Reorganization (First Steps)

Just a little mental picture for you: Its 1 am. I am sitting at the train station in Bohumin looking utterly pitiful and crying because I just realized that I had lost my wallet. I had just missed my stop because I failed to notice that I had to press a green button to open the door to get off. Instead I just stood there looking out to where I needed to be as the train started pulling away. I have never felt so helpless. How does one shout for help when she has no idea what the word even is in a language she barely knows? It is amazing though what kind of courage will well up within a person when faced with certain trying situations. After getting off at the next station and asking (by asking I mean fumbling through the few Czech words I know to get some semblance of a point across) an incredibly nice man for help I got on another train to get back to the stop I had missed and then boarded another train to my final destination. I was in the clear, or so I thought. I arrived at the train station to find it under construction and nearly completely deserted aside from a few questionable construction workers. Sounds like a great place for a scene from one of those horribly tacky teen horror flicks. I had prayed that someone would miraculously be there to pick me up even though I was hours later than I was supposed to arrive. No such luck though. As I sat on my luggage on the verge of a complete freak out, some uncharacteristically bold part of me came out in full force. I walked right up the the creepy construction worker and asked if I could use his phone. Amazingly he allowed me to use it and in a brief 30 minutes I was in a car on my way to training  with my friend Lucka and my team. Needless to say, this was not the welcome I had expected to receive my first day of the next six months of my life, but how seldom we get to chose how our adventures begin. Many times they are just as unpredictable as the adventures that got us there. I didn't have much time to think before I left for the Czech. One day I was in a bridesmaids dress watching one of my best friends walk down the aisle, eating mediocre catered food, and dancing to songs I  haven't heard since prom. The next moment I was lying in a hotel room in the Czech wondering how I got from donning a cap and gown at graduation to preparing for ministry in Eastern Europe. Well...now the shock of it all has worn off and reality is slowly setting in. I really am here, just as I had planned to be. For some reason reality doesn't seems to become real until it slaps you on the face. I have to admit it has been a bit difficult to reorganize my thoughts around this new life I am leading, a life that has little in common with the one that reflected the hurried and chaotic rhythm of academia, a fact I am grateful for. The objective now is to embrace fully this new beginning, this opportunity to experience what it is to live in eager expectation of the unknown knowing that, God willing, I will not leave unchanged. I am not sure that I know what it means to be an ambassador of Christ, but I know what it is to be used despite this fact. So here I go. One step in front of the other. That is how all journeys begin.