Church In Krakow
There
was a small expat church in Krakow pastored by a Pole who spoke fluent English, and the sermon was good.
While chatting after the service, he complained about the high turnover among
his congregants due to Krakow having so many tourists.
So I encouraged him that that just means the Gospel he shares is being carried to more places. He remained
unhappy and replied,
"Yeah
but they need to be here." Did he mean in Krakow?
"No," he replied, "They need
to come to my church." I knew what he meant, and he was voicing what many pastors
think but seldom say: they need to be in his church so that money can be
collected from them.
Since Krakow has clean air, people who are open to the Gospel, an English expat church that we can attend, wasn't too expensive, and we can stay for 90 days on each visa run, I asked Kristin what she thought of staying for a while. She said okay, so I looked through For Rent advertisements, found an apartment on the south side of Krakow, and arranged to meet Kristin at a bus stop near it to go and visit it together.
As soon as she got off the bus, Kristin said the area is full of demons and had a stench of death. She still went with me to visit the apartment but we quickly left as she said that she felt oppressed and wanted to leave the area. I explained to her that there had been a death camp called Auschwitz during World War II but that it was 50 miles from Krakow. She replied that lots of people died in that area of Krakow as well. When we returned to our airbnb, I looked online and learned that there indeed had been a Nazi concentration camp, albeit smaller than Auschwitz, in the area of Krakow we had visited.
Kristin seemed to enjoy teaching the Chinese kids online and said that if I wasn't going to marry her, she didn't want to live under the same roof as me. I said that would be fine in Krakow, which was a pretty safe city, and told her to save up about three months of her paychecks from online teaching to build a financial cushion and then move out, as I will continue to cover all of her expenses until then.