Here's a guest post from one of our summer interns, Anna from Mississippi. Anna is the oldest of 7 and the daughter of a college friend. Her parents (and 5 of her siblings) are missionaries in Swaziland in Africa. Anna is studying Criminology at Our Lady of Holy Cross College in New Orleans. She was the first to arrive this summer and she'll be the first to leave in just a few weeks. But as you can see below...this might not be her only trip to Ukraine!
I had been praying to come to Ukraine for years. I'd never been
set on doing missions work in any particular country--wherever I went was fine
with me--but I'd always had a particular fascination with the USSR and its
former territories. I imagined that some day I'd come up with an excuse for
going there, but I'd never planned on doing missions work there per se.
Despite that, for years
I had been praying to come to Ukraine specifically. My mom knows Clinton from
college, so I'd heard him talking about Ukraine on visits to the U.S., and had
read the newsletters my parents got from him about Ukraine the entire time he's
lived here. He'd even mentioned to me a few times that I should "think
about coming to Ukraine". And I had. But after four years of seriously
praying about it, and always hearing "not yet", I'd almost given up
on coming to Ukraine--at least for missions work.
Last summer, as I was
praying about what to do this summer, God finally said, "It's time. You
can go to Ukraine."
As thrilled as I was
to--finally!--be going to Ukraine, I really had no idea what to expect from it.
I had done some reading, and was religiously following the Maidan movement, but
perspectives on Ukraine and its current climate where skewed at best, and many
were biased. I've only been here a month, and will sadly be leaving in three
more weeks, but I've already come to learn more about Ukraine and this Slavic
region than I could've ever dreamed of. I don't know what the years have ahead
for me, but I know this won't be my last time in Ukraine.
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