God sightings Part I
Category: Life
These past weeks were an interesting time for AnnMarie and me. It seems that everywhere we turned God's blessing has showed up. We knew that we needed to get new passports and visas. This meant a substantial outlay of cash as well as time out of the country. I had been counting on George Bush's, "Stimulus Check" to get us over the hump. If our support would just stay on track we would be fine, I thought. Well the check never arrived from the Government; turns out I didn't earn enough tax credits for that. And our regular support was really short (almost $500 short). But God had a plan.
He put us on somebody's heart and someone gifted us enough to make up for the
shortage and help considerably with the costs of the passports and visas. The person remains anonymous. I don't know who they are and no one is saying… so whoever you are, I thank you for being obedient to God's prompting. We wouldn't have made it through this passage without going deeper in debt. But the blessings didn't stop there.
Monday morning AnnMarie and I headed out on our adventure to Warsaw and back. It would take us roughly 60 hours to get there and back as well as take care of business.
Our first stop was at the central train station in Kyiv (Valkzál). There we found a minivan (marshrouteka) to our first stop. We had been waiting to get all our ducks in a row before we took off. We had got new passports ($150) and letters of invitation. We really didn't feel like we could make any reservations before we had those two items in hand.
Now at our next stop, Lutsk', where our friends Hillary and Michele live and do ministry. We figured if we have any problems we could get their help. We didn't known the schedule of the buses and not sure we would make the connection. Little did we know that Michele was n Kyiv when we were heading towards Lutsk'. But as it turned out things went pretty smooth there. We weren't in Lutsk' 15 minutes and I had purchased tickets to Warsaw. We called Hilary who was at home with the kids, chatted a bit and said maybe next time. Now you have to understand how far I am out of my comfort zone at this point. I don't like going somewhere I have never been before without reservations and a hotel or something we could stay at. I also have never purchased tickets without the help of a translator. We had no reservation and we didn't even know if we could get a
bus for sure. Emily had checked on line and there were a number of hostels with beds available. But still a new town, never been there and not sure of where we were going (had a map but until you are there a map doesn't do me much good). I was a bit edgy the night before and the morning of our departure, but I realized with my wife's help that I was really walking in unbelief and needed to repent. God was there for us we just needed to trust Him and keep moving forward.
Our bus to Warsaw was not all that great, but it worked. It was a 40 passenger bus with lots of glass. But the border is where things got interesting. We arrived at about 8:30 pm (much later than I had expected) and the lines were long, but I guess public transportation gets head of the line privileges. The problem started with our passports.
We gave them our new ones and had our old ones on the ready, but they didn't take them. But then they came looking for us because there was no proof of our entering Ukraine in our new passports. Then when we gave them our old ones they got upset and I was having trouble understanding what was wrong. They seemed upset that we were coming across the border when we were. The problem turned out to be a bit of Russian induced dyslexia on my part. I had looked at our registration stamp in our passport and thought it read 2 Sep (which made sense cause that is when our passports expired) because I saw the Cyrillic letters "cep" which in my mind was sep. But the letter "p" in Cyrillic is really an "r". It wasn't 02 September when our registration ended it as the second of August! The abbreviation was for the Ukrainian word for August. OOPs. There wasn't much we could do about it. I explained that I had thought it said 2 September (and oh yes the Russian word for most of the 12 months sound quite similar to their English equivalents while the Ukrainian words have no correlation to the English words for the 12 months). They wanted to know what we were doing in Ukraine. I explained that we were volunteers and worked for no pay; That I was a teacher and my wife was a secretary. They had us step outside while they called their supervisor.
Now legally what should have happened was we should have been detained at the border and brought before a judge to explain why we had failed to register and then been fined some $90 - $120 each for failing to do so. But the guy decided for whatever reason to let us go. He stamped our new passports with an exit stamp and said just show that from now on. I had been praying for diplomatic immunity and it seems that God granted us just that. Then it was on to the Polish customs agents.
It went smoothly. The only comment they had for us was the question, "Why would you want to work in Ukraine as volunteers?" Apparently, the Poles may have some issue with Ukrainians. The rest of our bus trip was smooth. Now we were not sure where the bus stopped, but Hilary had described this empty lot with a bazaar surrounding it. We arrived there, but not everyone got out, so we decided to stay aboard. The next major stop was at something that had huge letters saying "Centralny" something. I remembered from reading directions to one of the hostels not far from the Ukrainian Embassy that this was a point of reference. So I asked about it and the driver indicated this was where we should get out. It turned out to be the central train station. It was 4:30 in the morning, local. So we just hung out at the train station and tried to get our bearings. Finally we left by foot and headed towards the hostel and the embassy. It took an hour but we found it and learned that the embassy would be opened at 8:00.
We were happy to know that because for all we knew it might have been a holiday. and it turns out that they are closed on Wednesdays! We walked by and stopped at a 24 hour grocery store to buy us something to eat (yougurt & buttermilk. Fresh bread hadn't arrived yet). Then headed to the hostel.
The girl finishing up the night shift was very understanding and accommodating. She let us rest in the lobby and use the bathroom to clean up a bit. She even sold us the last 2 passes for public transportation that were good for all day. We were back at the Embassy in time for its opening even if there was a bit of a line.
Within 20 minutes we had our forms in hand and were busy filling them out. At first we thought we were in trouble because the girl behind the glass said we didn't bring all the right paper work, Yikes! But it turned out she missed seeing the critical piece of paper in the stack we gave her. She really didn't seem too happy to see us and was not happy about how we filled out the forms. When it came time to pay for our new visas she handed us a deposit slip with an address written on it. She told us it was downtown and sent us off without map or directions. My wife said "Hey, lets move to the left away from this line of people." and no sooner than we did that a taxi pulled up to dropped someone off. We got the driver's attention showed him the address and he was able to get us there no prob.
The Rest of the Story
