Servants in Ukraine

 

Tolik and his wife Alla had never hosted a world race team, they didn't expect 7 girls they expected 4 and they had no idea what we would be doing.
"Teach English, yes?" 

"sure, no problem" was our reply.
We were originally supposed to stay in a hostel, but instead they wanted us to invade their small farm house home; 4 sprawled out in the living room and three others bunking up in their bedroom, while they and their 6 year old daughter slept upstairs in the unfinished loft. They didn't expect payment for housing nor did they expect us to pay for our food. We were floored. It's standard World Race protocol that during the first day you sit down with you contact and figure out the months budget: food, lodging, local transportation, long distance transportation, supplies and anything else that might come up. But no, Tolik and Alla didn't want any of this, they said that they were here to serve us. 

That isn't how it's supposed to go, we are here to serve the ministry contact in any capacity they need. Seriously anything you want. You need your church or house cleaned? We're on it.You want us to teach English? No problem. Evangelize? No big. Build a house?Yes please. No matter what, World Racers are here to SERVE YOU and YOUR MINISTRY  not the ministry contact here to SERVE US and we are to pay our on way to boot. 

Tolik, Alla  and the rest of their church congregation (around 15 in total) had the biggest servant hearts I've seen thus far in the Race. Every morning we had fresh goats milk along with an amazing breakfast, then we would head off to different schools, teach a little English promote the upcoming Christian English Camp happening in July then head to the church were we had fresh soup (borscht) followed by something else warm and delightful. Different people of the church would come by and fix us our lunch meal (which they called dinner) they had a routine down like clockwork. They would come and sit with us and over tea through charades and some very broken English we got to know each other and learn about the town we were staying in:Koloymia, Ukraine established 1200ish. In the afternoons children would come and we would split up and all teach classes for a few hours. Then once we got home Alla had something else amazing for waiting for us for supper. I swear that woman never slept, she was always cooking for us and her family, making sure we got on the right bus or doing some back breaking gardening.
 

We had a great translator, Roma and we picked up another friend Anna who also served us well throughout our month. They made fun of us all the time because when they would ask how we are doing all we could respond with was "So Good!" with a big cheesy smile and a thumbs up. Towards the end of our month our translators Dad asked us if we lied all the time. He said it couldn't possibly be "So good!" all the time. But in fact we weren't lying, my team had never felt more welcomed, loved, and appreciated before. At this response, he got the attention of the other members of the congregation and they discussed our answer. And what they responded with was that they felt regret. They regretted not being able to do more for us, for the language barrier which hindered deeper conversation and they were most sorry for the fact that there was not enough time for them to wash our feet. I was flabbergasted at this.
 

Here was a group of people, who 5 days before we arrived had never even heard of the World Race, pouring out their time and resources to make us feel so comfortable and at home saying that they didn't serve us as much as they would have liked and that they would have loved to was our feet. That is servanthood.So thank you Tolik, Alla, Roma, Anna and the rest of that amazing congregation for serving us so well, when in fact we were the ones sent to serve

PS-Pictures to come, but it will have to wait until we have more stable internet!