When I grew up ‘miracle’ was a bad word. It
had a lot to do with the doctrine of the particular denomination we worshiped
with. In fact, I can remember the word was replaced with distant synonyms such
as “Godly providence,” and so on. I’ve been thinking about that
lately, and I guess when you live life more-or-less ignoring the Spirit, it
only makes sense that miracles are a thing of the past, and today’s world is
run by nothing more than coincidence.
Today I realize I don’t even care what you
call it. Definitions and diction are nothing to be worried about when the
substance of God manifests itself in your life.
What the heck am I talking about?
We entered into the Ukraine on Monday with
no place to stay, one person to act as our contact/translator, and no ministry.
We all fought the urge to complain, and said, “Okay, God…we know you
have a plan.”
Fast forward to Wednesday afternoon.
Theresa, Jeannie and I decided to go downtown to grab some groceries and lunch.
We made plans to grab groceries last, find a place to eat and use wifi
beforehand. For whatever reason, I changed my mind and decided I was going to
order a pizza from the restaurant outside the grocery store as soon as we got
there.
Of the over 300 restaurants in Odessa, we
ended up at this pizza joint. I ordered, and we sat down at the table third
from the left in the first row. Out of the 20 or so tables in the restaurant,
we sat at this one. Four English speaking people came and sat at the table next
to ours.
In the land of Russian and Ukrainian,
English sticks out like a sore-thumb; we immediately engaged them.
“Hey, are y’all American?”
“So are we, what brings you to
Ukraine?”
Turns out that the two couples are a Father
and son (and their wives) mission team from New Mexico. Bill, the father, is
the director of an organization working in Eastern Europe for the past decade.
His son, John, now also works with the organization, and the two are traveling
across the continent putting on Bible camps.
We then find out that they are putting on
one of these English Bible camps this coming week right outside of Odessa.
You have a month-11 World Race team,
exhausted, but still anxious for the final month of ministry, left without
anything to do, and unaware of the next step to take, who happened to eat lunch
at the one table next to an American missions team who is not only putting on a
Bible camp (the exact ministry we were supposed to be working with, and fell
through) but also has room, and is welcoming us to join them.
Pure coincidence.
or maybe we’ll call it Godly-providence…
We just finished our orientation with the
group of 22 today. We head out tomorrow, about an hour outside of Odessa, to
begin a week-long camp, teaching kids English and the Bible, building a
relationship with over 120 children! Please be praying that this camp is a
blessing to not just the kids involved but for the team from America and us as
well.
I thank God that His timing is not ours,
that His ways are not mine, and that He still is very much in the business of
showing off.
On a completely unrelated note: Happy 4th of July! Brought to you by your local Romanian thrift store
