Monday, sometime around 8:00am the train stops, again. We have been on and off trains since early
Saturday morning so this is becoming normal to us. I glance out the window, same old scene-
mountains, trees, a few buildings- definitely not the capitol city of a
country, I think to myself. Someone gets
out of our little cabin. The other 4 of
us stay in our contorted sleeping positions from the night. Through the noise we hear one of our boys
yell, “this is us.” The scramble begins.
Some of our big packs are in different cabins from the
confusion when we boarded the train the night before. Passports are scattered from middle of the
night country changes. Clothes used as
pillows are strewn about. My mind doesn’t
even know where to start.
We know we only have about 5 minutes to gather all of our
stuff and get all 14 of us off the train before it continues on its way. We all start grabbing and stuffing things,
trying to just make it off. Personally
my stuff seemed to take forever to pack but I finally finished and find my way
onto the platform. I am only the second
one off the train at this point. Where
is everybody, I think? Conductors are
already getting antsy and telling us to hurry in some unknown language. Teammates start appearing; we assembly line
packs, guitars, and bags of food off the train and into a pile. People jump off too. Whistles are blowing; this train is ready to
pull out. A few minutes later we seem to
have everyone, I quickly count-12- that means we are down two. We see them running through the car to the
exit. They make it. We have everyone and everything, I’m still
not sure how.
Without discussing, we take a few moments to pull ourselves
together. We all just stand around our bags,
not much is being said. As my adrenaline
starts to calm, I begin to look around the empty platform to orientate
myself. To my left is now standing a man
with a warm expression on his face.
There is not another sole in sight; I swear he appeared out of mid-air. “Welcome to Montenegro,” he says in perfect
English. All I can pull out is a simple
hello and I tell him he speaks English well.
Thankfully someone else asks what his name is. He answers Vladimir.
Vladimir is the name of the only contact the 14 of us have
mustered up. He is the one person we
‘know’ in all of Montenegro and he seems to have just appeared next to us. I feel such relief in the midst of the chaos that
just went down. In his calming voice he
asks if we would like to load up and go to his church where we can relax and
discuss our next move.
Within the following 12 hours he has already given us
information on 2 other contacts in Montenegro, dropped team Seven Camels off an
hour and a half away at their contacts’ house, and given us a key to his church
where he is allowing my team to live for a few days. He doesn’t know any of us. He demands no payment. He didn’t complain about the trouble we put
him through. He doesn’t even ask us to
stick around and help out his church for the rest of the month. He expects nothing. After only 12 hours we have seen just how
trusting and how much of a servant he is.
It’s like we are his old friends, his family. This is the body of Christ
at work.
