It has been a while since I have written, this year has seemed to fly by. I was in the states in January and February. March began with getting back in the swing of things here in Ukraine. This is when some doors would begin to open that I wouldn’t have imagined. A week long English club was held in Odesa, with CRU and their ministry partners from Missouri. This event opened many doors for me. It gave me the ability to meet those who either speak English or want to learn. Now this was not my plan, I want to learn the language…..which that in itself is a toss up. I began learning Russian, you have to look back at the history of Ukraine. This year I changed to Ukrainian. However, many of the older people only know Russian, so it is a toss up at this point when I address someone or try to speak with them. Many of the churches have switched to speaking Ukrainian along with the young people who are learning it in school.
Meeting the young people, taking an interest in them, has brought about many new relationships. I began hosting a food and game night in my apartment, I have learned, cook and they will come😉. As these meetings were just getting started my landlady informed me she may come back to Odesa to her apartment, the one I was living in. This would begin a search for a new apartment that would take several weeks. The criteria was not one of being picky but rather what was needed. I always knew God had the right place for me and He sure did. He blessed me beyond what I could have imagined.
Just as I moved in, it was time to go to a trauma training about 8 or so hours away. This would take me on my 1st bus ride, which was over night. My friend, Amanda, she has been here for years and knows the languages and how to maneuver thru the country. Due to car sickness Amanda has to take something, which essentially knocks her out, whereas I think I got maybe 3 hours sleep. We arrived in Kyiv around 5 a.m. and need to take a cab to the next bus station, we have plenty of time as our bus leaves at 8:10 a.m. She negotiates, yes negotiates a price with the cab driver to take us to the next place, waves me over and off we go, until…..there is a traffic jam, the next thing I know, a lively conversation is going on between Amanda and the cab driver and now we are getting out. He decided he was not taking us any further. We grab our suitcases and up the hill we go. We get to the subway and take it to our stop. Now, for whatever reason, Amanda really wanted McDonalds……okay lets go. We get there and a sign has been posted they do no open until 8 a.m., it is 630. She looks at the map and says there is another one that it is close. I took that phrase “it is close” as literal. Off we go we forge ahead until we come to the point where we need to make a right and as we do she says: “Look, there it is.” When I finally see where it is, my voice raises: Down there??? My reaction was a little louder than I preferred so I gathered my wits about me and said, I am not walking back, I am taking a cab.
Finally, we are at McDonalds, we order, we eat and now we need to go. I hand her my phone to order a cab through an app. As we arrive at the address, it is the middle of no where…..because there is a difference in street, avenue and boulevard! The cab driver has to let us out as he has another fare to go to. We have 10 minutes to get to the bus stop. I am trying to order another cab, she is calling the bus company. We miss the bus 🤦♂️however, they move our tickets to the next bus, now we have over an hour. The next cab shows up and takes us to a large parking lot and asks, which area? See there are 3 areas where the busses leave from, and it is not marked on our tickets. Amanda being the sweetheart she is, we go to a coffee shop and she walks to them, they are all fairly close and she finds where we will depart from.
Time to leave on the next bus. We get on and right there on the front row are two reserved spots for us. It was less than a 2 hour bus ride to the next stop. Now we had been told, we could walk to the campground, resort, whatever you want to call it. We pulled off at a gas station that reminded me of Wally’s Filling Station in Mayberry on the Andy Griffith show. We pull around back where we all disembark onto a dirt parking lot. Amanda walks over to a man with what I call a little Russian car, she is waving me over while he removes the bungee chords from the trunk so we can put our luggage in it. He drives us to the camp on a wide, dusty road. The lesson I learned from that experience. I will NEVER take a bus by myself until I can speak the language fluently.
I would be home for a week, still unpacking, cleaning the other apartment and hosting my first guest from the states. We would go with ministry friends, the Sukos to a camp in Western Ukraine, about 40 minutes from Poland. This camp was for university age students, believers and non-believers. What a week it was! Probably 90 to 95% of them spoke English or at least understood it. Camp will be another post in the future. Once back home to Odesa, my guest would leave. I would start the process again of unpacking, sorting, catching up on paperwork, studies and so forth. This week I hosted supper for a group of 3 sets of missionaries, 2 sets are full time and one who was leaving this week from their short terms missions trip. I held my first ladies Bible study in my new apartment just last night and tonight I will have 2 ministry friends who will stay until Monday as they are doing some work here in Ukraine.
So, why the cornbread? If you ask me in the states, are you a good cook? I would have said, yes. Here I had to learn to do without products that was easily assessable there, here I have to adapt from ounces, lbs., teaspoons, tablespoons to grams, milliliters and so forth. My oven does not say Fahrenheit, it reads Celsius.
Last week I told a friend, I don’t want to get to the end of my life and say, I never did…such and such. I’m not necessarily saying a bucket list of items, because truly I have been blessed to see and do so much in my lifetime. The things I want are more simple such as, learning how to make cornbread in Ukraine. Last night, I cooked a meal of pinto beans that a friend brought from the states. Pinto beans with ham, fried potatoes with onions and cornbread. The ladies asked: Is this a traditional meal in the US,? Yes…. but probably only in the South.
God has made each one of us unique, with different skills and talents, different strengths and weaknesses. I enjoy something that my mom enjoys, cooking and bringing people together. It’s becoming a lost art, food and fellowship. Although, I will say here in Ukraine and I’ve been told in Europe also, people know how to sit and have coffee and cookies, or a meal and then converse…..not in a hurry. I don’t think at the end of life it is going to matter the hours of over time you worked, the bigger and better house, car, title or whatever you obtained or attained. The most important question we will ever answer in our life, What did you do with Christ? Reject Him? Accept Him? If you accepted Jesus, what are you investing in? Temporary or Eternal?