I’m sitting on a stuffy bus as it’s bumping up and down the road, my eyes are closed and my music is turned up almost as loud as it can go; I just had to say goodbye to the rest of my squad because all squad month is officially over now that we’re in Ukraine, and I’m trying to stop thinking about all the people I’m missing from the squad. Suddenly I feel a mist and see my teammate Connor bolting for the bus door. (Warning: graphic details ahead) As I take out my headphones and look around I see vomit absolutely everywhere: the windows, chairs, our backpacks and covering people’s clothes and skin. He had thrown up over almost everything. Eventually after much tissues and wet wipes are used, we get everything cleaned up and the chaos dies down. We all laugh about it afterwards and continue on our drive to the houses we’ll be staying in for the month.
As I put my headphones back in and close my eyes, my mind drifts to thinking about how intimidating it is that me and my team will be alone, without leaders, in a new country, teaching English to Ukrainian adults who may or may not know any English yet. On top of all of this we now have a very sick teammate and I myself feel very under the weather. I’ve had a cold for about a week and it only seems to be getting worse. When we finally arrive at our apartment, our hosts provide dinner and we promptly go to bed (it’s about 1am at this point and we’d been traveling since 4:30am the previous day so we had no problem falling asleep).
The next morning our hosts come over and we discuss some logistical things. Then we head over to the grocery store which is a short walk away. But on our way, we saw something crazy. There was a broken vase along the road, JUST LIKE THE ONE WE SAW DURING LISTENING PRAYER FOR OUR TEAM NAME. Like… WHAT. The Lord works in such insane ways! (If you don’t know what I’m talking about you can read my second blog post titled “Meet the team” where I talk about my team’s name).
Below is a picture of the vase on our street and a painting my teammate Lexi did a couple weeks ago of the picture and verse God gave us for our team.
So any worry I had been feeling about this month vanished. He was showing my team that we were meant to be here, on this little street, in this exact city, and in this country, and He was reminding me once again to be brave. To be brave through the sickness and the pain and to trust that He’ll be with us no matter what little street we may end up on.
