Heading south

We have vacation this week!
After the open air meeting last Friday Ruth and myself started to go south in a rental car with free miles...

The first night we slept in Kaunas in Lithuania. The next day we drove 740 km all through Poland and slept in Katowice. Then I suddenly realised that I have been there before. That was about 35 years earlier. Spånga/Järfälla Brass Band was doing a tour in Poland and they needed one cornet player and one trombone player from the Salvation Army. I was the cornet player.

This was during the Iron Curtain ages and every step we took was carefully supervised by the police or secret agents. We visited small pentecostal congregations, gathering in small apartments and it was not always easy to fit in a Brass Band in an average size living room.

During the trip we slept in private homes. Me, together with three other bandsmen were invited to sleep in the home of a family consisting of father, mother and daughter. During supper we tried to speak to each other. They could speak Polish and Russian and we could speak Swedish, English, German and French. We could not make ourselves understood to each other. The only way we could communicate was through Bible verses. We made a joke and gave them the verse about having angels as guests in their home. Looking at us they understood that it was a joke and laughed.

After the conversation of few words it was time to go to bed. The mother showed us to a room with a small double bed. We guessed two of us should sleep in that bed, but when she smiling backwards left the room and closed the door we suddenly understood that the small bed was where we were supposed to sleep all four of us. I do not remember more of that night. We probably fell asleep very fast exhausted of all impression from the day.

That band trip happened some time 1976-1978. It was shortly after we had experienced the charismatic renewal and got all our lives totally changed. We eagerly testified to everybody that wanted to listen and often also to those who did not want to listen. During the band trip we were supposed to preach in English so I brought my big English Bible together with my big Swedish Bible and my pocket Bible. At the customs I was taken into a room to answer questions about all my Bibles. I had to wait while they sent for a translator and then came all the questions about the big books I brought. In the end of the books they found maps of Israel which made them still more suspicious. I guess that the purpose of all this questions was to help me understand that it was not acceptable to speak loudly about the Bible in this country.

After half an hour they started to understand that I really enjoyed the situation. It gave me good opportunities to answer their questions telling them about Jesus, and they realised that I loved doing that. When they got that clear they did not want to speak to me any more. They just let me enter the country with all my books.

That was just a flash back that hit I me when we now, 35 years later, came back to Katowice. That was about Poland and Katowice. The next day we went on south in Europe. I will tell you more about that another day./PB