The Language We Speak: an Adventure in the Ukraine

By Lisa LaLonde

“Come, Holy Spirit,” Tonya was singing. She had translated two of her favorite songs into English for me. She was playing her guitar while I learned it on the piano. “Now you repeat,” she said, motioning me to sing with her. Together we fit into our third language: music. No matter that my Ukranian was days old, and her English had scattered confidence. We were in a new dictionary now, the language of the Spirit. The language where the two of us could move comfortably and in unity though we had met 3 days prior and had never played together before that moment. We felt the beauty and the pleasure of the One who created all languages. When I knew the song, she then taught it to me in Ukranian. “Come, Holy Spirit,” we sang together – and He came.

This was a moment in time but it is still affecting me. It was a gift Tonya gave me, and I’m certain I gave her gifts somewhere in that CFO weekend – the first CFO in the Ukraine! I could tell you about the training, how we foreigners came in and talked and modeled the tool of CFO for 12 Ukranians and one Pole, I could tell you how they jumped in with fearless enthusiasm and did Devotion in Motion with us, sang our worship songs (in both languages, and sometimes a third!) learned a dozen new ways to pray, and did the one thing many said they were the most uncomfortable with: creatives. I could tell you of the beautiful and expressive creative art that came out of them. I could tell you how these young people “got” the CFO program. By the end of the weekend, they understood the difference between a sermon and a CFO talk. They had consensus prayer in a Council Ring modeled for them. They understood that CFO is not about one leader, or even a team of leaders, but about listening to the One true leader – the Lord. So many of them said that silence was hard and new, but now they wanted more of it. On the last day they ran the CFO day themselves, and you never would have guessed it was new to them. As training goes, it was a complete success. I could tell you about all of this.

But there was something different happening in the Ukraine. I realized it after the first day. We had shifted somehow. We were no longer sitting in our two groups, foreigners and Ukranians. We were no longer thinking in those two groups. We were becoming one. By Saturday morning, several cameras were going at once, and I said to Jens Bergmann, our team coordinator from Germany, “That’s the sure sign that we are falling in love with them.” As it should be in CFO. In the Kingdom. We were IN love.

One of the great secrets of the CFO program is that it can build unity, almost without our effort or realization! It’s not about doctrine or similar personalities or styles or even like-mindedness, and certainly not about language. Many of my Ukranian experiences of touching Jesus came through these new friends, with or without a translator. The language of love is powerful enough and has enough vocabulary.

So there I was, experiencing God in the vocabulary of love as Tonya and I played our instruments and sang. I knew this young woman would be more than just a photograph on my prayer-wall back home. She and my new friends from Truskavets and Lviv were solidly adopted into the family that lives in my heart. No distance or language could remove them. Even now as I sit alone at a piano seven time zones away from the Ukraine, I can play “Come, Holy Spirit,” and hear my new sister singing with me. Perhaps she is singing in English. Maybe I am singing in Ukranian. I know for myself I can hardly tell the difference anymore.

© 2007 Cincogatos Productions