WiFi-less

This is just a quick note to let you all know that I'm doing great. There's no WiFi here, so I have pictures downloaded to my laptop, but can't upload them from there to my blog or facebook yet. Though my stay here in Krasnoarmeysk is really short(I arrived Tues. morning at 5:20am and depart today, Thurs. at 9:40pm), it has been a good stay with my friends and colleagues, Vika and Marina. I also had a really good talk with one of the interns that is serving here, Misha, who is from their small church plant. I'm headed to will and Phyllis tonight, and will be there through Monday. Most likely, I won't be able to post pictures until I return to Odessa on Tues., but I'll try to get caught up then before I head on to Bucharest Wed.

 I'd appreciate prayers for tonight's travel, because it's not my favorite. I'll leave at 9:40 pm and take the train to the capitol city of Will and Phyllis' region, Zaporizhye, arriving at 1:10am. I'll then sit in the train station until around 7am, and then take a cab over to where buses leave for their city. I'll make it to them around 8:30am tomorrow morning. It's the sitting in the train station in the middle of the night part that is no fun, particularly when your body is tired, but you need to be alert enough to watch all of your belongings. Regardless, it's totally worth it to get to spend three days with them. Ready or not, here comes Tyotya!

And.....we're off!

Lots of pictures today:

Marta is one of our former interns from Poland. She's from the last graduating class before I left Odessa, and I Skyped with her and her internship partner often while they were in India and also did their debriefings upon their return to Poland. She was in Odessa for Sergei's wedding and it was great to get to catch up a bit with her.

It was also really great to be back at my Odessa church, Living Hope. Worshipping in Russian is something that I've sorely missed, so today was a real blessing. It was great to see so many new faces and their larger space that they recently moved into.

It was also great to see an anti-abortion billboard in the Center, with a help number to call. The abortion statistics here are extremely high.

With Andrei and Laura. Andrei is one of the few orphan grads that Laura works with that I know well. He's the one that I was so upset about when I left here at the end of 2011, b/c the family adopting him and some other children changed their minds. It's wonderful to see him doing well in the Naval Academy, as well as growing in his relationship with the Lord.

I got to have birthday lunch with some of the other orphan grads today with Laura and one of her co-workers. Vlad turned 20 today and always says he wants a car, so Laura made him a Lada Cake. She thinks I'm joking, but I really love it.

Then it was off for coffee with my friend, Valya, whom I met almost 9 yrs. ago at a camp in Russia. I don't get to see her often, so it was great to spend the afternoon catching up with her. It was also great to know that I can still communicate decently in Russian.

I've never done this classic tourist picture in the center of Odessa, and Valya gamely jumped in with me. He's some sort of famous poet or actor, or something like that. =-D

**Tomorrow I head east 17 hours to Krasnoarmeysk and will be there through Thursday evening with two of our staff, Vika and Marina.

Let's Celebrate!

Today was the original reason for my adding on two weeks to this trip: the wedding of my friend and former teammate, Sergei, to one of our training center graduates, Yulya. I was extremely happy to have the opportunity to be here for their special day. Sergei has a special place in my heart because of his gentle nature and huge smile; many of us call him "Smiley Sergei."

It was a lovely, God honoring ceremony, officiated by the two leaders of my former team

With Sergei(who for some reason isn't smiling- too many pictures?) and Yulya

Godwin and I tried another picture, but we seem to have lost his smile, as well

Some of the girls from my church in Odessa

Getting ready for the dinner, skit, well-wishes, poetry portion of the day. Ukrainians and Russians go all out to celebrate weddings; planning skits, "kidnapping the bride", playing games, reciting poetry, giving long speeches and congratulations. It can last hours and hours. We only stayed four and hadn't even gotten to the cake and games yet. =-)

Eating & Drinking for Jesus

The Pres. of my agency talks about "Eating for Jesus." He's referring to the fact that when you're meeting with staff, sometimes you have meeting after meeting after meeting, and you end up eating and drinking at each location. Today I really got to experience a bit of that. =-D I had a nice relaxing morning and then went from one meeting to the other from noon until returning to the apartment at 9:30. I learned that sitting for that long without much movement is kind of painful. What a joy it was, though, to spend my day again with our younger staff getting the chance to hear their stories, their hearts, and what God is doing in their lives.

Anya is a dear Ukrainian sister whom I just love. She's gone from Odessa to Egypt to India and is now praying to go to Thailand.

Caleb is a fellow American who's been here for about 2 1/2 years working with the Downtown team.

Katya and Marina are girls from my Odessa church who went through the Odessa Training Center, did their internships in Uganda and are now part of a church plant with another IM colleague. They're also special to me, b/c they were in my English class at the very first camp I did before moving to Odessa. What a joy to see their growth and their heart's desire to serve.

So, that's two cups of coffee with Anya, one cup of tea with Caleb, water with the girls, and then I took Laura out for dinner, followed by ice-cream. One thing that a lot of missionaries don't do very often is go to a nice restaurant. Laura and I used to talk about it when we lived together, but never went anywhere other than McD's with the orphan boys. So this time around we scheduled that time to go someplace nice together. It was a long, but great day full of wonderful people.

Catching Up

Today was a great day; full of fellowship, exciting visits by the Militsia(Police), time on the bus, English Club, dinner with a friend, and then finishing the night off with Survivor with Laura(an old roommate tradition).

I had a great time visiting with friends and colleagues Lidia and Zhenya and getting to meet their most recent addition, Matvei(Matthew). We spent three hours catching up and it really was wonderful to hear how they're doing.

And in an attempt to document each person I meet with on this trip, I run across the old problem that my friend, Godwin, and I have when taking pictures. If we're in a dark place, we have to turn on the flash b/c he's so dark. But I'm so white that it flashes off my brilliant whiteness and I look like a ghost. Below is the best of three attempts, and that is with major editing. Hilarious. Godwin is a medical student from Nigeria that I met at my church here.

A study in contrasts. And for any curious minds: we were only sitting like this for the picture. =-D

 

-I'll try to remember to tell you about the Militsia visit tomorrow. It's after midnight and I need to go to bed. Goodnight, all!

Odessa Mamochka

Just a quick update to tell and show everyone that I made it here safely. Thanks to all who were praying- I had zero problems with the flights and slept beautifully on the long flight and the one from Vienna to Odessa, thanks to my friend, NyQuil. My former roommate and IM colleague, Laura, met me at the airport and I'll be staying with her while here. We went to the market(something I've really missed) and a couple of stores, had a birthday dinner for one of the orphan grads, and then took an after dinner walk in the center of Odessa, where she's living now. So here are just a few pictures of a couple of my favorite places in the Center of town:

With Laura at the beginning of Derebasovskaya St., the pedestrian street in the Center

The beautiful Odessa Opera House

The Voronsovsky Colonnades

Up, Up & Away

Well, it's here. Tomorrow I leave for the five weeks of craziness. I think I'm ready, and amazingly enough, I'm not running around like a crazy person today. =-) I did my final pack this morning, went to the bank, picked up a couple more last minute requests from Target, and have a few more cards to finish for the ladies in Odessa who won't be going to the Staff Conference. Then I'm going to get a manicure(something I do maybe 2x a yr. b/c I usually mess up the manicure within about 30 minutes), and go to Zumba tonight. It's been a good, stress free day, thus far. I hope ya'll are prepared for an onslaught of updates and pictures. =-) The excitement has arrived, mixed with a good measure of prayer that I can handle all that is ahead.

Ways That You Can Pray:

*Travel is exhausting. From door to door it will take 20-21 hours. Pray for smooth flying/no delays.
*Lots of germs abound on 3 different planes with lots of people. Pray for a great immune system.
*The overseas flight isn't any fun at all. Pray that I can sleep and not be restless.
*Time zone changes can mess with one's body. I normally adjust well heading to E. Europe. Pray that this is no different.

Thanks for all of your prayers and support! I'll update on facebook soon after I arrive, and on here- within the first couple of days if I have internet.

Are you getting excited??

Excitement.......or the lack thereof. It's now two weeks before I leave for my big spring trip: two weeks in Ukraine and three weeks in Romania. And in those five crazy weeks I will travel through five cities in Ukraine(one twice), and six cities/towns/villages in Romania(one three times). I'll be in Odessa four and a half days, in which time I need to meet with as many of the young and single staff there as possible(about 10), catch up with other friends, go to church, and attend the wedding of a former teammate. Then I take the train 17 hours to the east to spend three days with two staff members there, before taking the train down six hours to the capitol city of the region where my brother lives. I'll take a bus another hour or so to get to their city, spend three days there, then take the bus back to the bigger city, and the train back 17 hours to Odessa. I'll spend the night there, before having an 11 hour trip from Ukraine to Germany to Romania(b/c airlines no longer fly directly to Bucharest from Odessa). I'll arrive at 12:03am, sleep in a hotel somewhere for a few hours, then take a train out to the city where our annual Staff Conference will be. Then, there will be three and a half wonderful days of fellowship, laughter, teaching sessions, optional sessions, women's meetings, prayer meetings, personal meetings, trying to catch up with tons and tons of people(last year there were about 180 people there). Following that, I'll stay for a day of meetings, and then head back to Bucharest where I'll take a train to the other side of the country to spend a few days at the Care Home for abused women and children. Then I'll return to Bucharest and go on to Pitesti for a couple of days with one of our younger staff members, before heading on to spend a week in a village with one of our newly arrived interns. Then I'll go back to Bucharest overnight, fly back to Odessa for one night and spend a day traveling back to the States. Sound exciting?

People keep asking me if I'm excited. I will be. I really will. And I will most likely thoroughly enjoy each different aspect of the trip. But right now, I just feel overwhelmed. I feel overwhelmed by the daunting schedule ahead of me. I feel overwhelmed by the amount of travel, and the physicality of lugging my stuff around and sleeping on people's couches(often quite hard in E. Europe). I feel overwhelmed by the amount of listening that I will be doing and the expectations that people will have of me. I feel overwhelmed by the fact that it's the beginning of March and b/c I'm leaving in two weeks and not getting back until April 25th, I already have to plan out the travel and details for the trip out to the training center in May, followed by a trip to Portland, followed by the short-termer English Camp Training for the group from my church going to Ukraine this summer.  I'm  overwhelmed by the knowledge that I'm traveling five weeks now, will be back two weeks, will travel again for 11 days, will be back for two to three weeks, will most likely go to Houston for a week, will be back two weeks, and then will return to Ukraine and then go on to Poland for a total of 4-5 weeks. I feel overwhelmed thinking that I'm traveling what seems like clear into August......and it's only the beginning of March!

To me, in my feeble humanity, this seems absolutely crazy(and, um, yes, I did indeed plan most of it), but thank God that my sufficiency and strength are found in Him. Because of Him, I know that though I may grow weary, and I most likely will not meet everyone's expectations of me, I can and will have a joy-filled trip- where I can rejoice in the fellowship and laughter and stories of those with whom I'll have the privilege of spending time. So, am I excited? Wellll, not quite yet. But ask me again in a few days, because I can feel it coming. =-)