Misadventures.

⁷ I can never escape from your Spirit!
    I can never get away from your presence!
⁸ If I go up to heaven, you are there;
    if I go down to the grave,^a]”>[a] you are there.
⁹ If I ride the wings of the morning,
    if I dwell by the farthest oceans,
¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,
    and your strength will support me.

 

1. Fear: First fear was that I was going alone without knowing anyone, so I just prayed for good roommates, who either all had boyfriends or who were Christians (I figured this way we would have no issues with strangers coming over).

Answer: God provided beyond what I asked for. I had three awesome roomies: Ruth, Rachel, and Kiri- (all who funny enough had boyfriends) and we really were the odd ones out in a culture of study abroad students which was shown many times throughout those months.

2. Once study abroad was over I had two weeks before my parents would come meet me and I had no plans, and no people who would be with me. I would be a lone nomad- here are a few glimpses into the Lord’s DIVINE protection during those two weeks:

Fear: I traveled to a remote hostel in the countryside which I had to take two busses to get to, and they only ran at certain times, and only on certain days! People getting lost was the number one complaint on hostelworld.com.

How He answered: I actually overheard a girl at the front of the train mention the name of the stop I had to get off on, asking the driver if he could let her know when that came up, and thank goodness because I would have missed it. I tagged along with her, and turns out we were both lone travelers, going to the same hostel, in the same room! WIN

The Boonies ^^

3. On a more dangerous note…

Fear: I found myself in a very unsafe hostel. That day I felt so uneasy in my spirit, but almost all other hostels were full, and time was flying by. Everything seemed off, including the two middle aged women who would be sleeping in my room (not typical backpackers) who claimed not to know each other. But as I drifted in and out of sleep, I overheard talk about their passports (FYI- Passports are worth a lot of money in Italy!)

That night I prayed for energy to stay awake. Unfortunately, the day’s heat left me exhausted, and I drifted in and out of sleep.

How He answered: I had a dream.

A pigeon flew in through the door by my head. The door was wide open, and the bird flew to the ladies bed in front of me. I was surprised and sat up to see if the bird was actually in the room, but then it disappeared and in my dream I looked at the nightstand at my keys (which were under a piece of paper) and stuffed my keys under my body, rolled over, and went back to bed.

Five seconds later, I realized it was a dream, but wasn’t 100% sure, so I sat up to see the bird. No bird. The keys were still on my side table so I grabbed them and put them under my body and went back to sleep. All night, the two women in my room came out and in, back and forth, and left my door UNLOCKED open to the streets of Italy. Somehow I continued drifting in and out of sleep.

What he protected me from: The next morning, I packed up as fast as possible to get out of there, and the woman comes in to bring her “not friend” a cup of coffee. She tells me that there was a boy in my room last night. At first, I though she misspoke, “There was a boy in here last night.” I wanted some elaboration…like um was it a friend, did you know him.. all that comes out is, “what?” She says, “He was an Albanian man. He came in from the street- anyone can come in. I was outside smoking on the patio, and saw him through the window. I yelled at him to get out. He was wanting to rob you, standing by your bed, looking for stuff.” Well, obviously in shock I just say, “Thank you?!” She went on to say, “This hostel is not safe.”

I thanked her again (although she did leave the door unlocked- but I guess she also saved me by yelling at the guy), and left. In that moment, I was like God… my life is literally in your hands.

4. On a lighter note! NEXT destination: Paris to meet up with Rachel in a few days.

MY Plan…

A. Take bus to Santa Maria Novella station
B. Catch train from Firenze to Milan
C. From Milan, you have 15 minutes to catch Milano Centrale to Paris-Gare-De-Lyon at 8pm. Last train of the night. *this will be 10 hours long
D. Get to Gare- De-Lyon at around 6 am.
E. Take RER D metro at Gare-De-Lyon to Gare du Nord
F. From Gare du Nord walk to hostel by finding free wifi and GPS-ing it. Arrive around 7am.

What actually happened:

A. Take train from Firenze to Milan
B. Wait in Milan over an hour. Get on train an hour late.
C. The train to Paris will arrive 45 minutes before I even get there- resulting in me missing it. I start panicking now as my phone is useless and if I miss the 8pm train, I will be alone in a dark, deserted train station till 7am.

BUT WAIT! There is wifi on the train! After messaging travel savvy Rachel, she tells me maybe I can ask the conductor to call the next train and ask them to wait until I arrive, or ask for them to help get another train.

After walking down 12 train cars and finally finding an employee, I ask them to call. After 40 minutes of waiting (10 minutes before this train ride is over) she comes back to let me know that my next train is running TWO hours late. HALLELUJAH.

D. At 10pm I get on the ten hour train to Paris into my cabin of six strangers, grateful that mine was mostly females. I squeeze into the claustrophobic cabin, and I am on the bottom bunk trapped by three walls, and if anyone gets off their bunk, their whole body also covers air supply to my left as well, so I try to get “ready for bed” and sleep.

BUT WAIT, more questions- Will they call in the morning when we are in Paris? Most times in Italy you just have to watch and sometimes they don’t even stop at stations unless someone presses a button. Since there is no screen in here they HAVE to let us know, right? But there’s no one to ask so I let it go, thinking I’ll just set my alarm for 9 hours since it’s a 10 hour ride.

E. I MAKE IT to Paris. They woke us up to give some people back their passports (I may have slept with mine cause I was super paranoid)…After thinking my stop was the last five stops, mine finally arrives and:

Welcome to Gare De Lyon!

A new confusing language has taken over and no one seems to have time to help. There is a French woman struggling with a machine and I think maybe I can help, since she keeps pressing the wrong ticket option (from what I can tell with my limited knowledge). I get in line and after we figure her’s out, I realize they only take cards. Well my card had been cancelled due to fraud and all I had was a credit card not called in for Paris, only Italy. So as to not take a chance, I had to find somewhere that took cash.

I went to another machine line. There was someone fixing multiple machines (changing out all the tickets or something crazy) and he kept changing to different ones so the line just got longer and longer and after about twenty minutes,  I realized it only accepted coins and cards.

So, FINALLY, I get the bright idea to go to a human being, and wait in another line. Once finally up to the teller, I said “English?” She said yes. I asked for a ticket to take the metro once, and she handed me it, I handed her the euro, she gave me change, POOF, done!

Now it’s like 9:40am… I should have been at the hostel by at least 7am.

F. Time for my first ever metro ride! How does one read signs? How does one read french signs? Why didn’t I research this before? I find a giant red sign that says RER D and walk to it. There are so many words of places it goes to, but I don’t know which direction the one in front of me is going, is it going away from where I need to be, or towards it?

There are so many people around. So many questions. and AT THAT MOMENT– I was defeated, I didn’t have anything running through my head, no more ideas, I was done. I prayed a defeatist prayer, “God, help.”

How He answered: I hear someone call my name, “Kiana?!” I look in front of me and it’s my roommate- Rachel!

She said, “I was taking a picture of the sign above your head, and I looked at the photo, and was like hey I know that person!”

At that moment the metro came, we got on and I could rest knowing I finally had people who could get me where I needed to be.

ALL that just goes to show, that although I was “alone” God was walking with me that entire time. God promised to protect me, I knew it would work out in the end, but there were times when I let fear, or worry take over. BUT God proved faithful, every step of my journey that summer and continues to. This was just a few of the many times God let me know He was only a phone call away.

That summer, God was preparing me and I know He is still preparing me. He has given me a foundation of circumstances where all I could do was trust, and He came through EVERY SINGLE TIME. All I had to do was say His name, and He was right there to back me up, to protect me, to get me out of whatever danger I naively walked into, and to be the Father we all need. I believe this will even help me during times on the Race. So if there is any fear in you, sure there may be a legitimate reason, but sometimes all you can do is let go and give up control. He’s got you!

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