To Russia...For Love

 I am so excited about this month's guest blogger...Gina Farkas.  I first met Gina back in 2001 when I taught her daughter, Teresa, in second grade. I loved Gina because she was a direct, honest, compassionate mother.  Through that first year together as teacher and parent we  shared many conversations...but the story of her trip to Russia and the meeting of the then Eastern European guitar player from the band Elan, who would be her future husband...well I am a sucker for true love and the overcoming of obstacles...so this story is magic to me!  Here it is 10 years after first hearing the story and as I read it and remember some of the details that she left out here...of the conditions of life in Czechoslavakia, the cultural differences that she experienced their summer together when she went back to see him, obstacle after obstacle that they met head-on, and the relationship of respect and caring and love that they built through letters, I am once again moved.  I think about this story and honestly, I think to myself...God is so in the details of our lives. And I recall the verse Matthew 6:26  "Look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they?"  And Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." (English Standard Version). 
I have to stop and praise God that in this world of so much we don't understand, we know that He is in the details and gives us hope and a future and a testimony.  Gina and George and their two wonderful children, Teresa and Anthony, are a testimony to the mystery and greatness of God!  I should have asked Gina to write this story in installments...so you could get more of the wonderful details.  But I appreciate that she said yes to my request and I hope that you are blessed by her story.  And besides...one day maybe she will write about this in a book :)

                                                                                          Kim

Kim Dodd came into our  lives when our daughter, Teresa, was blessed to have Kim as her second grade teacher. Kim provided life lessons to my child from second grade through middle school which helped instill the values and choices she makes to this day. When Kim asked me to be her guest blogger I felt honored, then a bit concerned...What exactly is a blog? Sunday in church the music minister told the congregation a blog is sort of like a diary. So, ok, I will share a page or two with you from my diary.

Twenty-eight years ago (omg has it really been that long?!) I had the opportunity to travel to the former Soviet Union. I was an undergraduate student at the University of Alabama. That was in the day of another national championship coach Paul "Bear" Bryant! I digress. I thought going to Russia would be a great way to get a few college credits. I had no idea how it would change my life forever. The tour group went to such places as Peter the Great's Summer Palace and the Hermitage Museum where I saw works of art most Americans never have the opportunity to see. The tour group arrived at a city on the Black Sea called Sochi.

I walked along the the shore and collected a few smooth, flat, black rocks to take back to Alabama. A young man and his friends were talking to some of the other college students. He introduced himself to me. He told me he was from this country called Czechoslovakia. He told me he was in a band. He told me they were having a concert that very evening. I didn't believe a word he said. The university students had been warned not to interact with strangers,not to trust anyone. It was the Soviet Union. We were behind the "Iron Curtain". There were a few students with an adventurous spirit. I was one of those few. We went to the concert at an amphitheater where Russian soldiers walked among the isles holding AK-47 rifles. Well, the band Elan was pretty good and the young man who played guitar exchanged addresses with me. The next day my group left for Kiev while Juraj(Slovak for George) continued the band tour in the Soviet Union.

George and I wrote to each other for 3 years. These were real letters. Snail Mail. There were no cell phones, skype, or e-mail back then. Back then was just 1983! It would take seven to ten days for a letter to arrive after it was mailed from Eastern Europe. He kept all of my letters and I kept all of his. We spoke on the phone once or twice a year. Then in 1986 I went to see George in Czechoslovakia. When I got off the plane and saw the soldiers with the AK-47 rifles, it all came flooding back to me. The lack of freedom of speech, freedom of travel, freedom of religion, and very limited individual rights made me question how this intelligent, passionate man could even exist under such horrible conditions.

That summer George asked me to marry him. My brother thought I had been brainwashed by the communists! It took another year to obtain the documents and permission of our respective governments. In the U.S., the documents were legalized, super legalized, and translated at the Czechoslovakian Embassy in Washington, D.C. The country in which we were married no longer exists. It divided during the Velvet Revolution into two countries: the Czech Republic and Slovakia. I digress. None of my life has been as I imagined it would be. It is still a fascinating journey. We know what we have together has been in the hands of God. We sometimes still shake our heads in disbelief about meeting each other from completely different worlds and creating this life together with such wonderful children. Love is love. It grows through the reflections of all the memories.  Love creates a lifetime connection that can start with a chance meeting in one's life. Being open to life's opportunities, chance encounters, and new experiences can change your life.

 "A new command I give you: Love one another" John 13:34.



                            
                George and Gina in Prague September 2009
              

      St. George Island December 2009 with Teresa and Anthony

               
  The very young Juraj (George) (on the left) with the band