Adventures Without End

August 6, 2008 | ETO eReport
Written by Joshua Dasher

This week can only be accurately described with the phrase: Adventures without end. From tourist daze …uh, days… to challenging days in the mountains it seems like things here never go as we planned. However, God is still always in control and always gives us more than we could ever have imagined!

The week actually began rather normally! Tuesday was a "get back in shape after spending a whole day moving" day and was full of shopping and running around for everyone. Amazingly the day actually did go as planned, which probably only worked because there were not any plans for it to deviate from.

Wednesday was originally going to be a day trip to the mountains. However, because of complications we ended up spending the whole day tracting in L'viv. The weather was hot and sticky as opposed to rainy and cold. (L'viv only has two kinds of weather; convenient for the weatherman but not really for anybody else.) All in all the day was a very successful day of tracting and we were able to cover a great deal of territory.

Since four of the team members are leaving in a week we decided that we would change the schedule just a bit and spend the next two days doing tourist activities in L'viv. (And activities that only crazy CMOers do, but more on that later!) We began the trip with a visit to an observation platform on top of a mountain from which we were able to take photographs of the entire city of L'viv! We filled most of our time there taking pictures of the team. Later we went to an outdoor museum of Ukrainian folk architecture, which was basically a large forest with Ukrainian buildings that were brought in from the Carpathian Mountains and reconstructed in L'viv.

The next day began with a visit to the Apteka (pharmacy) museum; it documented the history of pharmacies in Ukraine. It probably will not surprise you that it paled in comparison (at least in the mind of the CMO guys) to our next visit; which was a visit to the L'viv armory museum. That one documented hundreds of different ways one person could cause severe pain to another person, and it was definitely interesting!

Now, our last stop that day is worthy of its own paragraph, so here we go! The last thing that we visited that day was the "Soviet tunnels;" which are basically caves that are carved into a hillside for several kilometers. This was not a museum; instead it was pitch black caverns with treacherous flooring and spooky rooms and echoing hallways! The only light visible inside was the beams of our flashlights as we tramps for kilometers through the darkness underground. We walked for several kilometers this way and explored all kinds of different rooms that were full of strange machinery, but the best part of the whole trip was definitely the stairs! Well, more accurately, a stairwell where stairs ought to have been but were not.

We found a stairwell that was nearly ten stories high and driven right into the middle of the hill. However, the first five stories did not have any stairs. That probably would have been enough to stop your average tourists, but we were not your average tourists! Five of us decided to figure out where it went and decided to help one another climb up the stairwell. (Really mom, we were careful!) We finally did make it out after a great deal of teamwork and sweat, the only problem with getting out is that it ended up being a small crawl-space to the top of the hill and the crawl-space ended in a patch of stinging nettles. (I highly recommend not trying to crawl through stinging nettles!) Well, that concluded our tourist daze!

Saturday was spent preparing for traveling to the mountains and also working on chalk art and a few other things. The team is working on a David and Goliath skit for a children's camp that starts next week so we spent several hours working on that.

Sunday was our mountain adventure day! It began very well; we loaded our packs into Jessie's van and headed up the street… and that was where it stopped going so well. Only a couple of kilometers from the apartment there was a loud bang and the van stopped. Apparently one of the springs on the van had broken and we would not be able to continue. So, since the train station was nearby, we grabbed our packs and ran to catch the train! We did make it in time; however, we found out that there had been massive flooding in the direction of the Carpathians and a train bridge was out so it would only go less than half way to our destination!

We decided we would take the train and then travel the remainder of the way by bus, which we did without any great trouble and finally arrived at the city of Lavriv. Naturally, a few moments after disembarking it started to pour the rain down; however, we threw on our rain gear and headed out steadfastly. We finally found a good camping site not too far from where we needed to be and the sun came out and the weather cleared up! Finally it looked like the day was going to straighten out!

We set up our camp and then all of us except for Josh Steele headed out to pass out "Good and Evils" in a nearby village. We had passed out one "Good and Evil" to the very first house in the village when all of a sudden a small, white car pulled up next to us. They made it quickly apparent that they were part of the infamous Ukrainian border guard. Nathan talked to them for some time but they confiscated our passports and took Nathan away in their car and told us to wait there while they figured everything out. They were gone for an hour before they finally returned! They quizzed each of us on our birthdays, dates of arrival, and information that was in our passports and then kicked us out of the border zone; thankfully they returned our passports without any trouble. Well, that adventure brought our long series of adventures to a close so we returned to camp and went to bed!

Monday was a successful day of passing out film invitations for our film showing next weekend and nothing terribly remarkable happened. We packed up camp and headed back for L'viv without any great mishaps or adventures.

It has definitely been quite the week, but through it all God has constantly shown Himself faithful in all things!

View the Week 9 Photo Album

Prayer requests:
-The Children's Camp: This week the CMO team is going to be working in a children's camp for two days. We will be doing chalk art and also a skit. Pray that it will be successful and well attended!
-Chalk art: This week is the "do as much chalk art as possible" week, and we will all be drawing and preaching many different times. Pray for the team as they minister in this way. Especially that the crowds that we draw have a heart that is open to hearing what we have to say.
-Jessie's van: Please pray that the van can be repaired quickly and without any great difficulties!
-Travel: Four of the team members will be leaving for the states in about a week, there have been numerous complications when it comes to airplanes already, please pray that we have no difficulties while traveling home!