Last night we went to a missions dinner at our home church in Southern California. The speaker, Rudi Wiens from Far East Broadcasting Company, spoke a lot about the organization's ministry in Russia.
I got rather homesick -- twice. The first moment of nostalgia hit when Rudi sang in Russian. That made sense; I've grown accustomed to the language and the tenor of Slavic music.
The second moment, however, was rather random. Rudi showed a picture. I imagine he chose it because of the foreground image: an elderly woman, warmly dressed in traditional clothing.
The picture affected me, however, because of the background. It showed a crowd of people strolling down the street. Two of them were walking side-by-side, each carrying one handle of a plaid plastic bag. We call these bags Poland bags. They're sold in the markets, but the tags inside say they're made in Poland. The are a frequent sight on public transportation in Kyiv, snuggled between people's legs on the subway, taking up narrow aisle space on the buses.
We have at least five of them. We use them all the time: To move, to carry boxes of cookies to the seminary for big events, to haul Thermoses of hot tea to church on communion Sundays.
At the moment, they're stuffed full of my clothes, Dietrich's toys, our cozy blankets ... all sitting in Dietrich's old room, waiting for our return.
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2 comments:
Great post, Josie.
I remember those bags, Josie. Only when we lived in Poland, we always thought they were from Belarus. It seems like all the market ladies who would come over to sell/buy stuff used those bags.
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