Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

What have I been up to the past four days? Exploring various forms of transportation! We started off with the classic airplane, followed by another airplane (which included the trek of the century from Z gate to A!). Then we took a bus to the hotel for the night, got five hours of delicious horizontal sleep, and then took a cab to the train station where we spent the next 23 hours on trains or platforms :) all of this was accompanied by 150 pounds of equipment each and a quarter of a mile walk from one end of each platform to the other.

Needless to say, I now have jacked forearms, blisters on my hands and feet, and sore shoulders. But after finally arriving and unpacking everything we brought, we covered the conference room floor with our treasures and it started to make those heavy bags feel so worth it as we get excited to serve the refugees here.

There are so many little things that have become great bonding experiences for us and have really begun to bring our team together :) the laughs, inside jokes, and hard stories made the time on the train enjoyable (even if it was quite jolt-y in the middle of the night and stagnant in the heat during border checks)

The past few days also included a bit of medication sorting, combat tourniquet class (where much to my dismay I learned that I had a phony tourniquet!), and funny snacks at the local grocery store. We also enjoyed some borsht, hot tea (even though it’s like 100 here), an “excursion” to the local town center, and one of the refugee homes the church is building. All in all, a great and quiet first few days on mission. Definitely thanks to all of your prayers! No bags were lost! No issues at border control! No sirens! (Ironically I got an alert from the government about protests in Poland happening tomorrow, so in a way, we’re safer here ;)) Thank you for your prayers.

We also discussed what will happen if something does progress with the war. A sobering moment, but a good discussion which has left us all feeling prepared and understanding of our roles in evacuation and getting to safety and all that jazz. (And I’m happy because I’m not quite at the very bottom of the dog pile ;))

We also met our translators and the medical student shadowing our director. She is a sweet girl and we are bunking with her at the hostel so I am looking forward to the relationship that gets to form with her and the others during this trip

Tomorrow we meet with the not-mayor-mayor (there is no mayor right now, but this guy basically has that role without the title) and we will pack up medications into single dosages. Once we have all of that settled, it will be a walk in the park getting set up at each location over the next week.

I am definitely going to sleep well tonight — no airplane seats!

Excited to share with you all that God is doing here! Stay tuned!