EVERY MOMENT COUNTS. A Lesson from Kazakhstan.

Yes, even on a mission trip, it is easy for me to enter into a 9 to 5 mentality. It doesn’t look the same as my routine in America. Our schedules are different every single day on this trip. Maybe we have established ministry contacts who give us a more solid schedule, but that doesn’t happen every month and even when it does, we find that schedules work much differently in eastern cultures.

However, even in this environment, I find many times throughout my days where I turn myself “off”. Travel day, in particular, just make me want to crawl into my proverbial corner with my headphones in and my eyelids shut. I only want to interact with people when I have to.

But this month, God wanted to show me a new approach.

And don’t you love that about the Father? He doesn’t condemn us or try to prove us wrong. No, He merely takes our hands, and gives us new perspectives. So, rather than allow me to close my eyes as I always do in taxi rides, He instead asked me to look up at the man in the driver’s seat.

It was 10pm at night, we had just gotten off a 19 hour bus with no beds and no air conditioning, and we still had about three hours to reach our first location in Kazakhstan. But as much as I wanted to sleep, God made it clear that I was to have a conversation with this man. I’ve been trying to teach myself Russian as best as I can, so I put it to use and asked him questions. He told me about his family. He has a daughter and a grandson whom he delighted in telling me about in the little English he knew and the little Russian I could understand. He beamed as he pulled up pictures of them (yes, he was still driving). There was nothing spectacular about the conversation. It didn’t lead to any spiritual topics or anything like that. But I witnessed a change in him. He grew more animated despite the time of night it was and the length of time we had been driving. And I just felt like God wanted to give him some joy as he was driving us to our ministry location.

And our time in Kazakhstan was filled with moments like these. We were only at our first location for about 5 days, then we traveled to a different host in a different city. Our apartment was far away from where we were working, so we had to take taxis every day in the second city. And so, in almost every taxi, I made it a goal to have a conversation with our driver. Sometimes we would end our conversation and I would pray for them. There were a few times that we were actually given FREE rides (a huge blessing considering that this is their livelihood). There was one driver who had a family member who was a believer, and He was asking God for provision for His family because they were in a hard season. Despite the different outcomes, at the end of almost every ride, I noticed something different that I don’t notice in drivers that I ignore: they have a smile on their face.

Taxi drivers have a bad reputation in pretty much every city around the world. And yet, when I stopped to ask questions and look past all of the exteriors (something I would not have done without God’s prompting if I’m being honest), I saw real men working to provide for themselves and for their families. I saw men with dreams. I saw men who loved their families dearly and loved to talk about them.

And if I had just decided to step back into my bubble in those rides, I would have missed it.

We did some really cool things in Kazakhstan: teach English, pour into children, love on a class of adults with special needs, and pray over the capital city of the nation. I loved every minute, but as I sat down to write a blog about this month, all I could think about were the taxi drivers. God showed me that these men were being pursued by Him just as much as the people they were driving us to and from.

And so, now, I pray that I would take advantage of every moment, of every interaction. I pray that even a smile that I give someone would display the love of God to others.

For those reading this, I encourage you to look at the people around you, and try to see them from God’s perspective. If the Father were standing in front of them, what would He do to convey His love for them? And then remember, that maybe you are the hands and feet that He wants to use to share that message.

Much love,
Meg

p.s. This will most likely be the only blog I post for Kazakhstan to protect the people we worked with in this country. I did put much more information about them in my newsletter though! If you would like to receive my newsletter (with a closer look at what we’re doing), message me!