Delivering a Message of Sorts…

I’ve felt a new weight on making promises to people in my days lately. God takes them very seriously, so why shouldn’t I? 

I’ve also been processing last year through photos, one month at a time. I’m on Month 9 which lands us in no other than Armenia!

But to understand this story there’s some backstory needed:

– Two months prior I was on a team of all women, Team Spring, with a family in Azerbaijan.

– We visited the home of a man in an apartment complex created solely for refugees of the conflict between Armenia & Azerbaijan. Most of these people had lost their homes, witnessed unspeakable acts (from both sides) and had to flee to inner Azerbaijan. 

– We deeply connected with these friends and family and felt the Lord asking us to visit their homeland that had been absorbed into a disputed territory region known as Nagorno-Karabakh, but self-proclaimed as The Republic of Artsakh.

– The key thing to note is that any native Azeri is not allowed to enter this region from our understanding of the conflict, so it had been decades since our friends had seen their hometown and stood on its soil.

Throughout our 11 months on the field we switched teams about every 4 months and a team change was on the horizon after Month 8, but even with that on the table we made a promise to the families that we would go to see Kalbajar and see who was living there.

Team changes came as suspected but two of us from team Spring ended up on our final teams together: Mosaic of Cedars! We informed our team of our promise, took it to the Lord and overwhelmingly felt the need to go to this disputed region. Jordan, a new teammate, felt a little uneasy after initial prayers which we would come to find out why.

We did our research, we contacted home base and told them our plans and let them know the risks involved. We were going into a lulled war zone that we had no frame of reference for. We had coordinates on a map, a city to start out in and the Lord’s will with us.

To cut what could be a very long story into a more edible piece I’ll summarize the process of getting to our ministry site:

– We made it to Stepanakert, the main city in Artsakh that holds the easiest of transportation. We were shocked at how beautiful and light this city felt considering the history of the region. People were so friendly.

– A person of peace appeared, offered us a place to stay, gave us pomegranates and then ended up charging us half the price because he liked us. He spoke no English. Edward we love you. 

– Through much deliberation, disagreements, weird rest stops, a monastery visit and a taxi ride that put the fear of God in me we made it to Kalbajar. A new team, ready to do follow The Lord.

We weren’t greeted warmly. This place was more desolate. It was in a beautiful area overlooking mountains, but it was cold both in terms of weather and in terms of atmosphere. We were dropped outside of an apartment complex that looked like it could have been from Chernobyl. Kids looked on, parents hung over the balcony and kept a watch on the 5 foreigners with their giant backpacks unload and begin to search for the map coordinates to guide us to the one guesthouse in the entire area. We were really solely in the Lord’s hands now.

It felt like a ghost town, there were ruins of houses, military bases, no signs of life anywhere. We walked around aimlessly convinced that we would have to pitch our tents in one of the abandoned houses. With The sun sinking lower and the temperature dropping we split up to see what we could find when we spotted smoke coming out of a chimney and what looked like a newly placed roof on a structure in the distance.

We had found our guesthouse. The couple living there consisted of a journalist who was writing about the area while also teaching at a nearby school and a historian who supplied All the facts while also helping build a greenhouse and other things for the children. They wanted to help the community out and also let people know the truth about the region. 
We had found them in Wikipedia after they had just recently updated the info to reflect their guesthouse about a week prior to our search. God is so cool. 
We camped on their property but used their kitchen. They showed us around. We listened to their stories, we fellowshipped, we went to their school, we picked apples and other fruits. 

But most importantly we prayed and stood where our friends families had lived and we cried out to God. We took photos and we sent them to the families. We told them about the ruins and the people there wishing to restore the town. We relayed the feelings and heart to the land and to it’s creator. 

They wept. 
We mourned with them. 
We then rejoices together that God was able to send us where they wished to go. We made good on our promise. No, we were vessels for God to follow through on a promise they had not yet heard of. It could have been any team but it got to be us and I will never forget that time.

It was tough to not fully understand the weight of that time there. Our team had tough moments. We didn’t have “normal ministry” opportunities and without being careful, we may have thought We were wasting time. 

We never really know what God wants to accomplish, but we do know that the promise is it will be good in the end. Bittersweet to some, redemptive to others. 
He finds us so precious and so worth loving he would knit our hearts to other believers so carefully and delicately. 

I don’t know what themes you want to grab from this, what you’ll take away but know that God will make good on His promises. Big & Small. Pray for this region, for understanding between countries, for reconciliation, for the family we stayed with and their generosity and hospitality. And for people to stay with them (:

Let me know your thoughts. What else do we have to do right now?(;