Detours

“Do you know any good mechanics?”

Those are not the words you want to hear when you are two days from departure, preparing for a long drive over rough roads in a van loaded with battery banks and power inverters—equipment meant to help churches remain operational in the middle of war.

But that was the question Pastor Vadim asked me.

It was Saturday evening in Poland, which meant every repair shop would be closed on Sunday, and we needed to leave Tuesday morning. That gave us exactly one day to solve the problem.

When Monday arrived, we began making calls and visiting shops, only to run into one dead end after another. The first two mechanics told us they might be able to fit us in sometime later that week. The third shop could not get the van onto their lift because of its size. The fourth mechanic was willing to look at it but was not confident he could even source the necessary parts.

At that point, we had run out of options, so we pulled the wheel off ourselves to see what we were dealing with.

What we found was worse than expected. The brake pads were completely gone—worn all the way down to metal on metal. There was no chance we were driving that van into Ukraine in that condition.

So we turned a parking lot outside a large building supply store—something like a Polish Home Depot—into our workshop for the day. After multiple trips inside for tools and supplies, I slowly worked the brakes apart, only to discover another problem: the calipers were frozen solid.

By mid-afternoon, I was still chasing parts. One parts store turned into two, then three, then four. Finally, around 7:00 that evening, I found what we needed.

We returned to the parking lot and worked until the brakes were rebuilt and the van was road-ready again.

None of that had been in the plan.

I was supposed to be finishing battery systems, testing connections, and packing equipment for the trip. We needed to leave by 9:00 the next morning, and instead of preparing for ministry, we had spent the day lying on concrete with grease on our hands, trying to solve a problem we never saw coming.

Detours have a way of feeling like obstacles when you are on a mission. They interrupt carefully laid plans, steal precious time, and force your attention onto things you never anticipated dealing with.

But detours happen.

And often, following God faithfully means learning to trust Him not only in the mission itself, but in the interruptions surrounding it. Ministry is rarely a straight path from calling to completion. Sometimes obedience looks like preaching, traveling, and delivering aid. Other times, it looks like lying in a parking lot in a foreign country, repairing brakes because the mission still has to move forward.

The plan changed.

The mission did not.