DAY 1: TRAINS AND PLANES

I said goodbye to Jordan, and the next thing I knew, I was on a Europe-bound plane. Yes, it felt incredibly strange to be going alone. No, I didn't know a single person on my team before I left. Yes, I was just a tad freaked out, but mostly excited. And I felt so encouraged by the number of people supporting, praying, and rooting for me at home.

An interesting new piece of information gave me an extra push out the door. I spoke with my grandmother the night before I left, and she told me that her second husband, my step-grandfather Albert, was the grandson of a national hero in Poland: Wojciech Korfanty, a freedom fighter for Silesia who fought for independence and served as deputy prime minister in the early 1900s. He was exiled and then arrested by Nazis, and he died shortly after his release, two weeks before the start of World War II. I thought I had no real connection to Poland before that phone call. And then I realized that God really was making a clear way for me to connect with people in Poland. More on that later.