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. =-)
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