The Trek Through Eastern Europe

Last you heard from me, I was in Prishtina, Kosova, in the first few weeks of leading the outreach phase of DTS. It's been just around two months since then, but it feels like ages. I've often compared DTS to a time warp, where you seem to somehow pack years of life into a few short months. This is certainly no exception.

KOSOVA:

I think I can say without fail, the Kosovar people stole our hearts and some very cool stuff happened. For example- what God can do with a small act of service:

Remember how we were picking up garbage? Well, apparently the brother of a Mosque leader lived in our apartment complex and saw us working. He told the mosque leader, who was really enthusiastic about what we were doing, and called the news station to interview us on the national evening news. A mosque leader put us on national television!

Another highlight for me, personally, was our partnership with the local Cru chapter, who let us run three 2-day events throughout the month of April. On the final night I got to share the full message of Jesus with a room full of Muslim university students. Who listened attentively. =D

In our last few days in Kosova, we helped run a youth conference where a young Muslim girl gave her life to Christ.

ROMANIA:

Next we had two and a half weeks in Romania, where our work consisted mainly of evangelism, and preaching and leading worship in churches, both in the city of Craiova and in a small village an hour away. Lots of public speaking. Towards the end, we got to share at a young women's prison with some 20 or so very friendly and attentive girls.

By the way, I think I really love Romanians. =) Warm, open, friendly, loud and FUN! Fast friends.

UKRAINE:

Now we're in in the last leg of the trip- already!- in Ukraine, working with orphanages. We are here just 10 days before we end the school with a couple weeks of teaching and debriefing. It's been fun, its been very challenging to lead, and I am amazed at how quickly the time evaporated.

Something has surprised me during this time: I didn't anticipate how at-home I would feel in these countries, how much I would come to love eastern Europe. But I think I fit in more in Kosova and Romania than I have anywhere else in Europe I've gone.

Including our bus and train journeys between countries, its been 7 countries in two months (although we only actually stayed in 3 of them more than a few hours). Still, I think that's a new record for me.

What a ride it's been!