When I was in college, my favorite professor showed us what she called her “Highlight Reel” from her mission trip to Ghana.
I really love this idea, and I wanted to share with you my Highlight Reel from Ukraine! This proved to be really hard, because I could hardly choose favorites between all of the amazing moments that I’ve experienced in my first month on the Race. But, because I love you all so much, I muscled through and picked out some of my top memories.
Here…we… GO!
As I said in my daily life blog (click the link to see more pictures about what a typical day in Ukraine looked like!), my team stayed in the lovely city of Ternopil! We also had a squad leader staying with us.
Our first adventure day in Ukraine, we went to “City on the Stone.” This is where I went spontaneously ziplining, which, if you don’t know me, was a pretty big deal because I am immensely afraid of heights. Facing my fears is always really impactful for me, so I wrote a blog about it. You can read it here. My friend Regan said recently that “you can be filled with fear and joy at the same time,” and I think that this is exactly what that day was like for me.
In that same city, we got to visit a medieval fortress which completely knocked my socks off! You can see it in the background here! Also, love these gals.
Then the next week, I taught english to these guys. They were all 14-16 years old, and they were the most well behaved group of high schoolers ever. I told them to take a silly picture and this is what I got!
And one of my students from that class actually DREW me! She is insanely talented! And if you look closely, you can see I’m holding a jar of peanut butter, which I told them that I loved at the beginning of the week. It was so sweet that she remembered, and that she took the time to do this!
Talking to these two was a huge highlight for me. Even though we didn’t believe the same things, we had such a respectful conversation about life, the church, and God. I also got the chance to share a little bit personally about my faith in Jesus and how that impacts how I relate to those around me. Many times I shy away from such opportunities, so it made me feel super bold and encouraged to continue to walk in love in such conversations.
The next adventure we went on was to Poland to visit the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Definitely one of the more harrowing experiences of my life. I felt honored and humbled to stand where so much history took place, but also deeply sad and troubled by what took place here. But it also deepened my understanding and appreciation of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. His death covers all sins that there ever was, is, and will be. And it’s hard to believe that he could even forgive the wretched things that were done during the Holocaust, but he said “it is finished,” and there’s no sin so great that his sacrifice isn’t enough.
Poland was overall an amazing experience. We also got to explore the city of Krakow together. We also got to eat the most ah-MAY-zing gelato I’ve ever had! I loved getting to go on adventures and explore with these people.
Here we are enjoying a Polish sausage! Something my family is huge on back home is sharing food, especially my sister and I. We will either split one meal that’s too big for us to eat by ourselves, or we will get two different things and each take half, so we can try more things. AND GUESS WHAT… did you guess?? God blessed me with a team who is HUGE on sharing food! We have all been trying bites of each others meals and us girls especially share the bigger meals and it has filled my heart with so much joy and I’ve gotten to experience a lot more tastiness because of it!
I seriously loved getting to know the other two women on my team so much. They both love the Lord so fervently and inspire me to seek after Him even harder. I have so much to learn from their strength, wisdom, and experience. They loved me so well, encouraged me, and called me higher to be better than I currently am in truth and grace. I can’t wait to continue to not only match them (because we all brought basically the same wardrobe lolz) but to also grow and have fun with them! Here’s to many more monthly donut dates!
Throughout the month we also played soccer with some locals on a weekly basis. This kid in particular was absolutely hilarious, and really good at soccer. He would always say “Megan, you will not score!” and I finally scored on him the very last day! Here you see me trash talking him a bit and telling him to try and get past me. At the end of the month we shared why we were there and got to pray over all the guys who were there.
The second week of ministry we worked at a day camp for kiddos of all ages, and the best word I can think of to describe the week was “fun.” These kids were full of joy and energy and laughter. We sang, we danced, we tickled, we laughed, photobombed. The little girl in this photo jumped up and photobombed this selfie I was taking with the boy behind her. I spent the whole week swarmed by children, and it was one of the most loving experiences of this life for me. (Side note: it made me miss my own niece and nephew so much).
Wow, this three kids right here. I especially bonded with them, and they will always hold a special place in my heart. They are brother and sisters, and my heart immediately fell in love with their smiles and giggles. They may have been small, but they were bursting with personality. I pretty much always had one of them sitting on my lap at any given point in time.
We taught the kiddos lots of fun things, like Baby Shark, the jellyfish fist bump, and this handshake called “Double Double.” They LOVED it! Once you did it with one kid, you immediately had 6 or 7 flock to you, pushing each other out of the way to get a turn. It was so much fun to teach them something that they liked, and then they taught us some Ukrainian handshake games.
This was one of my favorite nights on the World Race so far. We said goodbye to all the kids on Friday, and I just prayed for those three and how much I would miss them. Then, we were surprised to find out that their parents were hosting us for dinner! I was floored. It was such a gift from God, because I definitely wasn’t ready to say goodbye yet, and it was amazing to talk to their parents and share just how much of an impact their kids had left on me. Also, the two girls brought me the necklace that I’m wearing in this photo, and their mom translated that they wanted me to have it to remember them by (yeah, it’s okay to cry, I definitely did).
Here we are with our friend Tolik and his wife who so lovingly welcomed us into their home and fed us delicious pizza! We had so many opportunities to experience the love and hospitality of the Ukrainian people, and this night was special to us. We laughed so much, and just drank up all that joy.
Week 3 we taught at the Hope English School. Many of our students were older, but there were still some younger teens in the mix. These are some of my students, and they were so generous in showing us love when we left! I could tell that they would miss us as much as we miss them!
Ukraine would not have been as sweet without this sweet woman right here. She was so encouraging to us, she helped us grocery shop, she helped us translate, but more importantly, she loved us. It was really hard to say goodbye, so we just said “see you later!” instead!
This photo might look a little weird. My squad leader actually walked up to me and said “what are you doing ya goon?” so don’t feel bad! We had an extremely busy month, between adventure, ministry, lesson planning, community dinners, soccer, and that’s not even mentioning grocery shopping, working out, quiet time, etc etc etc. But this day, I had just worked out, and looked up to see some beautiful blue skies and clouds floating lazily from left to right. It struck me that as much as I love the sky, I don’t think I’ve ever done the cliche “cloud watching.” I followed the prompting I felt from the Lord and just laid on the ground to enjoy this beautiful gift that he gave us called the sky. I fought back the thoughts of guilt over “not being productive” and actually entered into one of my most restful moments so far on the Race, so this moment is pretty precious to me.
One of my favorite parts of this month was how we were able to stop and pray and talk to and love the homeless people in Ternopil. Each time we were able to touch another life I felt so filled with courage and love that I couldn’t wait for the next time. This woman in particular even prayed for us after we prayed for her. Lord, please continue to give me eyes to see your people the way you see them, the openness to be interrupted by you, and the compassion to have my heart broken time and time again for what breaks your heart.
Even though this picture is from our first flight to Eastern Europe, I put it at the end of this blog on purpose. On this flight I got to bond with the other Megan on my squad and I LOVE this girl. #teamMegans I also got to hear from my squad leader Danny that the number 823 is huge for him, and that it is a symbol of God’s love for him, which led to…
My team and I writing 823 total post-it notes of encouragement, love, verses, memories for Danny on August 23 (8/23) to show our love and God’s love! It was an absolutely amazing night, and hands down my favorite night so far. The guys on our team took him out to dinner while us girls stayed home to put all the notes on his bed to surprise him when he got home. He had no idea! Click here to watch his reaction (credit to the one and only talented Regan for making the video!).
That night we also baked homemade chocolate chip cookies to surprise all the guys! (It is also Danny’s favorite dessert, so God was really planning to make that night special for him, because we didn’t know that beforehand). It was such a fun night to serve all our guys and give them a taste of home.
I think we were all on cloud nine after that, because a lot of silliness happened right after. Here we see Josh and Danny reenacting the famous Titanic scene (just before they did a prom picture together, soooo funny). But that’s what I love about these people, and the biggest highlight from Ukraine. We’re all a little goofy (or in our case, a lot goofy), and it’s okay to let that show. Actually, it’s more than okay. It’s good. It’s beautiful. It’s life-giving. Yes this journey is going to be hard, but it’s also going to be fun, and I get to do it with these wonderful people. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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