After nine and a half weeks in Ukraine, I will be getting on a plane Thursday and returning home. It seems crazy that I got on another plane May 26th, not having any clue what I was going to do here. I had a hostel reservation for three days and after that..........nothing. All of my plans had either fallen through or people hadn't responded, etc., etc. I was so scared, but still convinced that God wanted me to be here.
And if I wasn't before, I'm now fully convinced of God's goodness and faithfulness. Three days after I got here, I bought a phone and called my friend, Zhenya and he said, "Come visit me for a week in Odessa." So I got on a train and went. While in Odessa, we called my friend, Lilya, and she said, "I'm on vacation next week. Come to me." So I got on a train and went. While in Xmelnitski, I received a text from my sister-in-law, which said, "Are you coming to us next?" So I got on a train and went. I also received a text saying that the directors of the English camp had changed their minds and that I could be part of the team, after all. While in Dnyeprorudnoe, we called a friend's family and they said, "Come to us next." So I got on a train and went. Than I headed back across the country to Lvov, where I spent 8 days exploring and preparing for the English camp. Then, it was time for camp and I returned to Odessa. And now, now it is time to go home...............and I'm not ready. My emotions and heart are here, more than ever. God has been so good to me and taught me so many things this summer. And I trust that He'll continue to take care of me, even as I mourn leaving here.
Comments (2)
That's cool that you aren't ready to leave...I don't know if I've often had that experience after an extended time away. I guess I'm more of a homebody.
Were you impacted by any of the flooding there? Hopefully we'll get to see you sometime in NC in the next couple months and hear more about your trip!
@theIndispensableMattWhaley - No, but almost, in a rather amusing way. Several weeks back, before I went to Lvov, the people I was staying with were really upset that I was going to Lvov by myself. They kept telling me that there had been a tornado and hurricane there. Since those two are fairly different, I was rather confused. I had my sister in law search the internet and it turns out that there was a storm there, but neither a hurricane or a tornado, just a bad storm. Since they don't really have either of those here, they use the terms very loosely to describe a bad storm. It made me laugh.
The recent flooding actually happened in the hometown of one of our camp interpretors and he was telling us that the water reached 10 meters high in some places in the river and that's why the flooding was so bad. We didn't really hear anything about it, though, b/c we were at camp and had no access to news.