People don’t necessarily talk to one
T
he electric train from Irpin to Kiev
runs from 5:30 a.m. until 10:25 p.m., and crowded with commuters, it was
impossible to get a seat in the mornings. In the evenings, however, the trains were practically empty. It was 2001, and I was living in Kiev, but already beginning ministry in Bucha and Irpin. Most of my friends resided in Irpin, and I traveled often on the commuter trains. One evening in May, I caught the last train leaving Irpin for Kiev. The empty cars had a sort of haunted feeling. In the entire train car only four or five people were seated. I had pulled out a book to read when a young lady sat down across from me.
another on public transportation. It’s not even appropriate to greet a stranger when he sits down beside you or across from you. But there was something about the way she sat down and the way she looked at me that gave me the impression that she was “sitting down beside me.” De- spite all the empty seats on the train she deliberately sat down across from me.
Kanaykinas
Her clothes were of poor quality and rather revealing. The dirt on her high heels told me that she was from a village somewhere. Feeling propelled by the Holy Spirit, I asked her one simple question, “Where are you going?” This girl, Sveta was her name,
probably about 15, whom I had never seen in my life, began to pour out her story. She was from a village not far from Irpin. Her friends had invited her to go to Kiev, to go dancing and partying and then spend the night at the house of an acquaintance. But about halfway to Kiev, her friend had hooked up with a guy on the train, made other plans and got off at the Irpin stop with him. And now Sveta was on her way to Kiev, a city of three million people, a city she had never been to before, and a city where she knew no one—and there were no trains out of Kiev. She was stuck in the city until morning. The thing that worried her the most was where she would spend the night. She had no where to go.
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