Friday, 26 June 2009

• The rules are always changing.....

  Well, this is a new one.  Today I got ready to leave, went to the embassy and got my visa with very little problem. By the time I arrived at the train station, I had just less than an hour to get on the train, enough time to pick up some Chicken McNuggets for the road and settle in. My friends and I happily made our way to the train car I was riding in.  I got my ticket out and put it in the picture page of my passport, ready to hand it to the conductor.  Everything was working like clockwork.  Until I handed my documents over.  She took one look at my passport and informed me that I couldn’t go on this train.   What?  I have a ticket.  That doesn’t matter, she said.  Only Ukrainians and Russians can travel on this train.   What? I have ridden on this train several times before.  I have a visa for Russia.  It isn’t a question of a visa, young lady.   Only Ukrainians and Russians are allowed to pass the border where this train passes.  A conversation with the head conductor made things more clear, but more bleak.   As of April 1^st, Ukraine had made a new rule, stating that they would only allow Ukrainians and Russians to travel across that station on the border.   So, any other nationalities (even Belarussians, Moldovans, or other  border nationalities) can not leave Ukraine at that point on the border.   Russia would have let me in, but Ukraine wouldn’t let me out.

  I’ll be honest.  I was pretty mad.   Mad that I had bought the ticket well after April 1^st and the person who sold it didn’t say anything.   Mad that they would make such a crazy rule, and that they wouldn’t let me out!  (Okay, fine, you don’t want to let people into your country for some reason, but you won’t let them leave!?!)  I was mad because I thought it was the only train that went to Voronezh, and didn’t require me to travel through Moscow. Mad that I lost about 12 bucks on the ticket change because they made some crazy rule, didn’t tell me about it, and some how that is my fault.  Every last “the-customer-is-always-right” instinct I had kicked into full gear, let me assure you.  

              But I wasn’t the only one affected by this new rule today.  There was a family of Moldovans who were also headed to Voronezh (my final destination city in Russia) that day.   A family of four were traveling, but only one of them held a Moldovan passport, and not a Russian one.  So, the whole family had to change their tickets, and change to another train, even though three of them were Russian citizens.  (Thankfully, there is another route, that goes straight to Voronezh, though it takes two hours longer and is more expensive.  That fact that it just happened to leave later that night, and that there were places available was a miracle in itself!).    I was very humbled by this families reaction.  It was clearly going to cost them a lot more than it did me, and it was clearly inconveniencing them even more than me (I had an apartment to go to in Kiev and wait out the 8 hours).   But they just rushed to get things changed, and laughed about it all.   That customer rules the world mindset that my own nation has imbued me can sometimes be a real curse, a disease, and a sin.

              Strangely enough, it is probably one of the biggest frustrations here.  It hits in so many different ways: rude store clerks, not getting “justice” when something breaks, or is less than satisfactory, very inconvenient spontaneous rules or changes.    And at the heart of it all is an ugly word that I hate to think about: Pride.   How dare they treat me that way?  I paid for this!!  (My money is supposed to buy me comfort and convenience along with the product)   It isn’t fair, I don’t deserve this, I did everything I was supposed to do and they have no right to change.   I, I, I, I, I, me, me, me, me…..the world suddenly gets pretty small (population: One) when my sense of entitlement gets crossed.

              As we took the Metro back again to my friend’s apartment to wait, I was a little jealous of those Moldovans.   I know they get frustrated too, but their lives, with the difficulties and the lack of justice that are a very common occurrence, has prepared them for life in this world where things are not fair, and there are problems that no one is really responsible for, no one is guilty, it just stinks.  They seem a lot less likely to get bent out of shape because of inconvenience.  

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              Now I have arrived in Tambov, after about 19 hours in the train.  You know what God did?   Well, first of all, this train had a 3 minute stop in Lipetsk, which is only an 1 and ½ away from where I leave, instead of 3 ½ hours, so it turned out to be much more convenient.  But even better still, I spent many hours on the train talking to the daughter from the Moldovan family, and another lady on the train, who used the bunk next to mine to lay her child down for a nap.   The Moldovan is Orthodox, and the other lady used to be Jehovah’s Witness, and now doesn’t go to church anywhere.  We talked a lot about the Bible, Jesus Christ, the differences between the different denominations, etc.    I got the chance on this train to share about Christ.   I guess that is a pretty good reason to have to stay in Kiev for 8 more hours.

              I hope I learn from this.  Instead of asking the question: “Why is this happening to me?”, the next time I encounter such an inconvenience, I want to look at it with excited expectation:  “What is God going to do with this?   What does he have in store for me?”   I want to remember what the Lord promised us through Paul in Romans:

   

  Всё содействует к благу!

   

  Everything works together for good….

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