Who ever said that it was impossible to communicate in separate languages? I, for one, can tell from personal experience that you don’t need to speak the same language to communicate, especially in Ukraine.
People back in the old days of the Tower of Babel gave up too quickly. They could’ve figured it out if they tried. Of course, the Tower of Babel was bad because of human pride, but we’ll put that to the side for now. The main point I’m trying to get at is that words are merely a helper rather than a necessity for communication.
This past week we had English classes but more importantly we had a whole camping retreat this weekend. We spent 2 days and 1 night at a campground outside of Rivne, Ukraine. We had games, English/Bible lessons, worship, and more games.
Let me tell you something. As I learned in Romania, confirmed in Ukraine, and will continue to learn for the rest of my race, games are a universal language. All games, regardless of whether they’re active or not, are always a tool to bring people together.
Time to set the scene…
At this retreat, we had a wide range of people who spoke varying levels of English. Some spoke zero English, some spoke a little, some spoke a lot.
I managed to work myself into the group with minimal English…and it was incredible 🙂
I walked into the room and saw 10 Ukrainians huddled around a table. Immediately I went to go check it out.
I looked down at the table, and lo and behold, they were playing the legendary….
UNO!
I asked if I could jump into the game and start playing. They said the most common word in the Ukrainian language.
“Da.” (Which means “yes.”)
I pulled up my own chair, we filled out the table, and the madness began. UNO! cards started flying all over the place. It was even more fun because we played with special rules that I had never played with before. Rules such as:
1. If a 7 is placed on the pile, everyone must slap the pile and the last person to slap the pile must draw a card.
2. If the color of the pile is blue, nobody is allowed to speak. If someone speaks, they must draw one card for every word said. The only way to communicate is by knocking on the table, pointing, and making really high pitched noises with your mouth closed. If a person needs to declare “UNO!” while the pile is blue, they must knock on the table twice.
3. ‘Draw +2’ cards can be stacked and passed to the next person in line. For example, if Player 1 plays a Draw +2 and Player 2 also has a Draw +2 card, they can play it and pass the consequence to Player 3, who must draw 4 cards unless they also have a Draw +2 card. (Also works with Draw +4 cards and Rule #5 down below.)
4. If a 0 is played, everyone must place their hand of cards down on the table and pass it to the left or the right, depending on the flow of the game. So, a person who has 14 cards could end up with 2 cards because someone played a 0 and they received a hand with 2 cards in it. Definitely a game-changer.
And my personal favorite,
5. If you have a card in your hand that is the EXACT SAME card as the card on the pile, you may play out of turn (if you are fast enough) and continue the game from your turn. For example, if there are 4 players in the game, and the order goes from Player 1 to Player 2 to Player 3 to Player 4, and it’s Player 1’s turn but there is a red 3 on the pile and Player 3 has a red 3, if they play their red 3 quick enough, they play that for their turn and the game continues on to Player 4’s turn. Player 1’s turn gets ignored/nullified because Player 3 played their card.
These rules were communicated to me in English at first, but I understood them more as we just played. I kinda picked up on it.
The laughs we shared were incredible and I can’t tell you how many times we had to communicate by just pointing and using facial cues. That’s also the next thing I wanted to talk about.
I might not speak a lick of Ukrainian (other than “Da”), but I most certainly understand it. It didn’t start to click until this last week, but I’ve definitely learned a lot. I can read facial cues, tone of voice, body language, etc.
There were so many times during both UNO! and general conversations that I managed to understand a lot of what people told me. For example:
1. During UNO!, there were multiple times when, if there was an interruption or if people played out-of-turn, people would point to me and ask me if I played the most recent card or they would ask the general group who played the card. Of course, this was all in Ukrainian. After the first few games I understood most of what people said. Of course, I couldn’t speak anything back, but I understood the question, so that was really helpful.
2. Last night we had a dinner at our ministry host’s apartment. We were celebrating the past 2 and a half weeks of ministry and reviewing it. We had normal table discussion and stuff but we also had a time of giving group feedback. Our hosts translated for us so we could know exactly what everyone was saying, but it was nice to listen to the Ukrainians because we could hear the sincerity in their voices while they spoke (mostly thanking us and blessing us for our ministry ahead of us on the Race).
3. As a funny extra which was also last night: When we first arrived in Ukraine, our host let us know that it’s very custom to take your shoes off inside of homes. We’ve been pretty good about following that custom for the most part. Last night, as we were leaving, we put our shoes on but instead of walking out the door, we stayed inside and waited for everyone to finish getting ready. I heard our host talking to one of the Ukrainians in Ukrainian and I immediately realized what was going on. I looked down at the ground, realized I was standing on the hardwood floor, and immediately took one really large step onto the rug next to the door. Our host started laughing really hard and said “He understood!” The little cues I noticed were the fact that she was looking at the ground with a smidge of an irritated look on her face. She wasn’t even looking at me and I still realized what she was talking about. We laughed about it and I apologized for standing on her flooring and she jokingly scolded us and said “Come on guys, what was the first custom I told you about when you came to Ukraine?” We laughed a little bit more after that. It was just cool to see how easy it is to understand people even if you don’t speak their language.
That’s all we have for ministry here in Ukraine, though. After this week, our team is officially finished in Ukraine. Next week we are traveling to Krakow, Poland and Auschwitz for an adventure week, then we’re off to Chile!
It’s been an incredible blessing to work with these men and women of God here in Ukraine. Definitely the best month I’ve ever spent in Ukraine 🙂
Please pray for the ministry here in Rivne, pray that God would continue to work through these incredible people and bless them. Please also pray for us as we’re going to be traveling for basically two weeks (5 days next week for Poland and then 4 days approximately to get to Chile).
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