It is 10:30pm on Saturday, July 12, 2008 here in Ukraine, about 5,600 miles from Northland Church in Longwood. I am sitting on one of three beds that are crammed into a room that is about ten feet by five feet along with two sitting chairs. The bathroom is host to probably a ton of diseases and also the strangest toilet I have ever seen in my life. The inside of it is more like a plate than a bowl. There is a small hole on the inside towards the front of it that leads to the tubes, so that when you flush it all the “goodies” are swept away by the force of the water and down into the hole; that’s the hope at least. I don’t know exactly how well this works because I’ve been trying to put off using it. However, I’ve already heard some stories about them not working exactly like one would hope. How did we go from being in some of the most amazing apartments to this? Well, let’s backtrack…

We were all instructed to pack up all of our belongings and haul them from our apartments, which are sporadically placed within a few blocks of each other, to home base: the Music Mission Kiev office. We were to have done this all by 7:30am. I don’t know about everyone else, but I wasn’t exactly thrilled about having to haul over 120 pounds of luggage about half a mile uphill to MMK at 7:30 in the morning. However, we all managed to make it there with all of our things and most of us were on time. We had a short amount of time from there to eat breakfast, make last minute restroom visits and load our belongings and ourselves onto a bus. This bus would be our transportation to the place that brought us here in the first place. It would take us to the sanatorium, where we will be host to about sixty Ukrainian students who want to learn English. Now, don’t be scared by the term “sanatorium”. Despite your initial thoughts, it’s not a mental health facility. This is simply a term that is used here in Ukraine to mean something along the lines of “retreat center”.

When we arrived at the sanatorium, we had about forty-five minutes to unload and get settled in to our rooms. Immediately after that, we were to head down to the auditorium where we would have a meeting about how things would work during the week long camp. This turned out to be a two hour meeting. After the meeting, we took a short break for lunch and then went right back to planning. The skits committee broke off from everyone else to practice the skits while everyone else went into another meeting to meet some of the Ukrainian students from Almaz church who would be joining in the English lessons to help translate and evangelize to the students who will be participating in the camp. When everyone was able to meet each other, we were all given room assignments where we would be teaching from and were instructed to spend some time setting up the room and going over the curriculum once more with the Ukrainians. Once this was over, we all had about an hour to catch up with ourselves before dinner. Immediately following dinner, we went to session. The session lasted for nearly two hours and caused nearly every person from the American team to doze off doing the “head-bobbing” thing every few minutes because we are all basically still being affected by jet-lag. Thankfully, it the session came to an end and not a minute too soon or a few of us would have called attention to ourselves by actually falling asleep and snoring during the talk. However, after session, we were required to attend yet another meeting. This meeting basically addressed some “family issues” and gave us some last minute advice for the day before all the students come tomorrow. Tomorrow we are all expected to be up by 7am and downstairs by 8am for… you guessed it: another meeting… followed by another one at 10:30.

Now, it may seem to you as if this whole blog has been a ginormous complaint about how long and crummy our day was when all we wanted to do was sleep in a comfy bed all day. We may have actually wanted to sleep in a comfy bed all day, but not one person complained about a single thing on today’s schedule. We are all glad to have had time to meet our translators and other Ukrainian friends because we were able to bond and make new friendships. We are all glad to have had such informative meetings because now all of us are experts on what is expected of us and how to be flexible. We are all glad to have had the time to worship and praise God and hear His Word be interpreted to us, even though we were so tired that we all could not help but to have to refocus every now and then. In fact, it was good because it helped us realize that we all needed to go to bed early tonight to regenerate and prepare for the busy and important week ahead of us. We are all also glad to have the accommodations that we do, even if it means having to cram into a small room for sleeping quarters and having to do our business on strange and uncomfortable toilets. If anything, it is a reminder that we do not want to make ourselves comfortable in our rooms but that we want to spend most of our time outside of our rooms and conversing with Ukrainians when we have spare time instead being a lazy bum and taking a nap.

No, this blog is not a complaint at all, but merely a glimpse of how we are carrying out God’s mission that is not always easy and at the end of the day holding our hands up high and praising Him by lifting each other up and keeping our eyes on the path He has laid out for us. We all are very eager to meet our students tomorrow. Please continue to pray for us that we will be prepared for this week and that God will show up in a way that we can only attribute our success to Him. Thank you.

-Adam Stone for the Ukraine Team