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!