Tara in Poland

My name is Tara. My partner, Becky, and I were summer missionaries in Czestochowa, Poland, a place that is gripped by the oppression of religion. It is a place where people follow a hopeless journey of trying to work their way to heaven. As the saying says, “To be Polish is to be Catholic.”

The city we lived in is the home of a huge monastery called the Jasna Gora. People from all over Poland and surrounding countries take pilgrimages here to pray to the icon called the Black Madonna. Although this is such a “religious city” you would never know it from the people’s lives. Many of them are very depressed and hopeless. The alcoholism rate is high, and many of the young people have rejected any kind of religion. Most of them live completely immoral lives, but we found many of them are hungry for something. And we were there to bring them the One who can satisfy their hunger!

One of those young people was Mariousz. I met this 17-year-old guy for the first time at a coffeehouse we hosted to reach out to the high school and college students in the city. He had come with a friend. As I sat down and began talking to Mariousz I realized how truly needy he was. For two years Mariousz had been on drugs and they had destroyed his life in almost every area.

A month ago to that date he had quit doing drugs. When he did he lost most of his friends. I started talking with him about Jesus. I had a Bible, and I showed him some verses. Mariousz told me that it was interesting, but he didn’t think he needed the Bible or God.

The next time I saw Mariousz he told me that he had really been thinking our conversation about God. No one had ever talked to him about that before, he said. From that point on Mariousz began hanging out with our mission team a lot. One girl on my team, Jenny, had a testimony much like Mariousz's before she came to know Christ personally, so Mariousz talked to her.

During the time Mariousz hung out with our team he even translated for our children’s Bible School one week. He surprised us that week by telling me that he wanted to start reading the Bible now. I tried not to show my shock! We gave him a Bible and told him to start in the Book of John.

The next time I saw him at a coffeehouse he said, “I read John—the whole thing; it’s not very long. What do I read next?” Mariousz started reading in Romans.

On July 24 my phone rang. I answered it, and Mariousz was on the other end. He said, “Tara, I have to tell you something. Today is the day that I have decided that I want to be a Christian.”

I asked him what happened to lead to his decision. Mariousz told me that he had been at his girlfriend’s house, telling her all about he had been learning in the Bible. His girlfriend’s mom began accusing him of trying to get her daughter to join a sect. (Anything that is not Catholic in Poland is considered a cult to many people.) And he looked at her mom and said, “No, it is not a sect; I believe in God!” As soon as he said those words Mariousz said he felt something from his head to his feet, and he knew that he finally believed. He said he could not describe the way he felt, but it was a joy like he had never experienced before.

Before I left Poland he stood up and gave his testimony at the coffeehouse. Then a few weeks after I had left Poland I got an e-mail from him that said these words in his elementary English. “I still very happy because God is still in my heart, and I enjoy Him every day. When I feel weak now I taking my power from God.”

Praise be to God who answers prayers, and changes lives for His glory!

—Tara

[ back to Testimonies ]