Kosciuszki Mound - Krakow , Poland

Hello from Krakow! We had a great time this weekend on a short trip to visit friends in Katowice, Poland.

Bubble Science

This is Rebecca making a gigantic bubble! The girls studied about water and surface tension yesterday and making bubbles was part of that.

New Family Pet???

We have a new family pet... kind of. He (or she) is a bat! A very cute bat we think. He visits us nightly when he takes feeding breaks under the eaves of our back porch.

Unusually Warm Day

We had a warm day recently, I know it's warm still in the US but here it is already cooling down. It was so nice, we all went outside. Here is Becca in the sand having a nice fall afternoon.

Art Class

On Fridays we study art. Here are the girls studying how to draw and color realistic 3D shapes.

WF?

You were wondering what WF means? It means the same thing at PE in English. This is our fall and spring WF program... ride bikes! Here are Abby, Cara and Sean out for their afternoon exercise!

Tour de Pologne

The Tour de Pologne is a bicycle race with 184 riders similar to the Tour de France. Yesterday was the first day of the race, it started in Warsaw and ended in Olsztyn. We spent the afternoon watching the race and thought you would like to see a picture from our view point. It was awesome, they went right in front of us like this three times. The girls thought is was really cool.

End of Summer

We were blessed to join the Baptist church in Olsztyn for an end of Summer camp on Saturday and Sunday. We stayed in a little cabin like the one shown above. We had a great time. As soon as we arrived on Saturday, we had coffee, tea and snacks with our adopted Grandmother, Wala. We also had coffee, tea and snacks twice on Sunday! Once immediately after the AM church service before lunch and again after lunch in the afternoon. We got to spend a great deal of time just sitting and visiting with the believers from this church. We joined in church services on Saturday and Sunday and played volleyball, scrabble and badmitton. On Saturday night, there was a campfire where we roasted kielbasa (sausages) and fellowshipped around the fire. It was a really nice weekend. I wish we could share it with each of you, you would have been blessed to spend such a special time with these believers.

Exciting News

Hi everyone, thanks for keeping up with us on the Blog. We have some exciting news. We will have three new team members joining us at the end of this year. Two young ladies who will head up our Student Team working at the university to start new Bible study groups and another lady who will be our volunteer coordinator. We are so excited about this good news. The addition of these new team members will expand the work we are able to do and increase the number of people who will come to the Lord in NE Poland! We will let you know more information as we get it and they will submitting additions to this Blog in the future!

Summer Camp 2007

This summer we worked with the Baptist Church in Olsztyn and volunteers from Central Baptist Church and three other churches in Northeast Arkansas at a summer camp. There were 46 children, many of whom heard that Jesus Christ could be their Lord and Savior for the first time.

Baby James Oliver Brooks

We visited the Brooks in Indiana before we returned to Poland. Here is a picture of our daughter Abby holding Baby James! Isn't he a cutie!

Christmas Greetings and What's Been Going On

We are settled now, and have all of our Christmas decorations up. Our home is wonderful, and all we had to do was show up and move in! What a blessing! We're in a great location, with just about everything we could need close by, and now that we've got our internet up and running, we're feeling more connected. :)

We're enjoying the encouragement and support of being part of a church, and the kids love it as well. We're all making friends quickly. We've been able to visit in several homes already (of both believers and unbelievers), and have SCORES of invitations for Christmas. No one wants us to feel lonely! :) We want to make the most of the visiting opportunities, so we're actually planning to celebrate Christmas as a family on the 23rd. The kids and I are making a birthday cake for Baby Jesus, and Caleb offered to blow out the candles this year, "...since Jesus doesn't usually like to show up and just LET people SEE Him." :)

We're enjoying language study and readjusting to the culture of Poland, doing as much practicing and wandering around as possible. We're also leading a Bible study/English Club once a week. This group has been meeting with the team for quite a while, and the team was glad to hand it over instead of telling the whole group, "See you in six months!" They've welcomed us with open arms, and we enjoy not only the hour English lesson, but especially the thoughtful and insightful time of Bible study following each lesson. Please pray with us that there will be a deeper understanding of the meaning of the celebration of Christ's birth among our group members this holiday season.

We've also found a great obstetrician, with whom Bethany feels completely comfortable! Praise the Lord for THAT! He said that everything looks wonderful, and Bethany was even able to see our little one's face clearly during the ultrasound last week. We're all getting SO excited! She'll be visiting the hospital this week to learn her way around a little bit.

Again, thank you all for praying for us, and for your patience as we were out of the communication loop for a while there. We love you all, and are praying rich blessings and enriching times of reflection this holiday season! Celebrate Christ with us!

This is the picture from the Bible study part of English Club tonight. We had 13 Poles and 6 Americans there! It was a HUGE group and we had lots of fun. We started tonight by drawing one thing that we did during the day and then the other people had to guess what we did. It was funny to see all the interesting things that we had done�and the interesting ways that people drew them! My stick person had a ginormous head and the oven where I was baking was twice the size of me. An artist I am not! Anyway, we had a wonderful time and it was neat to watch the group interact with and meet Robert and Bethany. I think they will enjoy doing English Club with them when we leave. Please pray for that transition.

here I am with me crew of little pirates at me birthday party on Saturday 

English Club was so crazy last night! I didn’t know half of the people at the table when English Club started! We had 4 new people. It was really nice to see the group accept new people and to hear new thoughts and ideas. We talked about our “dream home” last night and it was interesting to hear what everyone’s ideal house and future would look like. We have a few more meetings before we head back to the States. This group is going to be very difficult to leave.

Christian History - Nicholas Copernicus - 131 Christians Everyone Should Know

Christian History - Nicholas Copernicus - 131 Christians Everyone Should Know
Just a quick note, part of this article gives a reference to Olsztyn, though it never says the city name. The reference to 1514 and Copernicus’s time administrating the war was during the period of time that he spent here in Olsztyn.

Dearest Friends
and Family,

November is here, can you believe it?

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Volunteer Team

We were excited to have another
team from Central Baptist Church Jonesboro, Arkansas at the end of October.
This team came to prayer walk, and that is what they did. One goal that our
team has had since the beginning of the year was to prayer walk the entire city
of Olsztyn. Well, with the help of this team we did just that. There were
about 4 of 5 districts that we had not yet prayed in and they helped us saturate
these areas with prayer.

Another thing that they came to
do was to pray on All Saints Day. We went to three different cemeteries to
pray for people who were there preparing the graves for this holiday. We had a
Polish friend with us all three times who was able to explain many of the things
that were going on. I have been to the cemeteries three years now and I learned
more about Polish culture this year than any other time. It was overwhelming
for the volunteers to see such a sight. They had never seen so many people in
one place with such an urgency to do a religious act. It is always good to see
a different culture and how they deal with different things, especially death.
We saw people who have no hope in this life or hope for the next. Please
continue to pray with us that the Word of the Lord would come to this place and
give Hope to so many hopeless people.

---

Baby
Ollie

We are excited to say that
baby Ollie is growing up and healthy. We went to the doctor this week for a
sonogram and here are the pictures from this (click it for a larger version).
On the top picture you can see the baby sucking his thumb, the middle picture is
the baby’s heart and heartbeats, and on the bottom picture you can see the
baby’s ear. Please continue to pray for his (or her) development. Pray that
God would continue to prepare us to be parents.

---

English Club

English Club continues to go
well. There were 11 Poles last week, three of them new to our group! It is
awesome that people are still coming and inviting new people. Please pray
that we will continue to share our vast knowledge of English with these
folks, but more importantly that they would continue to bind together as a group
and that they would come to know Christ as their Lord and Savior. (See
below for more exciting English News!)

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Departure Of Friends

One of the hard things about
missionary life is the constant "goodbyes" that must be said. This month we
have had to say 3 goodbyes. At the beginning of the month we had to say goodbye
to our friend Damian. He moved to southern England to live and work. We did
get the opportunity to spend some time with him before he left. Please pray
for him as he is continuing to adjust to his new life in a country that speaks a
language other than his native tongue (though he does speak English well). He
is also seeking the Lord and the way to the Lord.

We also had to say goodbye to
our good friends Pawel and Ewelina this month. They are moving to Scotland to
work. They were two of the first people we met when we moved to Olsztyn and had
the opportunity to spend some good times with them doing many different things
from just hanging out to working together at the children’s camp to church stuff
to playing music. Please pray for them that they find jobs, housing, adjust
to a new culture and for Pawel as he works on improving his English.

---

Coming Up!

We are continuing to pray about
the future and our time in Terre Haute. We continue to pray about jobs,
transportation, and issues relating to the baby. One praise is that there is a
possibility of working in a local ministry. Please pray about this
opportunity. We feel that this is something that God wants us to do, but there
are some details that need to be worked out but we are trusting God to provide.

We have been praying about what
would happen to our English Club and what would happen with the people that have
been coming. Well, God has answered our prayers in an incredible way!
He is sending another missionary couple to Olsztyn. The Kaczmarek’s will
be arriving in Olsztyn on December 1^st. This is great because
they will be able to take over for us before we leave. Please pray for
them as they finish things up where they are, as they pack and move. Also
they are expecting their third child in February.

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Father, I ask that you would open doors for the
the gospel in this area. I pray that many would hear and receive Jesus.

"Finally, brothers, pray for us that the
message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honored, just as it was with you."

-2 Thessalonians 3:1-

(this is one of the prayers that we prayed
several times this week)

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Please feel free to forward this newsletter
to your friends, family, and fellow church members. Also send us a little
email letting us know what is going on in your world; we would love to hear from
you.

---

Here are the latest pictures of "baby Ollie". In the bottom picture you can see his head, body, and a hand. Also you can see his ear if you look closely on the head. The middle picture is of his heart and the waves on the right of the picture are his heart beats. The top picture is very similar to the bottom except that you can see him sucking his thumb. It was really amazing to see the sonogram this time. He did it for like 15 minuets and he also video taped it (I am working on getting it digitized so that I can post it). The baby really wasn’t too interested in being disturbed, he was sleeping, but when he woke up, stretched his arms and legs, and moved around some. It is one of the most incredible things, seeing a baby in the womb; seeing little fingers, toes, ears, the way they wiggle around, the way they react to things going on outside the body; it is by far one of the most beautiful things I have seen.

Here is one of the volunteers praying for people in one of the cemeteries in Olsztyn on All Saints Day. Along with the 6 volunteers Sean, Lydia, their oldest daughter and I were there (Emily was at home watching the younger two girls), along with 4 Polish believers, for a total of 14 people praying. Our prayer over and over again this week was that the �blinders� would be taken off of the eyes of the Polish people and that they would see the light of Jesus.
 

We had our first day of prayer walking in Olsztyn with the volunteer team yesterday. It was really good. We started in front of one of the largest churches in Olsztyn which has built into the front of it this saying “Mother to your Son lead us” (in Polish of course). We say several things including the new Michelin tire plant, a school, a Pentecostal church, a prison, and hundreds of barking dogs. Later we headed to Sean and Lydia’s neighborhood and prayed for nearly the entire neighborhood. We prayed for some of the members of our English Club who live there. We prayed for workers in the harvest, that the word of God would spread through this area, and that God would draw this entire neighborhood to himself.

We also celebrated Sean and Lydia’s oldest daughter’s birthday. It was loads of fun! It had a mouse theme, so there was a mouse cake, chocolate mice, and hundreds of other mice!

Two links about All Saint's Day

All Saints Day

Halloween in Poland

Poland may extend Iraq mission

Poland may extend Iraq mission

All Saint's Day

All Saint's Day

This week we have a volunteer team coming from Central Baptist in Jonesboro, Arkansas. They will be spending the week prayer walking the city of Olsztyn. We have been trying to prayer walk all of Olsztyn and by the time this group leaves we will have finished this task.

One of the other big things that they will be doing is going to the cemetery on November 1st to pray for the people that are visiting graves. The above link is some pictures that Sean and I took last year. Please pray for this team as they prepare to come and minister here. Maybe as the week goes on we can post some more about this holiday and the importance of it.

Here is the latest picture or the baby. The doctor says that everything with both the baby and Emily looks good. It was really cool to get to see the baby moving around inside of Emily, and to see his legs and arms (he turned away from the ultrasound that�s why you can�t see the arms and legs in this picture). We continue to thank God for this blessing and continue to pray for health and safety for our baby. 

This is a good article about the state of Christianity in Czech and Poland. I ado not totally agree with everything that was said about Poland, but in general it's a pretty good summary of things here. This article makes it sound like the Church (capital C) in Poland is in a great decline, and though it may be declining some, I don't think it is as much as it makes it sound. Also it makes it sound like many churches are empty, but that is far from the truth. Most churches that I have seen are overflowing with people for nearly every Sunday morning service.

Brooks September Newsletter

Dearest Friends
and Family,

This has been an exciting month...

---

Big News!

As many of you already know or can tell from the picture,
we are going to have a baby! If you are from Crawfordsville, Laura Ann
probably told you about it, since she has told everyone she has seen in the past
month! :) We are very excited about our baby, but we think that our parents
may be even more excited. We have been calling the baby Oliver because the day
before we found out, Sean and Lydia’s youngest daughter was playing with clay and
made a baby. She gave it to Emily and said, “Aunt Emily, you are going to have
a baby and his name will be Oliver. So here is baby Ollie.” Please pray for
Emily and the baby. Pray that the baby would continue to develop strong and
healthy.

---

English Club

English Club has been going really well since the school
year started! We have had an average of 6 or 7 people and 2 new people have
started coming. We have started talking about different aspects of the
Christian life. Though only one of these people is a Christian, we have felt
like it was time to move the Bible studies in this direction. We have talked
about baptism, the concept of being salt and light, the fruits of the Spirit,
and prayer. These topics have brought up many great questions and conversations
and chances to share examples from our own lives. We are thankful for the
progress that our friends are making in their journeys to faith. Please
continue to pray for our friends, that the Lord would lift the veil from their
minds and hearts. Also pray for Isabel, she wants to know how to receive
forgiveness for sins. We had an opportunity to talk with her a little, and Sean
gave her “Steps to Peace with God” by Billy Graham, and will be talking more
about it with her this week. Pray for this conversation.

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Gosia's Baptism

We are so excited to be able to share this great news with
you! We know that many of you have been praying for Gosia for quite a while and
we are all praising the Lord for her salvation and obedience in baptism. She
was baptized on the public beach in Olsztyn; this is a very popular lake (see
the sail boats in the background). It was a perfect day for an outdoor baptism;
sunny, warm, and lots of people out. Several people for English Club came and
shared in this occasion, many of them witnessing their first Protestant
baptism. Because of this Gosia had the opportunity to witness to several of
these folks, and now many of them are asking really good questions and seeking
what Gosia has. There was even a priest there who was interested and set up a
time to meet with the pastor of the Baptist church in Olsztyn.

Please continue to pray for Gosia in her new found
faith. She has already experienced some hard times and opposition from
family. She has been a big help during English Club and will be helping
lead a discussion on prayer this week. Please pray for her as she is
preparing for this.

---

Kids' Party in
Ketrzyn

The fourth Saturday in September we went to Ketrzyn to help our friends there
put on another party for local children and the children of students from the
English School in the church. We did a puppet show that talked about the birth
of Jesus, sang some fun kids songs, ate yummy sandwiches, had a fair where there
were games for prizes, and Sean did a really cool gospel presentation with
balloons. Here is an excerpt from an email that we received from Ania and
Michal, our partners in Ketrzyn and the directors of the English School there.

We asked the parents from our school about their
kids and they were very pleased about the event. While we were talking with
one of parents we saw that one little girl was drawing a sinful heart on our
white board. She was illustrating the story told during that evangelization.
So it had an impact on the children’s life definitely.

One of the 11 years old girl, I teach English to, is
a big fan of “the little Witch” magazine. She reads it very often and that
worries parents a bit. It also worries me when I see that she is wearing
strange necklaces on herself, like some spooky dragon. I just hope and
pray that the message she saw and heard during the evangelization would work
in her heart. I pray that the Holy Spirit would start drawing her closer to
the Lord and away from the magic. She is the girl for whom Sean made a
balloon heat.

Please pray for the follow-up that Ania and Michal will
be continuing to do. Also pray that they will have continued to
opportunities to share with the parents and children who were at the Party.

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Coming Up!

This Saturday we are having a party with our English Club.
There will be food, games, and Sean and Kevin will be playing music and teaching
some new songs to our friends. Please pray that we will have opportunities
to share our lives and faith with the people that come, that our friends will
bring some of their friends, and that God will continue to work in us and
through us!

At the end of this month, beginning of next we will have
another volunteer team from Central Baptist Jonesboro. They will be here to
prayer walk the city and in the cemeteries, for the living, during the holiday
of All Saint’s Day. Please pray for safe travel and fruitful ministry while
here.

As we told you last month, we are looking towards our
future, even more so now with a baby on the way. We will soon be looking for
jobs, cars, and schools. Our #1 choice for seminary was New Orleans Baptist
Theological Seminary. Because of the Hurricane we are not sure how that will
work out for the fall 2006. I read on their website today that they plan on
having the entire campus rebuilt by August. Please pray that we will have
wisdom in the decisions that we will be making. Please also pray that we will
trust in the Lord and his provision of our needs.

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For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His
mercy toward those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the
west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.

--Psalm 103:11-12

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Last Saturday we went to Ketrzyn to help the church there with a kids block party. We brought 4 of our friends from the church here in Olsztyn and 3 little girls from Olsztyn. We had a great time doing a puppet show about the birth of Jesus, songs, eating sandwiches for lunch, and playing all kinds of games, for prizes! At the end Sean did a gospel presentation using balloons�very cool!
 

Brooks July/August Newsletter

This is what our work is all about! This past Saturday we got to see one of our friends from English Club baptized! We have been praying for her for almost a year now, and are now praising our God for saving her. We are also thankful that most of our English Club came to the baptism and many of them were asking her questions about her decision and her feelings. She was able to witness to them about the life changing power of God in her life. We are looking forward to seeing more of our friends come to know Christ and to be baptized.
 

English Club Starts Up!

English Club started again tonight after taking a break for the summer. Everyone except one person was back and we had a new woman join the group. It was so wonderful to see everyone. This group is so precious to us. Please continue to pray that God would reveal Himself to them as we study the Bible and that we would see all of them come to know Him before we leave in December!

Here's a picture from the camp in Swietajno. We had a great time working with the volunteer team from Jonesboro and with our Polish national partners. There were about 50 kids at the camp and we are excited to tell you that at least one kid was saved and many others were asking really great questions and have started seeking. The Sunday after the camp there were about 20 kids from the camp at church and they heard the Gospel again. There have been at least two girls from the camp coming to church, on their own, for that past couple of weeks.

Please pray for the ones that accepted Christ or are seeking and the ones that are coming to church. We are really starting to see God's hand at work in NE Poland!
To Him be the glory and honor forevermore!
 

Brooks June Newsletter

It has been quite a while since I have written anything…sorry. We have had quite a crazy month and I am glad that we are now in July. I am trying to get caught up on all the things I didn’t get done in June because of illness, traveling, and AGM. On top of all of this Emily and I are both sick. I have been sick with bronchitis since last Thursday of Friday and Emily has been sick with laryngitis for a couple days now. We feel like old people in the mornings when we get out our handfuls of pills, ointments, and steam therapies. Please pray that we will get better soon. Also pray for the Stevenson’s, three out of the five of them are sick too!

Updates

Thank you all so much for your prayers and encouraging emails. Here is what we know right now. Lydia and their middle daughter are still in Budapest. She has been diagnosed with epilepsy and they are currently trying to get her medicine regulated to stop her seizures. We have talked to her several times this week and she still sounds like her chirpy little self. She had a seizure while I was talking to her on the phone this week and when it was over, I was crying and she said, “Don’t cry Aunt Emily, I’m okay.” She’s a tough little girl. Please continue to pray for the Stevensons. We aren’t sure how much longer they are going to stay in Budapest. Pray that they would be able to sleep at night and be rested in the mornings. Please pray that her medicine would start to work and that she and Lydia could come home soon. Thank you for all your prayers!

Kevin’s Granddad
Many of you have been praying for my Granddad. He had lung cancer and it spread to his brain and other parts of his body. We got a phone call from my dad on Sunday telling us that Granddad had past away early that morning. It is hard to be away from our family in this time. We would like to thank you for your prayers. Please continue to pray for our family as we are going through this hard time.

Dear Prayer Partners,

We have an urgent request for prayer for our team. Our supervisors’, Sean and Lydia Stevenson, middle daughter needs your prayer. She has been having episodes where she spaces out. They have become more and more frequent each day. They went to Warsaw today to have her tested and the doctors think she may have epilepsy. Please pray for her. She is 7 years old. Pray that God would give Sean and Lydia peace and that they would be able to rest at night. Please pray that God would show the doctors what is wrong and what to do. Pray that her little body would be healed. Thank you so much for all your prayers. We will keep you updated as we learn more! Kevin and Emily

English Club

Our discussions at English Club have been really great lately. We have been talking about the church and its function and sharing "our stories" of who we are and how we became who we are. Tonight one of the women in our group said that she had met people before who said they were Christians but didn't do what they said they believed during the week. She said that when she met us, she saw that we did the things we said we believed in and that we were different. What an awesome responsibilty we have here. It's so important that what you believe in your heart and head shows through you actions. It touches people more than we know! Lord, please make us more like You!

We have been super busy, sorry we've been out of contact for a little while. God reminded us about a promise tonight with this beautiful display outside of our back window tonight. Thank you for praying for us. We are doing well working with our English group. They are now meeting here in our home and the conversation/Bible study is leaning a lot more in the Bible study direction. Please continue to pray that those in our group will trust in Christ! 

Here's The Birthday Girl

Our middle daughter had her 7th birthday this last Sunday! Here is a picture of her and all her birthday stuff. We had a great time pinning the tiara on the princess, fishing for prizes and scavenger hunting. Kevin and Emily Brooks were here as well as our Uncle Joe, a missionary from Warsaw. We all had a great time celebrating. Happy Birhtday!

Candles lit for the Pope

This is a picture of the steps of the government offices in Olsztyn. The plaza in front of the building is named after the former Pope. All over Poland, Poles came to light candles on streets and in plazas named after him. We estimated that there were several thousand in this spot alone. Please pray with us that many Poles will place their hope in Jesus Christ alone.

The Catholic churches in Poland are packed with mourners. Here is one of the local churches in our area. Pray that many people would come to know Jesus Christ as their Savoir through this time of turmoil.

Spring has officially arrived in Poland! The water has melted in some places and the storks have returned from their long winter in Africa. We are warming up and so is everyone around us. People are out of their houses and in the streets walking around and riding their bikes. People are crowded into shoe stores buying spring shoes, there were lines today like we have never seen before. We went out today in search of storks because we heard they were in the area, Lydia even thought that she saw a pair yesterday so today we packed up the van and went to the country. Success!!! We found two. This is the one we could get closest to, isn't it a beauty? We hope you are all enjoying spring where you are and thank you for praying for us.  

The Pope

As most of you know, the Pope is nearing death. Many of you may not know that he is Polish. Our country is about to enter a time of deep mourning. Poles see the Pope as a father figure. Please pray that in this time of loss that they would seek God as their Father! Please pray for the Polish people that God would comfort them and that He would use this time of pain to draw them into a PERSONAL relationship with Him!