By Ryan and Nanette O’Grady
When we first started talking about celebrating our fifteenth wedding anniversary, a mission trip wasn’t what we had in mind at all. We had been saving for a trip to Western Europe, dreaming about places like Ireland and Switzerland. Around that same time, however, Mission Sunday at Rolling Hills came around, and we both sensed that God might be leading us in a different direction. We felt the nudge to use the money we had saved to finally go on the Moldova mission trip we had talked about for years instead.
The work of JMI has been close to our hearts for a long time, and because we sponsor three vulnerable children, the opportunity to finally meet them was something we couldn’t stop thinking about. When we realized our anniversary would fall during the same week as the trip where one of our sponsored children lives, it felt like confirmation from the Lord.
Looking back now, we’re grateful for the way the Lord led us. We knew this would be very different from the anniversary trip we had imagined. The year leading up to the trip had been one of the hardest seasons our family has ever walked through, but in the middle of our grief, we experienced God’s presence and faithfulness in ways we never had before. Because of that, when we sensed Him leading us to Moldova, it felt important to respond with open hands, trusting that His plans for us would always be better than our own.
Meeting the team we would be traveling with became another reminder that God had already gone ahead of us. From our very first meeting, we felt that He had brought together exactly the right group of people. Different personalities, gifts, and experiences came together so naturally that, by the end of the week, it felt less like we had traveled with strangers and more like we had spent the week with family.
One of the things we’ll always treasure most is finally meeting the three children we’d prayed for at home alongside our own children. JMI was incredibly intentional in making that possible, even though each child lived in different villages.
Our first meeting was with Anastasia at the Transitional Living graduation, where her older sister is part of the Transitional Living program. We sat with her during the ceremony, colored together, and watched her trace and decorate her hand on a new doodle pad we had brought. Thanks to our fantastic translator, we were able to tell Anastasia about our children at home and how often our family prays for her. It was a simple, sweet moment that we’ll always remember.
The next day we met Victor at camp. He was four years old and had a hard time saying goodbye to his mom the first morning. We spent quite a while playing together and talking (with the help of Google Translate) with his mom and sisters that first day. After that, if Victor became anxious at drop-off, someone would simply bring him over to one of us and before long he’d be smiling and ready to enjoy the day. Seeing him each day quickly became one of the highlights of camp for both of us.
On Thursday morning we finally met Nichita. Before the trip, we’d read that he loved music and wanted to learn guitar but couldn’t, because he didn’t have an instrument. Before we left Tennessee, Ryan found a three-quarter-size guitar that seemed perfect for him to learn on and carried it with us, hoping we’d have the opportunity to place it in Nichita’s hands. In God’s faithful kindness, we met him on the morning of our anniversary. We shared breakfast with Nichita and his mom before camp, and Ryan showed him a few basic chords, which he picked up remarkably quickly. Since we are both musicians, it wasn’t long before all three of us were playing worship songs together. It was a joy to get this one-on-one time to encourage him to keep developing the gift God has given him and remind him that He can use those gifts in ways he may not even see yet.
Another unexpected gift of the trip was what serving alongside each other would mean to us. We’ve been married for fifteen years, raised children together, walked through seasons of joy and hardship, and served in different ways over the years, but there was something special about serving side by side in a new place that had already become so dear to our hearts and removed from our bubble in the States.
Throughout the week, God gave each of us different opportunities to serve. Nanette spent each day with a small group of Ukrainian refugee children who quickly became “my kids,” a phrase that now needs no explanation between us when it’s uttered outside of the context of our actual children. We still pray for each of them by name. Ryan had the opportunity to encourage Nichita through music, spend time with Victor throughout the week, and build meaningful friendships with many of the Moldovan staff and volunteers. Watching one another love people well, faithfully use the gifts God has given each of us, and embrace whatever the Lord placed in front of us gave us another glimpse of the person we’re grateful to be married to. We came home thankful not only for the people we met, but also for the ways we saw God at work in one another.
There were several moments during the week when one of us would look at the other and ask, “What if we’d gone to Europe? What if we’d missed all this?” In many ways, we still experienced the kind of anniversary trip we had hoped for. We explored a country we’d never visited before, enjoyed wonderful new food, drove through fields of sunflowers, and got to know people whose friendship we’ll always treasure. The biggest difference, though, was that we weren’t just visiting Moldova. We were welcomed into people’s homes, churches, and lives. We worshiped, served, shared meals together, and left feeling as though a piece of our hearts had been left behind.
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