Day 11 - The Baltic Sea

Our first day of full sun in a long while came on Friday. We praised the Lord for it and spent a glorious day at the Baltic Sea after a 20-minute train ride, where we had the pleasure of dipping our toes in the sea, walking along the pier, playing a mad game of frisbee that included diving into the deep sand, and just breathing in the salty air. Some of us felt impulsed to jump into the sea, clothes and all, while the others, including me, were content with just walking in the water till it washed over our feet. Most of the guys were not satisfied with just that and, wanting every guy to be just as wet as the other, they pulled Joe in, making his white pants sopping and covered in sand.

About half of the group stayed behind in Gdansk Old Town with Pawel, to hand out invitations and relax. The other half decided this was not enough and instead enjoyed a pleasurable excursion to the beach, led by Pastor Bubu. After this seaside adventure, those of us who swam changed their clothes and we trekked back to the train station to return to the town square for another Subway lunch. We met up with the others, who were a step ahead of us and had already eaten their lunch.

Lunch passed quickly and we met at the appointed time to do a round or two of singing. The in-between times were spent wandering around town and doing a little shopping. Our first concert of two was at 4pm in the outdoor theatre in town. We had a pretty good turnout, despite the rain that was threatening to break loose from the sky. Fortunately, we only witnessed a small attack from the army of raindrops, which did not at all affect our singing. We had a large group of people who stopped to listen, and several people sat in the seats set out for them. We sang quite well and Dr. Horvath delivered a strong sermon. We were all quite satisfied with our performance.

We rushed over to the catering place to eat dinner, and then prepared ourselves for the next concert at 9pm. The 2nd concert of the day, held at La Fontaine again, did not have as good of a turnout as the earlier one did. This is partly due to the fact that it was raining... no, more like pouring. This forced us to huddle under a canopy on the "stage" where we sang, which actually made us sound better because it changed the acoustics. We did have some of the attendants stay and watch though, which made it nice.

After our tired voices sang out in our 2nd last official concert of the trip, the younger crowd went back to the hostel, while those above 18 went back into town to celebrate Elyse's birthday and eat pizza. They wanted to make the best of Nathaniel, Elyse, and Landon's last night in Gdansk, as they were going to leave us the next morning to tour Prague and Vienna for a week.

The party animals got back late and many of them stayed up all hours of the night and into the early morning, but the younger ones were wise and decided to go to sleep at 12am so that they would be fully prepared for the weekend.

Please continue to thank the Lord for our progress so far in ministering to the Polish! We hope this will lead into many new members being added to the body of the church.