Yes, Serbia. Not Romania. Yet.
One of the trademarks of The World Race—something they prepare us for—is that our route could (and probably will) change at any time. At any moment. Even if it’s a few days before we are supposed to leave.
Case in point, as you may remember, the destination for our first month of ministry changed from Ireland to Turkey. Just under a few weeks before we were leaving on The Race, we found out that Turkey was no longer happening because of the political unrest that was occurring there. AIM’s office was hard at work figuring out where we would go instead, but we didn’t know. A week before we met for Launch in Atlanta, Georgia, we found out that we would be going to Albania.
Although I’ll be the first to admit that I knew next to nothing about Albania—after setting foot on the camp grounds where we would spend the month serving and meeting the beautiful Albanian people, I would not have changed our month’s location at all. I absolutely fell in love with the people and the culture and the country of Albania.
And I would like to clarify, that I LOVE this aspect of The Race- this was one of the many reasons I was so excited for The Race. The fact that we get to be flexible…and that sometimes it’s a mystery where we will end up is something really exciting to me. This is a lifestyle I am easily able to embrace—we are truly living an adventure.
I trust AIM that they are looking out for us and taking care of us, that they have our best interests in mind, and are putting a lot of prayer into where they send us.
But even more than that, I trust that God is going to take care of and provide for us always.
And that wherever we are, we are there for a reason.
Even if we’re sitting on train station floor for ten hours in Sofia, Bulgaria surrounded by pigeons. Or piled 7 people high in our hostel owner’s car who graciously offered to take us to the train station so we wouldn’t have to arrange for a taxi. Or next to a couple of guys from England and Holland for a 9 hour long train ride to Serbia.
Let me tell you, not knowing where you’ll be the next day is a great opportunity to see God at work.
Now enter our second month on The Race. OuR entire squad (almost 60 people) hopped on a bus for the 13 hour ride from Albania to Sofia, Bulgaria. After spending a few days in Sofia, our teams would split off to different ministry spots scattered across Bulgaria and Serbia. We were told that our team’s particular ministry spot was 80% sure, but we would know a definite answer in a few days.
Typical World Race style.
After receiving the confirmation that we were indeed going to Pozarevac, Serbia, my team leader Sarah Anne, our friend Kevin, and myself booked it to the train station to buy tickets for our team.
This was the first time that we were traveling solo, without our entire squad, and without people who had experience doing this before. We had originally been told that our team would be paired with the other all women’s team for the month, but now plans had changed and we were going to be on our own.
I must admit, I was pretty pumped. While I absolutely loved our first month of The Race and appreciated that we were able to travel together and serve together with our entire squad, it felt like our adventure was finally beginning as we took the first few steps on our own.
I have never felt God’s presence and peace so strongly with us.
We had the smoothest travel day, and I’m not sure how to express exactly how much that means. If you have ever traveled on The World Race or if you remember the first time traveling by yourself in a foreign country, you can imagine what it’s like. But multiply that feeling by being responsible for the 6 other people on your team… Yeah, that’s a good start.
We took a taxi from our hostel to the train station, and walked in. As we walked up to the ticket booth, Sarah Anne prayed, “Please God translate for us,” and, I kid you not, as we looked up at the departing trains (all in Bulgarian), one of the first ones we saw was for Belgrade. Whew!
As we then spoke to the lady at the ticket booth, we quickly discovered she did not speak a bit of English, but she directed us to the international office that sold tickets where we could find someone who did. After finding out what the departure times for the train to Belgrade were, we left to make a call to our ministry contact.
Now for anyone who has ever used phones with international sim cards…they can be pretty challenging. Especially when you’re still learning how to use them. After spending about an hour sitting and trying to make a call to our ministry contact in Pozarevac, it finally went through. Now we had a solid day for our departure, and now we were able to go purchase our tickets.
Lesson learned, always have your passport with you, just in case, and especially when purchasing tickets. Our lady asked for a passport, but accepted Sarah Anne’s photo id instead. After a short wait, not only did we have our tickets in hand—but the sweet lady who had already been so helpful had given us a discount on our tickets! Done son, as Sarah Anne would say.
Now all we needed to do was to figure out how to get our team from our hostel to the train station the next day. Our options were either A. a 30 minute walk wearing our 50 pound hiking backpacks, gear, and daypacks or B. find a taxi. When we had first arrived in Sophie a few days earlier, we had experienced what it was like to book it across the city carrying our backpacks and gear for 30 minutes…so with that memory still fresh in our minds, excuse us while we looked into the taxi idea.
Enter our hostel owner Plamen. Now Plamen is a gem. He is a Christian and very passionate about what the Lord is doing. He also loves life, and took time to show us around Sofia. He showed us a really cool, all organic coffee shop that was in a house that was run by one of his friends, and took us up a mountain to see Sofia by night. That was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen (see photo).
When we asked him about how we should go about to arranging transportation to the train station for our team, his immediate response was that he would take us himself and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Even though he had to take time off from work to do this—he refused to let us do anything else.
Friday morning, we packed up all of our belongings and were out of our hostel at 10am. Plamen came and took us to the train station. Oh, did I mention all 7 of us fit into his car? Because we did (see photo). We safely got to the train station, said goodbye to Plamen, then set up camp for the next ten hours. We put all of our belongings in a corner in the train station and took turns watching our things. We ran into a couple of other teams from ouR squad who were also traveling to their ministry spots which was a very welcome surprise.
10 hours later…we gathered up our belongings and hopped on our train to Belgrade. After the train had started moving, the ticket collector came around to collect our tickets…and proceeded to explain that what we had were not tickets. Not sure what that was all about, but he then said we were fine and we didn’t have any trouble after that. Our team was split up into two cars, and we all took turns sleeping and watching our belongings since we had heard there was a possibility that there were pick-pockets around.
Sarah Anne needed to confirm with our ministry contact that we had boarded the train, and the first time she made the call—it went through. After many failed attempts at making calls the day before, you can understand how shocked we were that it went through the first time. And on a moving train, none-the-less.
We passed into Serbia without a hitch at the border crossing. There were no long delays on the train. Everything was going smoothly.
Next challenge—figure out which stop we were getting off. We knew approximately what time we should be getting off the train- 5 am and at the Mala Krsna stop, but we ran into a problem.
Not only were the stops not announced, but they were not always labeled very clearly. So we had a matter of moments as the train pulled to a halt at a station to scan the name of the town (in Serbian) and pull all of our belongings together. (Which if you’ve ever tried to put on your 50 pound hiking backpack in a hurry, it’s not as easy as it sounds. The first time I put mine on, I fell over backwards!) Sarah Anne spoke to one of the other passengers who spoke some broken English and was able to decipher that our stop was coming up soon. So we put on our backpacks and waited…for about thirty more minutes.
Now what is even crazier…is that the actual stop we needed to get off at—we couldn’t even see the name of the town on the train station because it was blocked from view by another train. The only way we knew to get off for sure was that our ministry contact Lydia, Pastor Dragan, and his son Daniel were standing right outside the train when it stopped. Seeing their faces, I felt sure I was seeing angels…because there is no other way we would have known to get off at that stop if they were not there. In fact, if they hadn’t been there at that moment, we probably would have stayed on the train and continued on, missing our stop.
Now tell me that God is not a very present help in time of trouble and covering our every need?
There were many situations over those few days where we could have been stressed and overwhelmed. But instead, we felt God’s presence and peace overwhelmingly around us. It felt like he was right there with us.
And that’s because he was.
Before we left, our friend Kevin shared with Sarah Anne Psalm 121 which became our mantra for the trip. I will leave you with that.
I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot slip—he who watches over you will not slumber;
indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord watches over you—the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all harm— he will watch over your life;
the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.
