You Think You've Had a Rough Day....

So, you think you've had a rough day... check out my first day at one of my missions jobs...

I was reminiscing the other day with some friends about my early days with Teen Challenge in the Czech Republic. Now for those of you who don't know, Teen Challenge is a program to help people with addictions find recovery through the best possible way out there...Jesus. You may think that is a falsehood, but look up the statics and you will find TC has a success rate of 87% last I checked which puts most others to shame (most success rates are in the 40-50 percentiles). So anyways, I was working with former junkies who may or may not be still dealing with withdrawal issues. Fun.

My duties at first were very trivial; teach an hour class in the morning, do light office work, write for the monthly newsletter. No biggie. Anyone really could do that, doesn't take a special person. But then, the director asked me to take on a "charge of the day." This means that for one day a week I would be responsible for the women at the women's center. In other words, make sure they get up on time, fix breakfast for them, they do their chores, eat lunch with them, they do their work at the general center, get them back home, make them dinner, make sure they do their daily homework and such, make sure they go to bed on time, etc. Basically, be in charge of them and make sure all goes well. That sounds pretty simple, so I was a little hesitant but agreed. Mind you, I didn't yet speak the language very well, so my translator would be with me and it was like we would do it together, so not so bad.

First day: Things are going okay, we are making sure they get ready for bed, take meds, and we are acting as mediators to a few issues that arose. But with only 6 students, really...how bad could it get? Yeah, I'm building up here 'cause it's about to get good.

There ended up all kinds of issues, but all the rest pale when compared to one. I am sitting on the floor having a chat with a fairly new student from Bulgaria who has a history with all kinds of issues; drugs, prostitution, you name it. She speaks a little broken English so we can chat a bit, and I know a little (very little) Italian, which she speaks a bit of as well as Slovenian. So, we seem to be having a nice chat, when suddenly she jumps up, goes to their bedroom crying, leaving me staring after her kinda stunned. Then I hear a strange metallic scraping sound, and I run into their room to find this girl breaking through the window, breaking out the screen and jumping out the window, running off.

By the way, I may not have mentioned she had no shoes or coat on and there was a good four inches of snow outside. I found myself staring at the window in a form of suspended shock...at least for a second which seemed like an hour. Then I looked at my friend/translator/co-captain on this titanic-esque ship and she was doing the same thing. "What do I do?" I asked her. "I don't know, you're in charge," she said. Yeah. So I ran out the door after this girl while my right-hand stayed to keep things together.

I found her across the road in a field hunched up in ball staring at the snow. It took me 30 minutes to convince her to come back inside and at least get warm; you know, get some shoes on, maybe a coat. She said she wanted to leave, and of course, we can't force them to stay, but at least let us get ya warm and get a good night sleep and we would take ya to the train in the morning.

She came in and went immediately to the bathroom where she refused to move for over an hour. 6 women, in a house with one bathroom, and someone decides to take shelter in it for over an hour; you can just imagine how many more issues that created. And don't think for a second that those other five women are just as sweet as pie and easy to deal with. Oh no! They have issues too and they seemed to all come out at once.

Did I mention this was my first day? I did? Oh, ok, just makin' sure. So, what would you do? Yeah, quitting wasn't really an option, so let's just say that after finally getting everyone into bed, I didn't get much sleep. Neither did my right-arm, as I affectionately call her. Maybe once I get permission to use her name, I will. She "slept" on the couch outside the ladies' bedroom.

The next day, my director comes to me and says, "So, I hear you had an interesting evening." He was smiling like it was the biggest joke of the year. I looked at him with daggers in my eyes and said, "You know, you could have warned me it could get like this." Then the director of the women came in, gave me a hug, and laughed. I guess this kind of event is not unusual, it just doesn't typically happen on someone's first day.

So, the next time you think you are having a rough day, think about my little story and perhaps you might realize, "Wow, my day's not so bad after all."