So I know many of you had seen my Facebook status, or
possibly heard from someone else that I had to appear in court in Kiev, Ukraine. It is true, and a pretty good story. So instead of doing this 20 times I thought
I’d post a blog on my education of the Ukrainian judicial system.
So it was the 26th and our debrief had come to a
close. Most of the teams were leaving
the same day for their ATL locations, except for Tikvah, the new worship team
and us. So we were offered to stay at
the apartment in town that BLING and the Gentle Warriors stayed at all month,
since it was paid for through the end of the month.
So after lunch that apartment building was rocked by 20
world racers, with their big packs and mouths storming to the 10th
floor trying to get situated into our apartment. Apparently we didn’t make any friends. Thank God all but 5 people were gone that
evening when the door bell rang. To my
surprise, I was met by two police officers who welcomed themselves into the
apartment and began demanding “papers” in very broken English. Now it probably was not fair to immediately
project this onto these cops, but most cops you meet in these countries are
corrupt and creepers…and they seemed to fit the part nicely.
I let them look at my passport and the others brought their
passports as well. He started to go off
about something with my departure forms but I couldn’t tell what because I
spoke about as much Russian as he spoke English. Steph happened to be out with a friend of
ours (Galina) that was a native speaker but also spoke English very well so I gave
her a call to see if she could talk to these guys. I called her and thank God she was only 5
minutes away, so she showed up quickly and began translating.
It turns out, our “crime” was that in the address section of
our departure forms we didn’t have the apartment we were at. In fact we didn’t have any address because we
didn’t know where we’d be staying when we came into the country. So once we established that, it felt like all
hell broke lose. Some of the girls began
getting worked up because the charges were bogus and the cops were wanting to
take our passports. Galina was trying to
talk to the cops but she was already nervous so when the girls got worked up
and started shouting things at her to translate she got even more rigid. Not to mention the cops were wanting to take
our passports with them and make us pay a ridiculous fine.
I was pretty anxious myself, but I tried to calm down the
girls and asked them to make some phone calls about what to do and they also
called the others and told them not to come back…which was a great idea! I was also trying to calm down Galina and
reassure her that she was doing a beautiful job (and she was). But then try to figure out how to get these
cops out of our apartment with our passports and integrity in tact. We were told to tell them to either write us
a ticket and we’ll pay the fine or take us to the US embassy. And if they’re authority was legit they would
be OK with one of those option, but of course they weren’t. They wanted us to either pay them there or
let them take our passports so we could go to court in the morning and pay a
fine. But eventually we talked them down
to only making one person go. So after I
told them I would go only if I could keep my passport they eventually agreed. I had a court date for 8:30 the next morning
and a flight to catch at 7:30 that evening!
So I volunteered to be the one to take one for the team
(literally). I made sure I had enough
money for the fine just in case but I also had a bulletproof case ready to set
before the judge. Galina and I showed up
at the address the cops had given us, hoping they wouldn’t be there…but they
were. They were shocked to see us though. They must have thought since we had no reason
to show up since it was only our word holding us to it and not our
passports. We sat there as they wrote up
a full report of what happened and then we went with one of them to the other
side of town for him to file the report.
Then we went to another part of town to appear before the judge. I had my case ready. But as soon as she heard the case and read
the report, she closed the case before I had a chance to say it. This was a huge blessing since Galina had
somewhere to be and I had to pack because we were leaving the country in a few
hours.
So as much of a hassle as it was, it makes for a pretty cool
experience. And also call me crazy but I
think I needed that. I’ve been so tired
lately, I think I needed that kick in the pants to shock me back to life and it
worked. Looking back that high pressure
situation in the apartment made me come to life! Maybe I should look into becoming a hostage
negotiator when I get home or something.
But let’s give credit where credits due:
1.
The police came when 5 people were at the
apartment and not 21.
2.
Galina and Steph were not planning on coming by
but they were on their way to the apartment and were 5 minutes away when I
called.
3.
Galina had to be at the airport at 1 PM and I
had to be at the apartment by 2 PM. If
we would have been fined it would have possibly added several more hours to the
adventure because we would have had to take the money to the bank and get a
receipt for it and take it to a different office for another receipt and take
it back to the judge. But the judge
dropped the case very quickly.
I hope you’re just as convinced as I am that God was all
over that situation and answered a bunch of prayers.
But
anyway, we’ve made it to Munich, Germany and are very tired. We’ll be resting here for a couple days and
will be catching the train to Croatia.
Thank you all for your prayers!
