Okay, I failed. Again. I just cannot get a hang of this blog thing.
There are many things I want to share with you – and I thought an easy way to do this would be through a Q&A session.
So, grab a cup of coffee, pull up a chair, and pretend like we’re just catching up.
Q: Where are you?
A: I’m currently in Uzhgorod, a small-city in the far west of Ukraine on the border of Slovakia.
Q: You told me you would write more last month and you didn’t. So what exactly did you spend your time in Serbia doing?
A: Mornings were filled with trips to the cafes to meet local Serbians, and our nights were filled with prayer-walks, church-services, youth groups, and pastries with our wonderful host-family. We also had the opportunity to travel to local villages and minister to Christians who are too far away to attend church services.
Praying over the city
Q: Where did you live?
A: We lived in a small “apartment” in the back of a house owned by a member of the church. We had a bathroom, a tiny kitchen, and two rooms (technically, a living room and a bedroom.) We had four girls on two couches, one in a bed, and me on the floor. We lived on top of each-other for the entire month.
Q: What’s your favorite memory from the month?
A: I preached. For the first time. For an entire 25-minutes.
Q: I noticed on Facebook that you were in Auschwitz. How on earth did you end up there?
A: We had a few extra days in between our Month 7 and 8 of ministry, so we took a detour to Budapest and then Krakow. From Krakow, we visited Auschwitz. It was both an incredible and and incredibly tiring trip.
Q: How did you get to Uzhgorod from Poland?
A: Okay, get ready for this. It’s a little confusing:
The overnight train (and the last direct one for 24 hours) to L’viv, Ukraine, was full, and we couldn’t afford a hostel, so we slept in the train station for the night. Apparently, the Krakow train station turns into a homeless shelter at night, and we shared the floor with about 100 homeless drunks.
Sleeping on the floor on the Krakow Train Station
My neighbors for the night
Since we missed our train to L’viv, it was time for Plan B:
We boarded a six-hour train to somewhere in Poland at 7am.
Once we got off the train, we took a ten-minute drive on a mini-bus to the Polish/Ukrainian border, where we got off and proceeded to walk over the border and through the crossings.
Walking across the border
Then, we boarded another hour-long bus, which took us to the L’viv train-station.
Although we were hoping to make the 4:15 bus, we unknowingly passed through a new time-zone and got to L’viv an hour after the train left.
The next train to L’viv left at 9pm, and we boarded it to find the most ridiculously vintage train I have ever been on. We didn’t have our own room, so we slept among the snoring Ukrainians.
Finally, at 2:30am, we arrived in Uzhgorod, Ukraine, and disembarked the train to find our host waiting for us on the platform. Luckily, he’s a former Racer, so he wasn’t too thrown off by the change in plans.
(If you’re wondering, we traveled for about 35 hours and slept for about four.)
Q: Where are you living in Uzhgorod?
A: We live in another “apartment” on the first floor of a church member’s home. We have two rooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen. It’s about two times the size of our home in Serbia, but I’m still sleeping on the floor. Maggie, however, has joined me this month.
Q: What are you going to be doing in Uzhgorod, Ukraine?
A: Two of us will be working at a hospital helping care for babies who have been abandoned, two of us will be working with children who are disabled, and Maggie and I will be splitting our time between visiting Roma camps to teach hygiene and sex-ed classes and making appearances at local English classes.
Q: Where are you going next?
A: At the end of the month we'll board a flight and head back to our side of the world. We'll be spending our last three months of the Race in Central America. As of right now, we'll be in Nicaragua, El Salvador/Honduras, and Guatamala. … But you know how things go on the Race.
