It’s 5am and I’m absolutely freezing, we’re sitting on a overpass above train tracks, we just got to this country at 3am and hopped off the train below us. My entire team is sleeping around me but I can’t seem to sleep. “Turn around and watch my sunrise” I hear God say, so I turn and see a beautiful sunrise coming over the mountaintops behind us.
Dogs are barking, people are starting to walk past us for work, they look at us with a mixture of confusion and concern. But despite not knowing the language, having no local currency, no phone service, and no place to stay that next night either, I feel completely safe and at home. This country wasn’t where we thought we’d be, actually we only found out a week before we weren’t going to Uzbekistan, and three days before learned we’d be in Armenia. I didn’t know anything about the country except that it was in a conflict with Azerbaijan and had been for years. So, slowly my new teammates wake up and we stumble into town half asleep or deliriously tired from a lack of sleep, determined to find a place to stay. After getting to a cafe we realize that we weren’t supposed to get off at this town, yes we bought the tickets and got off at the right stop. The problem was that we weren’t supposed to stay in this town, God told us to stop here but wanted us in Yerevan the capital city that night. So we didn’t grumble that we could have just stayed on the train and slept for the night, we just found a Airbnb for the next three days while others went to find us a ride. After a rushed almost run to get on a marshuka that we missed, we got on the next one that pulled up, right as we walked up actually. Three hours and no sleep, for me at least, later we arrive in Yerevan a full three hours before our checkin time. So we camped out at a coffee shop until our checkin time, followed by dropping our bags off because the place still wasn’t ready and heading to dinner. Oh have I mentioned that I haven’t slept and the rest have had maybe three hours of sleep? While dragging all our bags around with us wherever we go? We finally get checked in and realize we still don’t know what we are doing for the month, but that’s a problem for the next day and we all decide it’s time for bed, at 7pm.
Now if that seems chaotic and confusing that’s okay! Because that’s how the entire day was. My first day in Armenia was a complete disaster by some standards, probably by most standards actually, but I learned two things that day.
- I love Armenia. I didn’t know why at the time but watching that sunrise I knew I would love the country in a way I couldn’t fully explain.
- My team works in a strange way, but it works well. From the first moment of finding our new teams in Georgia my team was told one thing “this team makes no sense.” And to begin with I’d agree with people, we don’t make sense.
But let me tell you exactly why my team makes sense, and how I knew I loved this team from my first day with them in Armenia.
– Sure my team isn’t one that you’d look at and say “oh I understand why y’all work well together” or even “I can see how that would work” it’s a team you’d look at and laugh because we’re all so different it doesn’t make sense in a regular setting. But hear me on this my friends, we are not in a regular setting. This team was made in a Kingdom setting and with a Kingdom mindset, and why wouldn’t that make sense? 
– Yeah so our name “Stu Pickles and the PinguiNuns” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but the story behind it is what I love. Also no I will not tell the story because we all swore we wouldn’t, are you happy PinguiNuns? I’m still keeping the secret two months later.
– Okay so we have a lot of big personalities on our team, loud people with a lot of passion about a lot of things. But then there’s me, a not so loud but very passionate person who didn’t exactly know how to make herself known in the start. But we all listen to each other and make sure everyone is heard, no one is cutoff and made to feel like their opinions or thoughts don’t matter, we’re not perfect in that but it’s something we are actively working on and making sure changes.
– Speaking of changes our team hears feedback that’s given and knows it’s come from a place of love, so what do we do with it? We make a change. We hear what’s being said and actively work to make a change in ourselves to look more like Christ.
– My team laughs! I don’t mean like a “yeah we get along and joke” no. I mean in the way of “we’re laying on the floor dying in laughter just because someone else is laughing.” Does it look insane to others outside of our team? Yes, you can ask Fillup how it looks and they’ll tell you about all the times they’ve found us in this state.
– And lastly I list probably my favorite part, my team chooses each other. Not in the daily “oh we’re doing ministry together and I’m going to choose to love this person and work with them.” No we don’t do that here. That kind of choosing in is not for us, PinguiNuns don’t play when it comes to choosing our people. We want to spend time together, watching a movie, taking a walk, exploring the town, or just sitting doing nothing together but being in the same room. We choose each other more than we choose to have our own space or time because we just truly love and trust each other. We’re a family and like a family we just live, our lives are interwoven and we know details about each other that we wouldn’t know without open and honest communication and trust.
So if you look at my team and question why we are all together, just come back and look at my list. Or maybe just ask me so I can tell you a hundred more reasons that we just work. Because if there’s one thing I know, it’s that this team just works, and makes perfect sense. 
