I think seeing the smile on his face when I gave him the food and the thankfulness he had for it may have blessed me more than it blessed him.