“When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like seas billows roll; Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.”

-“It Is Well With My Soul,” Horatio G. Spafford.

During spring break, a group of 30 individuals had the chance to go to the country of Belarus on a mission trip. I was part of the group. Two other students from Missouri Southern and the director of the Baptist Student Union also made the trek to Belarus. On Wednesday of that week, the group was split into teams of three to four people, including translators, and sent to several villages.

I was sent to the village of Garadischae along with Jeff Reed, of Southwest Baptist University, and our interpreter, Dima. Reed said he was excited about the first day.

“It was a pretty crazy environment to adjust to,” he said. “The squatty potty made life a little different for sure.”

Stepping into some of the villages across Belarus was like stepping back into time. Few houses have running water and almost every house has an outdoor toilet. Citizens take a bath once a week at a Russian sauna.

We were placed in a town that had never seen Americans before. The pastor of the local Baptist church, Nikolai, served as our host for the time we were in Garadischae. The Russian Orthodox Church has spread rumors about Baptist missionaries. These rumors have caused Baptists to be persecuted.

These rumors include Baptists sacrifice people, eat children, drink human blood during communion and have “Paradise Night.” Nikolai told us a story of how he was almost arrested for holding church services in Garadischae. One day before the church was registered, he was coming down the street and saw the police and the military waiting outside the church, which is also his house. Nikolai turned around and went back the way he came and didn’t return to his house until he registered the church.

“He [Nikolai] had a lot of perseverance considering the persecution he faced. I admire him for that,” Reed said.

Once we entered the school, the director told us we couldn’t teach without a license or we could be arrested. Later that evening, a group from the school gave us a tour of the town. The group told us a local legend about a hill the town is named for.

The legend says there was a princess who lived in the castle with her father, the king. The king would bring princes to his daughter, but she refused to marry any of them because she was in love with a peasant in the town. A wizard who lived in the town was in love with the princess, but after she refused to marry him, he had the castle buried under sand. The legend continues by saying the princess and her love were in the castle at the time, and, if you dropped a rock down the chimney that stuck out of the hill, you could hear voices. The city took down the chimney because of vandalism.

At the end of the night, we were told by Nikolai that America had set a deadline for war with Iraq. Reed and I were scared something might happen to us at the school the next day.

“We were faced with a lot of opposition,” Reed said. “Then, I just had to break down and give it to God in prayer – 1 Peter 5:7 tells us to cast our anxieties on him and that’s what it took. God wants to hear our concerns as well as our praises.”

The amazing thing about the second day in Garadischae was that we were able to enter the school without a problem, and no one asked us about the war. Reed said he was surprised by how the second day went compared to the first day. He said he was amazed how we were able to go into the school without any opposition, teach the children PowerPoint and then play basketball with them later that night.

“That meant a lot to me during the trip,” Reed said. “That was when I knew God was definitely taking care of us.”

On March 21, we went around the town and bought materials to cook scrambled eggs, bacon, garlic bread and noodles. The original plan was to make spaghetti, but after we couldn’t purchase all the ingredients, we switched to making scrambled eggs and bacon.

A group of children came to the church at 4 p.m., and the group from the school came shortly after the children. We taught the children the game “Honey, if you love me won’t you please smile.” We taught one girl how to say the phrase in English, but she couldn’t say smile. Instead, she said smell. Of course Reed and I would laugh every time she would say it to us.

Later after the dinner, there was a church service where Reed and I sang and gave our testimonies.

“It was exciting to be a part of planting seeds in their lives,” he said. “We certainly couldn’t have done it without God.”

After the service, the group from the school stayed, and we talked until approximately 10:30 p.m. Right after they left, the boyfriend of one of the girls there came by and threatened to beat us up the next morning. We were supposed to leave at 10 a.m., the time the guy was going to show up and put the hurt on us, but the taxi showed up at 9 a.m., and we left at 9:30.

“Overall, I think it was a great trip to learn about patience, faith and encouraging each other as a team,” Reed said. “We definitely learned to face things we would never see here in America.”