Malone Service Learning - Poland

After a frantic few days of last minute changes, all team members have now returned.  Although none of us are showing signs of illness, we are taking government recommendations to limit social contact seriously. Malone University had someone drive a Malone van to the Detroit airport for our use, and he then rented a car to return without having any direct contact with us.  (Thank you, Dr. Miller and Russ Thorn!)  Malone team members returned to campus by late Saturday evening.  Students were allowed to gather belongings and head home if they had transportation.  Two students who plan to leave in a day or two were provided with on campus housing with self-isolation procedures in place.  One student who may be on campus for a longer period of time was provided a self-contained apartment on campus.  Any necessary supplies and food will be delivered to these students and we will work with them on next steps. Milligan students were met by a parent at th...

The Milligan team arrived in Munich and awaiting their next flight in another four hours.   The Malone team is at their departure gate in Frankfort and is scheduled to depart for Detroit in just over two hours.  Everyone is sleepy but doing well. Update: the Malone team has boarded and is preparing for takeoff to Detroit.

Both Milligan and Malone are at their gates in Kraków after getting up at 2 am. Flights will leave in just a little while, and Milligan will land in Munich while Malone will land in Frankfurt before their connecting flights to the US. Prayers for safe travels are appreciated.

Update from Dr. Entwistle and Dr. Mudrack.   First, here is an announcement from Malone’s Provost: We have good news to share! Our travel agent, Bethany, has been successful in re-booking the entire team for arrival in the US tomorrow March 13. The only challenge at this point is that the Malone team will arrive in Detroit. We will work out alternate transportation to get them back to Canton. I am not concerned.    I have been praying Psalm 3:3 all day. Please join me in prayer tonight for the safe return of the team! Greg Gregory J. Miller, PhD Provost Malone University Canton, OH USA We are incredibly thankful for the work of Bethany, our travel agent, who has worked this problem since the early hours of the morning in Iowa when Dr. Mudrack called her at 4 a.m. her time.   We will be looking for a tangible way to express our gratitude! Our day began with a frantic rush to the airport to try to rebook our flights, a scrambl...

Dear friends and family., Due to the travel ban just announced by President Trump, we are attempting to return earlier than we had planned if possible.  Communication regarding our plans will be coordinated through Malone University’s provost, and we will also post updates here.  Dr. David Entwistle, Malone University Dr. Kristen Mudrack, Milligan College

Today, our plans changed a lot. But, turns out God’s plan is always better than the plans we make. We acted like true American tourists today. We started the day by traveling to Wieliczka’s salt mine. Our tour started with walking down 55 flights of stairs…. For those of us afraid of heights, looking over the rail was not a wise decision. However, the trip through the mine made it worth it. Our tour was three hours long and we walked roughly 5 miles underground. Shockingly enough, we covered less than 1% of the total underground mine. (WOWWW!) Fun fact about the mine: if you licked the walls of the tunnels (which to those of you who are thinking ‘why would you do that and share germs?’ salt kills microbes!! Therefore, it was a completely healthy choice to do so.) they tasted like pure salt!!! God’s creations are truly amazing. The next part of our journey today took us to Auschwitz Concentration camp. To say this experience was indescribable is an understatement. The moment each ...

Hey everyone! Its Graham. I am doing the blog for today and I am super excited to share what I experienced today. The first thing we did that day was eat breakfast at the church, which was always delicious. After that we went around the Jewish Sector in Bedzin, Poland. Asha, one of our schoolteachers we kept in contact with, was our tour guide in this sector. The Jewish sector was absolutely beautiful and rich with history. There is a sense of unsettledness and relentlessness walking through the sector, however. There was a sense of surreal sadness that this beautiful area full of history has been run down into many abandoned buildings and degradation of acid rain. This was once a wonderful, vivacious piece of land, and there was a sense of that. There was also a sense of fear and terror. Due to the Holocaust causing so many deaths in the Polish community, it was hard not to get over the feeling of terror and sadness. After we walked through the main part of the sector, we f...

Today we had a full day of serving the Lord in a couple different ways. The day started with our typical breakfast of sandwiches, sausage, cucumbers, and tomatoes. After breakfast we began work on the church where different people completed   jobs of plastering walls, painting railing, general cleaning of the church, and staining wood. We were all starving by the time that lunch came around and some of the nice ladies from the church made us a delicious meal. It was one of my favorite meals yet.   We had potatoes, salad, and breaded chicken. We hung around after lunch with Pastor Daniel’s family and went back to the hotel to freshen up. Afterwards we went into the city portion of Sosnowiec to go to a coffee shop. Unfortunately, we were unable to go   serve at the school like we had previously planned due to concerns over COVID-19 but Kasia, a teacher from the school, invited us for coffee. A group of students met us and we had the best time talking about differences in Po...

This is just a quick entry given that it is already late as we are getting back to our hostel.  We began the day with our normal routine of a brief devotional liturgy, and then headed to the church for a typical Polish breakfast of cold cuts, cheese, bread, sausages, yogurts, coffee, tea, and juice.  After cleaning up after breakfast, we enjoyed a two-hour long service, with lots of singing.  Some of us tried singing in Polish, and some of us sang familiar songs in English.  Our team sang a couple of songs in English, and many of the Polish people joined us.  Dr. Entwistle preached a sermon on running the spiritual race, setting aside the things that can trip us up or slow us down, and following Christ based on a variety of passages.  After the service, we all split up in pairs to go to the homes of Polish people who fed us wonderful Polish meals.  In the evening we returned to the church for more food and to debrief from the day.  Tomorrow we pla...

Hello from Sosnowiec! My name is Daniel Adams and I am responsible for talking about our team's first full day in Sosnowiec in the Poland Trip Blog!  Just to recap the day for everyone, we left our hostel around 9 a.m. to go to the church to do some work. But before we actually worked there, we had an amazing breakfast provided by Pastor Daniel. Traditionally, Polish breakfast includes cold cuts, cheese, and the most amazing sausage and the best bread ever!! Then we started working on several jobs including sanding/staining wood planks, painting primer on the inside brick walls in the church fellowship room, installing a vent above the stove for the kitchen, and working on the plaster of the hallway and stairs to prepare it for painting next week. We worked for about 3-4 hours, then we had our main course dinner around 3pm which included baked chicken, cooked potatoes and a homemade coleslaw of cabbage and cream.  Around 4 p.m. we prepared for the yo...

After our arrival in Sosnoweic, we dropped off our bags at the hotel and went over to the church, where Daniel's wife, Gosia, cooked us a delicious meal. Our students worshipped together in music as we prepared for tomorrow's worship with the youth at the church. We ended the night with conversation and games with Daniel's family, whom we love already. Hannah A made good friends with Jeremiah, Daniel and Gosia's youngest son, over their shared love of superheroes, even though they don't speak the same language. We are grateful to be on this service learning team, and grateful to sleep tonight in a bed rather than (attempting sleep) on a plane.

We safely met up with our teams in Munich and boarded our last flight to Kraków. Other than some exhaustion from lack of sleep, we are all in good spirits and excited to be here! Konrad, our bus driver, is a master packer of luggage and is driving us to Sosnoweic. We are grateful for safe travels and all of our passports being with us still!

Both teams are at their gates!  We will meet up in Munich tomorrow morning!

Malone students are at Akron Canton Airport.  Next stop... CHICAGO!!!