God Took Care of Me Again!

Just a quick post today because I am not even sure which day “today” is. I need to hop into bed for about four hours of sleep before getting up in the Ukraine to a new day, a day full of meetings and work. It is still Wednesday afternoon in the USA, if my telephone clock is correct. So, I will label this a Wednesday post, make it short, share one of God’s small mercies for which I am always (well, at least usually, thankful), and go to bed.

I came into Kiev this evening (actually, early this morning) with two colleagues. Neither was from the Ukraine and therefore not aware of how to handle the taxi situation from the airport – how to tell which ones were safe, how to gauge the price, etc. Fortunately, we did not have to know anything. The young man sitting beside me and I got into an interesting conversation. He told me about how he got into working in Germany albeit being a Ukrainian. Then he asked me how it was that my fate brought me to the USA. For a minute, I thought I had misunderstood something in Russian, then I realized that he had just paid me a huge linguistic compliment. I explained that I had grown up in Maine. He still did not understand and asked how my parents had gotten to Maine, at which point I told him I had only a Russian tongue and not a drop of Russian blood. He laughed at his erroneous assumption that I was a Russian emigrant to the USA, and then, realizing that I was a foreigner in a strange land (not entirely strange, but it has been 15 years since I was last in Kiev), he offered to share with the three of us his company’s driver. What an easy way to get to the hotel!

I gave him my email address and asked him to keep in touch. He may. It seems like quite a repeat of my meeting with Eddie Pareiras of Campinas, Brazil. Once again, without my even asking, God took care of me. How otherwise would one explain the perfect seatmate on the plane? Luck? Okay, I suppose one could. But such luck twice, in two different hemispheres? I think luck may be, as someone once said, those times when God chooses to be anonymous!

Yippee! I’m off to bed, wishing you all a blessed day, evening, night…whatever it is where you are!