Kyiv Craziness

The last few weeks we have been trying to visit a Western Ukraine city called Mukachevo. With tons of snow and a few other details, it seemed like we weren't going to be able to make it. The whole reason why we wanted to go there was to spend time with a young family (The Browns) that will be planting a church there summer. We wanted to pray with them over the city, to seek the Lord and see His vision for the city.

Well, over the last few weeks, Ukraine has seen some serious amounts of snow. The trip to Mukachevo wasn't going work out, seeing that many of the trains and public transports were closed, along with the roads. Kyiv got hit the hardest with the snow, and Kyiv is where the Brown are living at the moment. They weren't going to be able to leave the city for a while. I guess the Lord had other plans for us.

Instead of meeting in Mukachevo to pray and fellowship, the Lord told us to just go to Kyiv to spend time with them. So, this past week, we went to Kyiv. We enjoyed our time praying and fellowship with the Browns, talking about the Lord's plans for the church plant in Mukachevo.

Our plan was to head back to Ternopil Friday night, because we had ministry commitments all day Saturday.

Thursday we planned to meet a few other friends in Kyiv... and thus began the longest day of our lives:

Let me first explain that Kyiv is very different from Ternopil. Ternopil feels like a village compared to Kyiv. We are used to walking most places in under 20 minutes. When taking public transportation, we're used to hoping on a marshrutka and arriving at our destination in about 10 minutes. Kyiv is whole different story. Horrible traffic, lines of people waiting for Marshutkas, swarms of people in the metro stations. The large amounts of snow around the city didn't help the situation either.

Now, we've spent a lot of time over the years in Kyiv, on short-term trips and visits, but we've now become accustom to our small little Ternopil.

Thursday morning, I got online to check the train schedule so that we could swing by the train station after we met our friends to buy our tickets for Friday night. Online, there were zero tickets available for the weekend. The website isn't always trustworthy, so I didn't give it much of a thought. We still planned on swinging by the train station to get tickets back to Ternopil on Friday night.

To make a long story short, we spent close to 2 hours on public transportation (Marshurtka, metro and taxi) attempting to get to the restaurant where we were meeting our friends for lunch. Showing up 30 minutes late for lunch, we had a great time catching up with our good friends Kevin and Debbie.

After lunch, we had to go meet up with another missionary family that just recently returned from the States that had brought some medicine for Emily. But we quickly saw our day dwindling away as we rode public transportation.

We had dinner plans back at the Brown's apartment, they said they would have dinner ready for us and our other friends Reese and Bekah.

We knew things were going to be close on time if we had to stop at the train station to buy tickets as well as pick up Emily's meds. This is when Emily and I decided to spilt up. She would go pick up her medicine, and I would go buy our train tickets.

This was also when we realized that Emily's cell phone was dead. We only had one phone. I gave Emily my phone and decided that we would just plan to meet at a specific McDonald's on the metro line once we finished our errands. We figured we'd be done around the same time.

We got to the transfer station on the metro, and we parted ways. There went my wife, disappearing into a crowd of hundreds of people. I had no way to communicate with her. I never would have thought I'd be in a situation in which I would encourage my wife to travel around Kyiv by herself. But at this point, we really had no choice. So I just began praying that the Lord would watch over her, trusting in Him that there wouldn't be any issues and we would see each other at the McDonald's in a few hours.

I got to the train station and was overwhelmed by the mad house. I guess with the combination of the snow, cancelled trains the previous week, and spring break, everyone was traveling over the weekend. There were about 20 open ticket windows with lines of over 50 people per window. I committed to a line, and about 25 minutes later I'm halfway through the line. This is when the ticket lady decides her shift is over and closes her window. Shouting and pushing break out around me. People are running for the next shortest line. I take off sprinting to a somewhat short line. This line goes pretty quickly, but apparently I was in the refund line this time. They wouldn't sell me a train ticket. So I sprint over to another window and start the waiting process all over again.

By this time it has been about an hour of waiting. I'm sure that Emily is waiting for me at McDonald's. Thankfully, I get through my third line fairly quickly. Praising the Lord that my language skills seem up to par, I successfully communicate that I would like two tickets to Ternopil on Friday night. However, all trains headed to Western Ukraine are sold out... for the entire weekend. The only available tickets are for that night at 8:17... only a few hours away. I buy them.

Tickets in hand, I'm back on the metro headed to meet Emily. In the meantime, Emily got a little lost trying to meet up with our friends who had her medicine. Luckily, she had my phone and was able to call for help, and they sent out their son to find Emily (Thanks Phillip!).

Eventually, we were back together at the McDonald's. We had about 2 1/2 hours until our train. We still had to head back to the Brown's place to pick up our bags. We were still felling optimistic that we could have a quick dinner with them, so we met up with our other friends Reese and Bekah and began the public transportation journey once again. This time it was rush hour. The metro was crowded, the marshurtka was slow and stuck in traffic, and again I found myself anxiously watching our departure time growing closer and closer.

Thankfully, we had great company with us on the marshurtka, and we were able to catch up with Reese and Bekah, two of our favorite people.

By the time we finally picked up our bags and had a hasty goodbye with the Browns, we had about 50 minutes until our train left. Seeing that it took almost 2 hours to travel there, we knew we'd miss our train unless we took a taxi. Reese, who speaks Russian very well, saved our lives by calling the taxi and communicating with the taxi driver about our time crunch (Not having time for dinner the Brown's packed us dinner to go! Thanks guys... It was delicious!). On the way to the train station, we dropped Reese and Bekah off at their metro stop and then the taxi driver begins to show off his skills.

Weaving in and out of traffic, this taxi driver we determined to get us to our train on time. Scared for my life, but more scared we would miss our train, I was excited to see him pushing his little Lada to the max. If this was the way the Lord wanted us to go, I was okay with it. By the way, from the moment we got into the taxi, the gas light was on. As I was praying that we wouldn't die in a car wreck, Emily was praying that we wouldn't have to stop for gas. Oh, also, there were no seat belts in this Lada... We were praying about safety for that too!

By the grace of God, we screech up to the train station at 8:10, 7 minutes until our train leave. "Очень большое спасибо" (very big thank you), Emily expresses to the proud taxi driver. The driver starts to brag about his car, "моя машина очень хорошая" (my car is very good). We thank him one more time and take off sprinting towards the tracks.

I think we made the taxi driver's week, he was so proud of getting us to our train on time, and he made our week because he saved the day and got us to the train station without getting in a car accident.

One we were inside the train station, we had to figure out which platform our train was on. I'm a very slow reader in Russian. It is not my strong suit. However, before Emily could even locate the message board in the station that told us which track our train was on, I found it, read it, and shouted "we're on track five!" and took off up the stairs three at a time (Emily amazed me by keeping up, even with her short legs).

We jump on our car and the train begins to roll away just moments after we got on. We made it!

All in all, it was a long and stressful day. But looking back, God is so good. We really got to practice 1 Thessalonians 5:17 by praying without ceasing throughout the whole day. The day could have been so disastrous in many ways, but God is faithful to hear our prayers. What an awesome God we serve.

Hope you guys enjoyed the story. Life as a missionary certainly never ceases to produce good stories.

God bless you guys,
Byron