This past Wednesday marked my first year as a full time missionary in Kyiv. This causes me to wax nostalgic a bit, so I think I’ll do a first year retrospective. You know those lame tv show episodes that consist almost entirely of clips from previous shows? That’s just the work of lazy writers and low budgets. I won’t do that.
When I first arrived here, I had only met a few people by email, and knew very little about what I would do. Don’t get me wrong, I did all the research I could. But there are some things you just can’t know about.
Soon after I arrived, I met a guy from Norway who’d been here for a short time. I had the stars in my eyes of an Indiana Jones wannabe on a new adventure. He warned me, “It’s fun here at first, but trust me, three weeks from now, you’ll want to go home.”
Extended missions trips always have that kind of a honeymoon phase, and then when the newness wears off and the frustration of trying to live in an unfamiliar culture hits you, then many people go into a dark “I hate this place and I just wanna go home” period. Then that normalizes as you get accustomed to the foreign culture and you take the joys and frustrations as they come. Budding missionaries take note. This is normal and to be expected.
So I understood what Mr Norway meant by three weeks. I know when I was in an outreach in China for a month, I loved it and I really loved the people I was with. But I was happy to come back to the universe I understood. Just trying to understand Chinese people who were trying to speak English was mind numbingly tiring after a while.
But I never hit that dark time here in Ukraine. In fact, by the time three weeks had gone by, I really felt like I had found my place here. I had plenty of great friends and was leading worship already. There were frustrations here and there, but I really came to recognize that at least for an extended season, this is where I belong. I wanted to tell my Norwegian friend that it was all cool, but he’d already gone home. Poor fella.
Just for fun, here’s the quick list of the worst things that’s happened to me in Ukraine in the last year. Bit by a dog, slipped down a metro shaft, got pick-pocketed, ran out of peanut butter, got really really cold a bunch of times. Worst, after four months of no phone service, I’m forced to get one of those how you say, “self-phone” things to communicate. But despite all of this, my scars healed, my sweaters came in the mail, my wallet was recovered, and most importantly, my peanut butter was replenished. I still have all my limbs and most of my sanity. God is good. In fact, the worst experience, when my dad passed away, happened while I was home in safe ole America. Even that shows me how good God was to let me be home when it all happened.
So this is for you dreamers who think God’s calling you to something bigger, but you’re not sure about leaving the safety of your known world. He’s there, always, and He understands the language. He’s figured out the science. He’s already preparing you for the new job. He knows the ending of the book. He knows where the money will come from. It’ll be okay. Just watch your step when you get off the metro...

¶ 8:06 AM

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