I feel like venting

This is a rant.  And also a prayer request.  (See how I got all spiritual there?).

It's time to renew my Temporary Residence Visa to live here in Ukraine.

Last month, you might recall, I left the country for a few days to visit Kyrgyzstan.  At that point, I had already begun the process of renewing my Visa by leaving my Temporary Residency Card with my Attorney.  Now...I took a picture of it so I'd have a copy, but guess what?  I accidentally deleted it.

So, upon trying to leave the country, the Ukrainian Border Guards claimed I had "overstayed" my Visa (the 90 Day Tourist Visa).  That was absolutely not true, of course- I just didn't have my Card with me indicating that I was good for a whole year.  You would think it would be as simple as typing my name and US Passport Number into a computer to realize that I was completely legal and had not overstayed my welcome!

That's what reasonable, normal people would do.  They weren't reasonable or normal.  They fined me $100 US and then let me leave the country without further ado.

Fastforward to ...yesterday.  My Attorney informed me that the Immigration Officials here pulled my "file" and saw that I had been "fined" and "charged" with overstaying my Visa last month.

Funny.  The computers don't work at the nations biggest airport to check my Immigration Status, but they work fine here in the hinterlands of Ukraine.

I was told by my Attorney that an unnamed government official indicated the situation could be expedited for a "fee".  I declined.

Furthermore, and this is mostly my fault, apparently there was an "appeal" procedure I could have taken to prove that the fine was bogus...but of course, I missed the deadline.

So there's my Attorney speaking with the "Director" of some Govt Agency...he's looking at my VISA which clearly shows that I was NOT in violation last month, he's looking at the "citation" that was bogus.  But because the deadline for appeal has passed he says he can't do anything about it.  Sounds like a "Director" that doesn't have the authority to "Direct" to me!

So we're are starting the process to receive a Visa all over again.  Just like last year.  I will have to go to the Embassy in Budapest all over again.  I'll have to spend all that time and money and energy all over again and this is a really bad time for me to be caught up in all of that.  I go back to the States in 2 weeks (for 2 weeks).  I'd like to get it all done before then.

Oh Ukraine.  You model of efficiency, you!

At least I can blog freely about it.  If I had written this in a letter home I would have to go to the Post Office and the clerk would have to record the purchase of the Stamp and the destination of my letter on three forms that require official stamps in duplicate.

A nice little excursion

This is my best little bud, Rostik.  Turns out he must be everyone's best little bud (among those of us who regularly visit the abandoned babies at the local children's hospital).

His story is a little unusual.  Babies end up here because they are out and out abandoned; sometimes they are given-up by a parent or parents that can't take care of them.  Sometimes the "State" removes them.  One kid had a single parent being treated for TB so they had the baby for the time being.  Little Rostik is caught in the middle of a custody dispute and so he's a Ward of the State until the issue is resolved.

He's not overly emphatic but then again a lot of the babies here are fairly lethargic, I think due to lack of stimulation, at least until they start to approach being about a year old at which point they ship them off.

Anyway, he was removed a couple weeks ago to everyone's dismay.  In the year or so I've been visiting the children's hospital, it's pretty much unheard of to know whatever happens to them when they leave, until now.  Apparently some of the girls have been questioning the hospital staff and they were sympathetic to our cause and told us how to go see him at the Regional Baby Orphanage (for kids up to 3 years old).  A church here in town also had some connections with the Orphanage and they put in a call on our behalf.

Yesterday my friend Anya called and invited me to go with her and some other girls today to try and see Rostik.  We left town at 8 am on public transportation to Svalyava, about an hour and a half away.

We had an amazing time.  It's a bear to get there and back, being almost 2 hours away, but worth every minute.  There are about 100 kids at the facility.  If you think holding babies is fun, try chasing a dozen toddlers!

I will say this: the toddlers LOVED the girls and took to them instantly.  No so much with me.  My guess is that they don't have too much interaction with men.  I don't know if I'll be able to visit often enough to change that, but I'd sure like to.

One kid in particular stuck out to me: Her name is Bogdana and she has a cleft palate.  I didn't get a chance to question any of the nurses about it.  I suspect it's something that be surgically corrected pretty reasonable over here plus I know at least one American Dr that might be able to point me in a direction.

Oh, and we didn't find Rostik.  They said he is in the Hospital in Mukachevo, so maybe we'll see what we can find out.

I didn't want to pull my camera out on my first visit, but one of the girls, Maria took a few pictures.

Here's Anya, one of the child-magnets that went with us.  She's the one that invited me to go.

This is the only one that seemed to really like me on the first visit.














Thanks Anya and Tonya, Maria and Katya for letting me tag along today!

Central Asia

This has been a BUSY month!

• April 2 I returned from a week in London (via Debrecen, Hungary).
• April 5 I was on a train headed to Kalush, Ukraine to coach our church for the weekend.
• April 7 I was on a bus to Lviv where I spent the night with new ministry friends.
• April 8 I was back on a train headed to Kyiv.
• April 10 Doug and I met a small team of Americans here for a Vision trip.
• April 11 we drove all day to Ternopol where we visited our ministry partner Ternopol Mission Institute.
• April 12 we drove all day to Uzhgorod- arriving about 10 pm.
• April 13 we toured areas of Uzhgorod where ITeams is engaged in a "Transformation" Project with our lead church.  Later that day we were back on the overnight train to Kyiv.
• April 15 we flew to the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan where we met with a multi-national team of Christian workers- many of them Ukrainians, most of them in their 20's. They are fantastic young people working in a beautiful but challenging environment.
• April 18 we flew back to Ukraine via an all day layover in Istanbul where I spent some time with some fellow Mississippians.
• April 20 Doug and I were back on the overnight train to Uzhgorod.

I have been sleeping and keeping a low profile ever since!

This weekend I'll preach at our Spring Regional Re:Fresh Youth/Youth Leaders Conference.

Next week a World Race team arrives for the month.

Some thoughts about our trip:  

One of my personal goals for coming to Ukraine was to assist Ukrainian believers carry out the Great Commission; ie, to help churches here catch and implement a vision for doing missions at home and abroad.   Actually, a lot of  workers here are working toward that end and that's the primary goal of International Teams-Ukraine (a separate but related entity- I work for ITeams-US).  In partnership with Ternopol Mission Institute, IT-Ukraine and TMI have sent about 80 Ukrainian believers to the Nations.  They are in Africa, India, Central Asia and here in Ukraine.  It's relatively unheard of!  No one else is sending Ukrainians abroad like TMI and most of them are supported by Ukrainians and not US dollars!

So while in Central Asia we met with some of those workers.  Most of them are Ukrainians but some are "native" workers from the various "Stans" that have come to TMI for training and then returned home.  At an average age of 25 years old, they are planting and pastoring fellowships and making disciples while living in often difficult settings.  They are constantly under spiritual attack and sometimes in danger of physical attack as well living in predominately Muslim areas.  They are heroes of the faith.  Pray for them and for the truth to be made known throughout Central Asia and the Caucasus.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. And Marshrutkas, and Subways, and Taxis.

It is, as I write, 12:30 am on a Friday night.  I got home about 3 hours ago after being in a the backseat of a car all day.  I was in the backseat of a car all day yesterday, too.  The day before that I was on a train all day and the day before that on a bus/marshrutka where a woman in the aisle next to our seats threw-up about 45 minutes before we got off.  That was not pleasant.  I've been in the Kiev Metro (Subway) and in a taxi or two in the past week, too.

Tomorrow afternoon I'll be back on a train for an overnight ride back to Kiev.  We'll arrive Sunday a few hours before a long church service then we'll walk miles touring the city.  Early Monday morning I'll be on a plane on the way to Istanbul  and then to Osh, Kyrgyzstan.

• I like traveling more than I like packing.
• I like planes more than trains and trains more than cars (unless it's my Jeep and I'm driving) and cars more than marshrutkas.  I'm more or less indifferent about taxis and subways; I've had good and bad experiences with both.
• I like eating in Kiev.  I had good Chinese food with even better friends last week.  I ate at KFC for crying out loud.  I ate a Domino's Pizza!!.
• I like to read and sleep and listen to music when I'm on the train.  It's not at all unusual to meet really nice and often very interesting people on the train...but I'd rather pull my invisible blanket around me and chill-out the whole way.
• I'm a little scared of what we might eat and drink in Kyrgyzstan.  Got Fermented Horse Milk?
• I'm thinking there might be a Starbucks in Istanbul?

I'll write a lot more about all this traveling next week.  This morning was awesome hearing testimonies from 5 recent graduates of the Mission Training School we partner with.  God is doing some cool things through some Ukrainian believers-on-mission!

London!

When I was stateside at Christmas one of my childhood best friends, Charles Trammell,  told me he and his son would be in London for Spring Break with a team of teenagers from his church, Hunter Street Baptist Church, in Birmingham, AL.  I started making plans then to join them for a few days because, generally speaking, airfares within the EU are pretty cheap.  Sure enough, I was able to get a round-trip flight from nearby Debrecen, Hungary for under $200.

So off to London I went last Tuesday.  I took a cab to Chop, along the Ukrainian-Hungarian border and then caught the train to Debrecen.  My IMB friend Darrel Hathcock picked me up at the train station and got me to the airport on time.

I arrived that evening in London in time to catch a movie and begin a week of eating western restaurant foods.  (Actually, I ate a Kebab from a street vendor that first night!)

I spent all day Wednesday shopping and then met up with a friend that works in the neighborhood of Southall; it's a community dominated by Indian Sikhs and Pakistani and Somalian Muslims.  It's a pretty rough place, at least after dark.  I was blessed to attend a Bible Study at her church that night.

On Thursday morning I met my friend Charles and spent the day with the mission team from Hunter Street.  Charles and I spent most of the day with 3 of the girls on the team and together we prayer-walked the Camden community in London and the girls engaged British teenagers in conversations.  They did a fantastic job and learned a lot and sowed some tremendous gospel seeds.  In fact, the British teens were so open and civil in their conversations that the girls were able to very freely share the gospel with them.

HSBC Girls and some of the Brit teens they shared with.

On Friday the team (9 teens and 6 adults including me) spent the day and night being "tourist".  We visited The Tower of London, the Passion Play at Trafalger Square, Buckingham Palace, a river cruise on the Thames, the London Eye and some other places.  

Great kids and adult leaders from Hunter Street, including youth minister buddy, Smokey Gibson.

The team returned to Alabama Saturday morning and I slept late before going back into Central London to be a tourist.  The city was EXTREMELY crowded because Easter weekend is such a big holiday, not so much because it's Easter, but because it's a long weekend.  Anyway, it was terribly crowded everywhere.  I ended up seeing two movies because I have so little opportunity to see movies in English.

On Easter Sunday morning I attended Hillsong Church in Central London.  It was awesome of course and had a very Revelations 7 feel to it...ie, people from LOTS of tribes and tongues were there!  After church I met enjoyed an amazing Easter Dinner with the ITeams-London Team. It was awesome! I'm looking forward to seeing them all again in August in Germany at an ITeams Conference.

Finally- I had to catch a cab to my bus stop at 3 am yesterday morning to get to the airport and catch my flight back to Debrecen.  Darrel again picked me up and I stayed the night with him and his lovely family.  I caught the train back to Chop and a taxi back home this afternoon.  I'm tired but it was a great week.  Now I have to get ready to "go" again.  Lots of traveling in the next few weeks!

I HATE being sick

I do.  I hate getting sick.  And to make matters worse, I am, essentially, a wienie.  The only thing that kept be from being a complete whiny-baby-patient back when I was married was that whenever I would get sick, Kim would vacate the premises.

It was great being married to a Nurse.  I remember the first time I got sick after Kim died.  I went to the pharmacy section at Walmart and just stood and stared at over the counter medicines for 45 minutes.  I didn't have a clue what to get.  Kim always hooked me up and told me what I needed to do...and then she'd go stay with her sister for a few days!  She was a Nurse and a great caregiver but her own compromised immune system necessitated her hitting the road whenever I'd get sick.

So this past Thursday night I had a bout with food poisoning.  I knew almost immediately that's what it was.  It could have come from any one of 2 or 3 leftovers I had earlier that day.  (Time to clean out the refrigerator!)  Anyway, it's been a long time since I've felt that bad.  By 3 am I was dispensing liquids from both ends.  That's graphic, huh?

By early morning I was kinda scared because I couldn't keep liquid (or medicine!!) down for more than 5 minutes.  I knew where that was headed so I texted my team leaders wife (She's a Dr.) and sent out a Facebook plea for help.  Within a couple hours I had several people offering to pick-up medicine and bland foods for me.

Realistically, I guess food poisoning would have run it's course within a 24 hour period.  Maybe I could have toughed it out.  But I'm glad I didn't have to.

This episode made me think though:

1.  My landlord is battling cancer.  She brought some toast and berries downstairs and told me that she's had the same symptoms for 4 days because of her treatments (see? I'm a wienie!).
2.  What about all those people in the world without clean water who battle constantly with diarrhea with virtually no chance to recover.  People die from what could so easily be treated.
3.  I watched a movie a few weeks ago about Jews that survived in the sewers of Lviv during World War Two.  Many times they would have to eat terribly rotten food.  What would you do if you were starving and the only food you could eat was rotten and would make you sick?  If you don't eat, you're going to die.  If you eat, you're going to get sick and might die.
4.  I'm thankful for friends here in Ukraine.  Medicine isn't sold in grocery stores here.  You can't go to Walmart and grab some Imodium and some Bananas.  You have to go to a Pharmacy and tell them what you want and you have to go to the market or a grocery store.  And not many of my friends have cars so that means they have to get out and deal with public transportation and walking and I do live off the beaten path out in the "burbs".
5. I'm a wienie.

I am about to get really busy for a few weeks!

We're leading worship again this coming Sunday morning.  I've had a lingering Cold and cough now for about 2 weeks.  But life doesn't stop just because I don't have much range in my voice!

Next Tuesday (March 26) I'm catching an early morning Marshrutka (overcrowded mini-bus) from here to Chop where I'll buy a train ticket to Debrecen, Hungary which is only about an hour and a half away once you get over the border.  From Debrecen, my friend Darrell will take me to the airport where I'll catch a plane to LONDON!  Woohoo!

I'll be in London nearly a whole week visiting my friend Charles and his son, Josh and some other folks who will be there on a Spring Break mission trip.  I have some other friends in London, too and hope to catch up with them as well.  I also plan to eat things I can't get here, go to some museums, maybe some Plays or Musicals, take lots of pictures with my new camera and go to an English speaking Church or two!  Probably Hillsong London!

When I return the following week to Ukraine (April 2) I'll have a 3-4 day turnaround before going to Kalush with Christina to coach the church there for the weekend (April 5-7).  Afterwards we plan to spend a night with the Blessing family in Lviv and learn more about their ministry.

From Lviv, I will go to Kiev by train where I will meet Douglas (April 10) a couple days later and where we will meet a team from two US Churches coming over for a vision trip.  We will visit some ministry sites there, in Ternopil (April 11) and back here in Uzhgorod (April 12)  and then go back to Kiev (April 14) where we will fly to Kyrgyzstan (April 15-18)!  I'm really excited about that trip!  We will have long layovers in Istanbul going and coming and I'm hoping to connect with some friends that are in ministry there!

Upon returning to Uzhgorod at the end of that trip (April 20 or 21), I will have another 3-4 day turnaround before working at and speaking at our Spring Youth Ministry Conference in nearby Mukachevo (April 26-27)!

The day after the Re:Fresh Conference, I will welcome a team of World Racers (April 28) who will stay with me in May!

What's your calendar for the next month look like?