Much like Disney’s Belle from Beauty and the Beast, I wanted adventure in the great wide somewhere. For years I dreamed of traveling the world. Then God led me to the World Race, and I did my best to convince Him there was some mistake. Indeed, several times over the course of 2009 I thought God had missed it.
In month 10, H squad found ourselves in Ukraine. I entered the country sick, exhausted, and with a pretty crummy outlook on life. The lingering talons of the post-Soviet world were undeniable and the language next to impossible. It felt cold, untrusting, unwelcoming, and I was truly just ready to go home.
But then something changed.
A simple invitation into a home, some hospitality, and a lot of laughter began to change my perspective on the cold exteriors I noticed around me. A student’s outlook, which was rooted in cynicism and hopelessness, made me see the great need for the hope and truth of Jesus in the lives of Ukrainian youth. Friendships formed with students and those working in the universities shed light on a corrupt system and the courage required to live a life of bold belief and take on roles of leadership.
Holy Spirit along with the people of Ukraine found the cracks in the walls around my heart and just kept tapping until they crumpled like a clumsily built house of cards.
Physically I moved on at the end of October 2009 to Berlin, Germany and the final month of our World Race, but I never truly left Ukraine.
I returned in the summer of 2010 to volunteer for English camp and by summer’s end committed to move. I lived for three and a half more years in Kyiv and am now working to return again, because God gave me eyes to see the Ukrainian people as He sees them, oh so valuable and deeply loved.
There are many beautiful places to behold throughout our world, and I am grateful for each one I’ve seen with my own eyes. There are also many horrors untold across our planet, but I’m also thankful that I cannot turn a blind eye because God doesn’t. Instead, He sends sons and daughters into those places, into the dark, to shine His light and power.
I know that the way things seem aren’t necessarily what they are.
I know that He uses unlikely people in unimaginable ways.
I know that He gives a voice to the voiceless and hope to the hopeless, and He’s given me a heart for a nation.
