269 Chechen refugees are living in Katowice - they are spit on, laughed at, or just simply ignored. Why? Because they're different and the surrounding neighborhood is angry that they're sucking up Polish taxes, their taxes. They complain that the children only play "war" and are uncultured that they shouldn't be here. Too bad. They are.Greg was moved by an article he read in the newspaper about the Chechen's. They're living in a district of Katowice where we used to work. So Greg jumped on the chance to try and help. We both know how it is to live in another culture, not knowing the language, and feeling out of place. So he made a phone call to the journalist and explained his desire to help, who we are, and what we do here in Poland. She was excited about our interest but apprehensive that we might try to "evangelize". He said we only want to help the children have fun: play games, have clowns, make balloons, bracelets... just be with them and make them smile. So after getting the go-ahead from the government in Warsaw we met with the youth from our club and prepared everything.
Well, we thought we were prepared. Nothing could prepare us for the chaos of 100 curious excited kids who want to be the first to receive whatever we were giving out. We had them on top of us trying to get balloon animals and no matter what we did to try to explain you must stand in a line, it didn't work. At one point a guy from our club just got up and walked off. He couldn't handle it! I don't blame him- it was pure chaos! Later, I used the illustration of Jesus in the crowded house in Capernaum teaching and a lame man was brought there by his friends. It was so crowded that they had to destroy the roof in order to get him to Jesus. Now that's chaos! And Jesus didn't seem to get frustrated, he was impressed by their faith.
