Nearly a Year.

So many anniversaries are happening right now. My 4 year anniversary of graduating high school. 5 years of being back from Finland, 6 years in August since I left for Finland. And in less than a month it will be 1 year since I traveled to Eastern Europe for a 2 week mission trip where I built a foundation for a house; but it's so much more than a house a year later. It's a symbol of hope for Jesus to reach the untouched in a country who so purposefully wants to put out His glorious light. I had intentions of blogging what I journaled when I returned, but life took off and I never made the time for it. But now, a year later, I've decided to take the time to share just some of what my experience looked like while I was there. 

A little background: I traveled to a country in Eastern Europe that I cannot name on any internet source to keep those who are continuing work in said country safe from any government infiltration. This country is home to thousands of people who have never heard the name of Jesus, let alone His story of unending love. A missionary that my home church, Olympic Evangelical Free Church, supports has been working in this country with a band who has found a way to reach a multitude of people by playing in concerts and inviting people to come to their church. In this country it is illegal to talk about Jesus (proselytize) in any public forum; the property must be a government approved property for a church. I went with a 12 person team to build a structure on a piece of property that a member of the band owned and was using to host church and youth services. The timing of this mission trip was critical, the property had to have a structure built upon it within 3 years of it's purchase or the government would repossess it and it had been purchased 2 1/2 years ago when we arrived. So our main goal of the trip was to lay a foundation for a building that a small crew would later build. The rest of our time was spent cleaning up the existing building so that it could become functional for various groups. Here's a re-cap of what my days looked like! 

      "Day 1: Travels started off smoothly - we took the church van on the Bainbridge ferry and got dropped off at the airport (thanks Cindy and Emily Snodgrass!). Security in the US was a breeze and we waited in our boarding gate for a good 2 hours. Ended up running into a former coldstone co-worker who was on my same flight to Amsterdam! 10 hours on the plane flew by - I watched movies and read magazines and was well fed (: [seriously though. My last international flight experience taught me to take the snacks they offered as they would be few and far between. But this time the flight attendants brought a new snack every half hour it seemed! I probably gained at least 10 pounds on the first flight alone.] 

     Our layover in Amsterdam was easy - we showed our passports in Amsterdam and went through security a second time and waited an easy 1/2 hour for our next flight. The flight to Poland was an hour and a half and I slept through the whole thing! Getting off in Warsaw was a jigsaw, but we found an exit through customs that had no one in it to check us out. So we literally walked right out into Poland. Weirdest customs experience. We followed the signs for the tram so that we could go to the train station in a different city, but buying the tickets was a pain and very confusing. Luckily, we ran into a nice man from Liverpool named Martin who stuck around awhile and pointed us in the right direction. He wanted a picture with us at the end. We hopped on the tram and took a 1/2 hour ride through Warsaw - so much graffiti! When we got off we were even more confused, but Martin saved us again and showed us the way [I'm still not certain his way was the actual way to go, but hey, we made it.] We had to walk our luggage through a series of dimly lit tunnels and stairwells and then had to drag our suitcases up about 75 stairs.....not sure what people in wheelchairs do in this situation....Finally  we were at the train station where were supposed to meet our two guides, Christina and Dima. But we couldn't find them. We sat looking like lost American tourists in the middle of the train station for 3 hours - meanwhile Bart and Dave went to the post office to pick up our train tickets. Finally, 15 minutes before our train [or what we assumed was our train] was supposed to leave we found our guides! There were miscommunications somewhere and we missed each other, but now we were ready to board the train to our final destination! Stepping on, we almost fell off. 

      The train had very narrow hallways that Bart had to walk sideways down and which were very dim because we were underground; directions were being mumbled around while most of us didn't know what to do, but someone overheard 3 to a room so we started to pile in. The doorways were 2 feet wide and opened to a cabin not much bigger than a bathroom. 3 bunks were stowed and stacked against the wall, although Amber, Alyson and I couldn't figure out how to fit our luggage in the room while still being able the third bunk out! We eventually figured out the under the third bunk was a storage space so we began to roam the train. We found a bathroom smaller than the one on the airplane and smelled incredibly foul. We were told to put our toilet paper in the trash can......needless to say, I decided I could hold it. 

      Kimi, Alyson, Amber and I practiced our beginner Russian for the last hour of the train ride - creating quite the comedic scene as most of the Russian we knew was English phrases in Russian accents. [so not Russian at all actually...] Our passports were stamped on board the train by attendants who spoke absolutely zero English. They gave our passports back so we assumed all was well. We overheard Arlene two doors down trying Spanish with them.....oh Arlene.

    We arrived at our destination, but due to some unmentioned detail, we got off in the middle of the train tracks and had to leap about 5 feet from the train to the ground. [if you've met me, I'm sure you can picture the scene I caused trying to do this gracefully]. We were greeted by Carey, our OEFC missionary and in-country partner, and his team of helpers. Christina, who spoke Russian and English, Dima, who spoke Russian and Polish, and Sasa or Alex, our 15 year old translator. We loaded our things into their cars and set off for the church were we lived for the next 2 weeks. The church was incredibly modern and HUGE. 4 floors of bedrooms/classrooms, a huge spiral staircase that connected each floor, tons of bathrooms (though many didn't have toilet seats or mirrors....), a big indoor soccer/tennis court that will later serve as the sanctuary, and a large dining area. We got a quick tour and took group photos and saw our work site (where we would be digging) and then decided to shower. Kimi and I couldn't for the life of us figure out how to get hot water so our showers were ice cold! There was also no accessible wi-fi at this point, so I wasn't able to get ahold of my parents since Amsterdam; all that they knew was that my connecting flight to Poland landed safely. 

     The first night of sleep was just fine for me, though I can usually sleep anywhere. I woke up at 6 to Amber and Kimi attempting to open our bedroom door which was very difficult, incredibly loud, and required you to slam the door handle down while simultaneously pulling the door inward to release the latch...Amber, Kimi, Alyson and I shared a room with 4 tiny twin mattresses, a small decorative couch pillow, and a fleece blanket. We received a daily itinerary from Carey. The first work day we would start our ministry project and work for 4 hours. Every other day we would work from 9-12:30 and 1:15-5:45."

Wow. That was all just one day. I am so glad I journaled, just as I am appreciative of blogging while I was in Finland. There are so many memories I would have forgotten if I wasn't able to re-read them. I'm so excited to blog the rest of my days! If you're reading this, feel free to take breaks!  

      "Day 2:  Today we dug a trench! But before building we had a breakfast together of cereal, yogurt, bananas, and granola. Carey shared lots (and lots) of information with us about the people we were there to help and we shared information about ourselves and why we came on the trip. We got a tour of the building, which was even bigger than I thought! The bathrooms where we showered also housed 10 different bathroom stalls, a "dunk tank" or sorts that you fill with water to dunk into and then head into sauna [I SO wanted to do it. It reminded me so much of being in Finland it gave me chills. But they never did figure out how to get the sauna up and running so I never got a chance to enjoy it.]. We started our workday outside by digging out dirt and trash from a cement trench and refilled it with potting soil for plants. Then we started the trench. This was no small trench to reroute water away from the house in a rain storm. This trench was 60-70 feet long, 4 feet deep and we had to shovel with square-headed shovels through sand, clay, crumbled brick, deep soil, and trash (used as filling when the land was leveled to sell). It was probably the roughest workout I've experienced. 

     During our break we sat around and chatted while munching on some snacks. Kristi got the giggles [much like my mom sometimes does. Once you get them you can't stop. It's awful and so contagious and one time almost killed us when my mom started choking while driving down to Colorado and I had a panic attack about it. But back to the trip.] She remembered a comment Arlene had made while we were shoveling dirt. The process had each of us shoveling dirt from a big dirt pile into wheelbarrows, walking the wheelbarrow to the end of the cement wall, tipping the wheelbarrow end over end and dumping the soil into the wall. It was hard work and usually required two of us to be able to tip the wheelbarrow. Kristi and Alyson were working together and Kimi and I were sharing a wheelbarrow; this meant Arlene was working alone and somehow Kristi wondered aloud who was helping Arlene; to which Arlene promptly replied "ARLENE'S THIGHS." Probably only funny because we were already tired. But we bawled. And then when Kristi remembered this comment during break we cried even harder.

    Before dinner I took a (hot!!!!) shower and then played many rounds of ping pong with Alex and his friend Andrei."

    "Day 3: We got wi-fi yesterday! I was able to text my parents and talk to my mom via facebook which was wonderful. Yesterday evening we ate dinner (pasta with white sauce and chicken drumsticks!) and we heard Jeff's testimony as well as Christina's - both were very encouraging. Sleeping was easy as pie - woke up around 5:30 and around 6 there was loud music coming from downstairs and everyone seemed to be having a party - it was very strange. 

     Today's work was 3 times harder than yesterday. We finished digging the trenches, laid the conduit pipes by running them from inside the basement of the church, up and out a window, and then into the trench in the ground outside. Then we had the terrible job of refilling the trenches we spent so much energy digging out. We then began digging more trenches where the foundation would be poured. 

    Kimi and I learned some key phrases in Russian that allowed us to play hide and seek with a little boy named Matvei. Though I thought I had mastered the pronunciation of the phrase "I can see you" in Russian, I was later informed I was telling him "I can tie you up!".....whoops. A 13 year old girl named Alla is the daughter of one of the pastors of the church and stayed with us for the week and was so sweet. [We all ended up forming a great bond with her; saying goodbye to her was awful and hard on all of us. It's amazing what a week can do! She confided in us early in the week that she had accepted Christ as her Savior, but hadn't told her parents yet. We talked a lot about it and by the end of the week she told her dad, who of course was overjoyed! It was so special to be a part of that moment.] During our digging a car drove by the church and broke down; it's entire exhaust pipe fell off! Sasha, who is 15, quickly jumped under the car and started cutting pieces of wire to reattach the pipe like he was tying his shoes or washing his hands. It was second nature to him.

    After dinner I played more ping pong with Sasha and realized how snarky and sarcastic he is - it was so great. Although when I called him a brat he quickly retorted "I am not a rat!", so maybe we're not quite there....We all took a walk (35 minutes one way) downtown. We stopped at a convenience store and most people bought ice cream (I had no dollars :( ) I am so tired tonight, so incredibly sore. Side note, it seems to be very European to not wear deodorant. I noticed this in Finland but I'm thinking it's the entire continent..."

    "Day 4: Today I woke up incredibly sore - I couldn't move a muscle. I'm not sure I even have muscles anymore.We mostly finished digging the trenches today and we started building the rebar cages for the foundation and wheelbarrowed dirt from the pile in the back of the building to the front of the building. When we were done we moved inside to start cleaning out classrooms to get ready for priming and painting. After dinner I played more ping pong [I never got any better no matter how many games I played], then we all made a fire outside and Sasha and Alla got to try their first s'mores! [Illegally brought into the country courtesy of the Kreifels]. Sasha, Alyson, Alla, Kimi and I all say around the fire singing songs and playing hand games after everyone else went inside. Then we played a game of frisbee and soccer for about an hour [Attention Aly and Kimi: Mattress, matrix, crabwalk frisbee with sassy showoff Sasha :P)"

The days kind of started to repeat themselves so my journals got shorter. 

     "Day 5: The day started off with Alyson's testimony - which mirrored parts of mine I think. We dusted down the plaster of the classsrooms to get them ready for primer. It was tedious and required dust masks. I also helped move the scaffolding for Bart and Inga to hand the sound panels. [so in the big soccer gym room they needed to reduce the echoing by a lotttt, so we had to hand make a couple hundred sound panels from batting, 2x4's, a staple gun, and some black fabric. These were created in what Kristi liked to refer to as her sweatshop as she was stationed in the basement corner of the church which had little to no light and smelled like, well, a basement. Her and the rest of the girls who built nearly all of the panels had literally no grip strength left when they were done. And that was only half the job. Each sound panel had to be attached to string and then hoisted up a 30 foot scaffold to two people who would then hang each and every sound panel across the beams of the ceiling. The scaffold was a sketchy metal structure that was built by Bart and Company. Bart only has one real leg. We did a lot of praying this day.] Every time one panel was hung, I had to push the scaffold 2 feet left and then hoist up another panel on a pulley system we created. 200 times. It was so awfully boring. 

    On this day I also got to learn how to use the fancy schmancy espresso machine that an American couple, who moved to this country to open a coffee shop, brought in to the church. It was great! I got to make americanos and latte's for everyone in the morning. Though one of our milks went sour so that put a damper on things....Alla shared her testimony this day as well and it was so wonderful; she is too cute."

    "Day 6: Last night we went to a worship service (which was all in Russian) at the community center here. Some of the songs we knew the English counterparts to (like Shine, Jesus, Shine). About 1/2 way through the sermon part of the service my chair broke! We were sitting in a row of old fold down theatre seats and I sat too far forward on my seat and it the seat fell through! So I did a wall sit for the last 30 minutes. It was so hard to keep our laughter down, especially since the service was in Russian so it's not like we could pay attention to it. Everytime we thought we had our emotions under control, someone near me (ahem, Bart) would think about it and start us all laughing again. Then we had Arlene (oh, Arlene) sitting behind us would would nonchalantly, and utterly out of nowhere, very loudly chime in words like "Pikachu!", which just sent us over the edge. I apologize Russian pastor man. 

     Today was probably the most stressful of days - we filled the foundation with cement! The cement truck driver arrived in flip flops and shorts - as was true for most of the workers we worked alongside this week. The cement truck drove over our recently filled in trenches and got stuck twice. Alla and Sasha, our translators, were both out running errands so we literally had no idea what was going on. Arlene spent time talking to Mischa's (the guy in charge of our building job) wife, Anna, who spoke zero English. Arlene tried spanish some more, and got no where. But they formed such a beautiful bond in that hour they spent not speaking. Anna was a beautiful lady who just radiated Jesus. I think she might have been an angel.

    The cement pouring was extremely difficult, and we still didn't have a translator. The cement truck didn't have a boom, so it just poured out of the truck into our dug out foundation and we had to stand in a line, straddling the trench with a shovel and shovel the wet cement around the foundation. The cement poured so much quicker than we were able to shovel however, so it was a madhouse! At one point I got shuffled to the front of the line where the cement poured from the truck and got cement splattered all over my face. We then had to work quickly to smooth out the cement so that it would be level and flat to build upon. Impressed with our work, Arlene's husband, Bob, told Arlene that Kimi and I could come and pave their driveway and began to reminisce about a hawaiian paving company he knew about called Kahuna and suggested that we could call my company "Jocelyn's Big Kahuna's". Kimi and I about fell in to the wet cement. 

     Sasha has gotten sassier lately and has taken to placing bugs in my hair. I'll get him back. Kimi found a giraffe mask in a junk pile, so naturally I put it on and had a dance party with Arlene. The night ended hanging out with Sasha and him being extra sassy. He has now changed my name to "horse-a-leena" and likes to refer to me as a little pink pig. It was like my brothers came on the trip with me or something! Sasha also had a scary resemblance to Micah....."

     "Day 7: A whole week! Today was our first day off of working and boy was it fun! We had a church service with the band that we were there to serve and their church provided us with a translator! Then we headed to Alla's dad's church where Bart gave the message! Their music was so fun and amazing and they sang many songs we knew! After church we went to lunch with a bunch of people we didn't know, but they provided us with 25 pizzas for 24 people so they were alright ;) The pizzas were delicious (aside from the "surprise" pizza that had tuna....) Then one of the band members, Igor, took us to a historic landmark in the country and we had a 2 hour tour even got to step illegally on Polish soil! The youth we ate lunch with wanted to throw us a party - and boy did they! 35 people showed up at the church when we got home and we peeled potatoes with butter knives and grated them to make potato paste for potato pancakes! While the girls cooked we played "Impulse" for about an hour."

    "Day 8/9: Yesterday was just so crazy that I didn't even journal! Igor and Carey picked us up in the morning for our historical tour of the city. We heard lots about the history, though I spent most of my time taking pictures. On this tour I used my very first "squatty potty". If you have to ask, you don't want to know the answer. We spent the last 2 hours of our day shopping and I got some neat souvenirs. Then we piled in the van, which was a panel van, even though we were on a scenic tour....and drove 45 minutes to Igor's grandfather's property where the band and church originated in a tiny 9x9 foot room. Their family cooked for us the most delicious meal, grilled kebab and veel and so many fresh veggies and fruit. Today we were back to work on the property and spent the whole day priming the walls and floors (??) upstairs and hung more sound panels in the gym. Tonight we are heading to Alla's house for another BBQ."

    "Day 10: Our last full day of work! I moved scaffolding for Jason and Jeff the entire day - so boring. [But so worth it when we were done! What  a different it made in the sound!] A chef who cooks in the Hyatt hotel in Dubai came to cook for us today at lunch and it was so yummy! After the work day was over we had dinner (cheesy pancakes with raisins) and then some of us walked to the store for chocolate and ice cream and then I facetimed my mom and dad! Today was boring and frustrating. I think a lot of people are overworked and tired so we're triggering more easily. There were some altercations that were handled in ways I probably wouldn't have chosen, but it wasn't my place to interject. Kimi has been a good person to talk to here - I've appreciated her humor."

   And that's it! That's the last journal entry I made. Here's what I didn't journal on the way home:

We took a train out of the country back to Poland at 5 am; as aforementioned, saying goodbye to Alla was the hardest. The train ride was so much better than our previous experience. The train was 10 times nicer and they served us warm towelettes for our faces and a delicious pastry! When we got to Poland we had to take the tram back to the airport. While waiting I decided to use the bathroom, which cost 2 zlotti! We referred to the bathrooms as "zlotti pottis". I definitely appreciated free public bathrooms upon return to America. I paid my 2 zlotti for the potty, however. Unfortuantely, I read an awful article not too long before the trip about deadly spiders who lived under toilet bowl rims and bit you while you were doing your business, so of course, mid-stream, I decide to "hover-pee" and check for spiders. AND THERE WAS A GIANT SPIDER. I ran out before my pants were even all the way on. And I wasted my last zlotti. And I still had to pee. It took me at least 2 months after I got back to sit properly on a toilet again. Once we got back to the airport we checked into our flight and easily got on the plane to Amsterdam. We were aware of the 7 hour layover we would have in Amsterdam so we planned to take a historical canal tour to kill some time! Someone had looked up directions so when we got off the plane we had to store our luggage in airport cubbies, catch another tram to a different part of the city and find our way to the canal tours. The tour was lovely, and narrated in English, Russian, and Dutch, so that was neat. When we got back to the tram station we had to literally sprint to the tram as it was leaving and Jeff had to manually hold the doors apart while Bart pushed us through the doors and somehow managed to get himself through just as the doors pulled shut. It was like something from a movie! I still can't believe he didn't get left behind. We got back to the airport and had to return through customs and airport security, so we received 3 stamps into and out of Amsterdam in a matter of 6 hours....Our flight home was short and I slept through a good portion of it. 

And now it has been nearly a year since all of that happened. It's so amazing to me, time. I'm so thankful for the experience and opportunity I was able to take and I sincerely thank each and every person who supported me financially and prayerfully! It wouldn't have been possible without you. I can't wait to get to explore more of the world and see how Jesus works in the lives of so many people, in so many places.