Missions / Grace Missionaries / Wakula's

The Wakula Family

There are moments in our life that God, by His Grace, let us stop running our life and reflect, rest and restore. This is what we had experienced this year, a sabbatical year in the US. Let us tell you a bit more about ourselves. We are Ania and Leszek Wakula, with our three children Paulina (17), Filip (16) and Luke (15). We are living back in Poland in the second largest city of Poland – Lodz, which has around 1 million inhabitants, suburbs included. Located in the very center of Poland. Poland itself is a country of 38 million people, predominantly catholic. 97% of the population claims to be catholic. There are only 60,000 evangelicals in our country, which is 0.01 of a percent. Yes, Poland needs Christ like no other country in Europe and young Poles are open for good news.

We are serving in Poland with Baptist Denomination. Our main ministry for last 12 years is the Youth Ministry. I am the Youth Director for the Baptist Denomination serving and coordinating the Youth ministry among 75 Baptist Churches. Our first ministry was a pastoral ministry to a small church for 5 years where we have experience God’s power and discover our calling to full time Youth Ministry.

Our desire and prayer is to see Him present in our life and in all we do for Him. This is what we pray and desire to be where He is at work. And where is He at work in Poland? Many places, many areas. Let us share with you just few, those who are closest to our hearts and calling, our various engagements in youth ministry in Poland.

1. Intercity Ministry . This is a ministry to street kids and youth. By now we have four different activities running for those intercity kids together with our church youth. But.... there is more, we see God opens doors for more, to reach wider and to our surprise they want more too. So we pray to be able to run in the city a Youth Center, where we are going to reach wider the intercity kids and youth. A Center, where we provide simply a secure place, place where they can feel being loved and where their hope for future is restored. We would love to see at such site a Christian Internet Cafe, an English Club and Youth Club. So we hope to have every day/night an ongoing program. Our home town is a city of 1 million people, tremendous challenges and needs. We see it, we are aware of it and we want to make a difference.

• Fifth Element Club - The Youth Club outreach project officially kicked off in November 2004, called the "Fifth Element Club".  We have a great team of leaders and mentors reaching out to the youth of Poland.  We expect over 120 kids to come to our summer camp this year!
  

1. Training, Discipling and Mentoring . For many years we have been training and discipling Youth Leaders across whole country of Poland. Once we have in-place an outreach ministry, we would love to bring some teachable youth leaders and/or seminary graduates to mentor/disciple them in to ministry by working with us. We want to disciple them in to such ministry, send them and support them by building around them strong Ministry Teams. This is where our heart bit is and what we believe so strong about.
   
2. Country Wide Ministry Challenges . Being in charge of the Baptist Youth Ministry, we feel strong the need to reach the youth in Poland and to mobilize the church young people for outreach. The best way and very effective is the ministry of summer outreach camps. This is a great opportunity for youth groups to come along side with their unsaved friend and witness to them for a week or more at the camp setting about their life with Christ. Every year we have hundreds of young people coming to such camps and hundreds trusting their life to Christ. There is no higher or deeper joy to see unsaved person, confessing their sins and trusting their life to Christ. Such camps are great place of getting youth groups engage in reach out and then a fallow up process with their new friends. We pray our Lord will bring more and more lost young people to these camps, so they may hear about the hope and salvation in Him. We pray that there will be more youth groups having this mission/outreach minds and desire to see their friends being saved.
   
3. Mission Opportunities . There are many mission opportunities both short and long term. We pray and we would like to see God is sending to Poland people, missionaries for half year, whole year or even longer to help and assist us in the Intercity Ministry and Church Planting project. We need people helping us to work at the Christian Internet Café, teaching English at the English Club or just spending time with kids and youth in the Youth Club. We would love to see what else God has for us and what a new challenges and opportunities HE may bring along side with some missionaries to our country and city of Lodz.

Short term. There is a need for summer teams to come and spend like 2 weeks at camps or in churches helping with outreach projects. Most of them are English camps, where our American friends, help with English classes, sport activities and where they have chance in simple way to share their walk with Christ with others. It’s simple, it’s possible.

We would like you to pray for all this we have shared with you. Since some of this are new things in our life and challenges expecting us upon our arrival to Poland. We encourage you to pray for the new project of the Youth Center. We want to see godly people, with deep desire and love for the lost to be part of this ministry. We don’t want to advertise, we want to see God brings His people for His work. As we wrote at the beginning, we would love to be where He is at work. This is our prayer and desire of our hearts. We invite you to face this great challenge and opportunities of changing lives and reality of many young people in Poland.

Serving Him with You,

Ania and Leszek Wakula - Poland