LOVE FIRST…LOVE MOST

It was so unexpected. I did not see it coming. I was not prepared for it. My reaction was one of shock, not pleasure.

Uncle Fester kissed me. Right on the lips!

Well, it was not really Uncle Fester from the Addams Family TV show. It was his doppelganger. His twin from another time and country.

There are kisses that rock your world. That electrifying unforeseen first kiss. The forever sweetness of that marriage kiss. That fantastic baby-breath kiss of your child. This kiss was unlike any of those.

Let me set the stage for becoming the kissing booth for Uncle Fester and his twenty lookalikes.

I met the Uncle Fester clone in Moldova, the poorest country in eastern Europe. The country is sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania. The nation was a former part of the Soviet Union. It still had the presence of Russian police and the evidence of Communism in all its buildings and impoverished people.

The church I pastored became involved with some special people from Moldova. We supported future Kazakhstan missionary, Kairat, as he studied in a Moldovan college. Nicolae and Svetlana Sili are two of the most precious people on the planet. They carry God’s love to orphans and women’s prisons, as well as organize camps for youth and senior citizens throughout Moldova.

Our concern for the homeland of these world-changers led to an invitation for our staff to visit Moldova to conduct a conference for church leaders from around the country. Steve, Derek, and Gabe would depart two days prior to allow them some additional stopover time in Rome.

I am not a world traveler. It is kind of like cooking. I do not mind doing it; I am just not very good at it. It seems to end up in a mess.

The travel highlight for me occurred because of a travel snafu. The airline mistake allowed me to engage in a one-day solo walking tour of Rome, the City of Seven Hills. Maybe all roads do lead to Rome.

Somehow, I covered most of the three-day and five-day tour features in a fast-paced jaunt from morning into the night. The City of Fountains did not disappoint. I saw St. Peter’s Square, the Vatican, and the Sistine Chapel with Michelangelo’s’ ceiling masterpiece.

I experienced the Roman Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Roman Forum, the downtown shops, and outdoor cafes. I was captivated by the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, and the site of Paul’s imprisonment.

Those were the highlights. The lowlights would include travel problems.

My flight from America found me seated next to a sick, crying two-year-old. The green stuff from her nose was running down her chin. Her tired and unresponsive mother remained conked out for most of the transatlantic journey.

The crying toddler never stopped whining and sniffling. Occasionally, a stewardess would stop by to offer a sucker. I told the stewardess I preferred the cherry ones.

I was stranded in the Rome airport, unable to get to Romania or Moldova. Apparently, the airline agent considered my ticket as unacceptable. Invalid. Counterfeit.

Travel advisory: Be cautious about suggestions to use Gorilla International Discount Tickets. It looked as if the Leonardo da Vinci terminal might be the location of my Last Supper. No wonder Mona Lisa was not smiling. She missed her flight waiting on the airport gate attendant to return from a cappuccino break.

The airline was unhelpful. Western Union was shut down. Language problems dominated every attempt to resolve the situation. My only alternative was to get a hotel room in the city.

On the twenty-five-minute trip from the terminal to the city hotel, the taxi was intercepted by motorcyclists who hammered their fists on the car windows and hood. It was similar to a scene from The Lincoln Lawyer, starring Matthew McConaughey. These biker gang members rode mopeds instead of big Harley-Davidson hogs and the passenger carried no resemblance to the movie star.

Apparently, the taxi driver owed some money he lost on some soccer match bets. He ended up outside the car in a stereotypical Italian argument. Loud language. Passionate differences. Demonstrative hand gestures which included verbiage that needed no translation.

Maybe this was why Rome was not built in a day. The Italian police arrived with sirens and lights to disperse the fight scene and free the flow of blocked traffic. Welcome to the Homeland of Pizza.

I encountered another police intervention in Moldova, a nation filled with political unrest. Russian police interrupted the hotel meeting. They suspected the clandestine meeting involved some criminal activity. They insisted on checking our passports with threats of imprisonment. They lined our group up against the hallway wall.

I was a little nervous since my passport was still at the airport under review. I avoided being carted down to the police station when the Gestapo-like enforcer stopped his passport check at the person standing in line next to me.

You probably think I make this stuff up. No. I was about to be arrested when divine intervention or the sight of a free doughnut distracted the interrogator.

There were food challenges besides one less doughnut. The Sili family went to great efforts to provide fruit and muffins for breakfast. The rest of the time, every meal involved POTATOES…in every form imaginable and in some ways unimaginable. Everything was boiled, so we were never served French fries or a baked potato.

There was one major exception to the Potato-fest. Kairat’s family made a huge sacrifice to feed us a delicacy…HORSE MEAT. Originally a nomadic people, the Kazakhs considered the horse as a proud feature of the Kazakh culture. Horse meat is served at special occasions to honor the guests. The mother was so proud and so happy to host us. I insisted that we were not honorable guests, but the horse was already on the table.

I could not understand any of their language except for Kairat. I eventually learned zhylky minezdi referred to “horse” and  blctblk tamak meant “hot food.” As the platter was passed to me, the hostess said, “Beshbarmak.” That is the name for boiled horse meat served on a bed of noodles.

Have you ever eaten hot horse meat?  

Anthony Bourdain, the celebrity chef and travel documentarian, advised to “eat without fear, whether it was an indigenous stew, grilled fish head, or mystery meat.” How do you eat mystery meat without some measure of fear?

The Kazakh delicacy smelled like…well, like boiled horse meat wafting into my nostrils. It looked slippery. I picked up a small piece to show my appreciation. As the horse meat neared my mouth, my gag reflex kicked in.

I paid Gabe to eat from my plate. He was discreet. I just smiled and expressed my appreciation for such a delicious old nag.

The hosts insisted on a second serving of the steaming steed. The Kazakhs credit the heavy protein source with making one faster, stronger, wiser, and more virile. You will need to ask Gabe. I am indebted to him. He took one for the team. Thankfully, Gabe took two for my team.

When we sought to leave the country the next week, my passport was flagged again as the rest of the staff departed for home. I appreciated Steve’s concern. (That is a little sacrcastic.) He asked me to let them get on the plane and leave for home before I tried to straighten out the problem.

My three amigos departed for home. Security interrogated me for hours in the Chisinau airport dungeon. The loud woman and mean man looked as if they were members of Spectre who stepped right out of a James Bond movie. Their heavy Russian accented English only added to their villain imagery. They kept me in a tiny room and threatened imprisonment for espionage. Really?

Did they really suspect I was smuggling out the recipe for beshbarmak? They demanded a lot of money to bribe the officials. Later that night, finally convinced I had no money and was worth no ransom to anyone else, they deported me to Romania.

My most memorable day in Moldova was a road trip to the country’s southern rural area. The President of the Baptist church association invited me on a day long trip to visit several churches. He hired a chauffeur and a sports car. We were cramped in a small, fast car with a wild kid who envisioned himself as a Formula One Grand Prix driver. Maybe he was.

Our race car driver drove fast. Extremely fast. We were not on interstate highways. These two-lane rural roads without any shoulders were barely paved. Mario took every curve at breakneck speed with total commitment that there was not another car coming toward us. He swerved to dodge potholes at the rate of one every two seconds. He would occasionally squeal to a head jerking stop to avoid plowing into the back of a mule driven cart.

I stared at the wasteland and thought about how long it would take for the news of the wreck to get to my family. God promised to be with us even to the ends of the earth. This desolate area must be near there.

My nerves were on edge from the blind curves and innumerable potholes. It did not help to be told the president’s travel credentials had expired just as we came to an armed security roadblock. At the moment, imprisonment seemed preferable to car crash.

We visited a church involved in a business meeting that needed no translation. Hearts are the same in any language. The heated arguments sounded like some American church disagreements and covered some of the same subjects. Without any translation, I completely understood the divisive decision requiring the oversight of the neutral leader.

At another stop in a muddy rural area, the entire village came out to see the sports car and surprise visitors. I was the first American ever seen by any of the younger generations. I was a curious celebrity. They stared at me, touched me to see if I were real, and asked for my autograph. I smiled and obliged, signing anything placed in my hands. I might have given away the rights to the Louisiana Territory.

One teenager asked if I were an astronaut who landed in the wrong country? One small step for man, one giant leap for American graffiti.

The coup de gras of the one-day trip was next, following another harrowing drive as our car raced around sharp curves and deep potholes. We occasionally bounced through some of them which realigned my spine.

The church building was fairly large. The outdoor restrooms were …what one might expect. I am old enough to have used an outdoor restroom. My grandparents had one during my childhood before plumbing was installed in their house. The early years of our church camp offered similar facilities. This one was different. It was larger. Multiple holes. No stalls or dividing partitions. It was just cheek to cheek.

The horrendous odor set off my gag reflex. I was gasping for fresh air. As Roberto Duran, the welterweight boxing champion known as the Tasmanian devil with hands of stone, cried out in his defeat to Sugar Ray Leonard in the Louisiana Superdome, “No mas.”

The president presided over the ordination of a young preacher being installed as the new church pastor. The men sat on one side of the church and all the ladies on the other side. I sat on the platform with the president who asked me to speak and pray. Next came the confirmation ceremony. The young pastor knelt on the platform while the church leader, the president, and I stood beside him.

The older men lined up against the wall in preparation to kneel in prayer next to the young man. I thought the first man looked like Uncle Fester. He was friendly, fat, bald, and mostly toothless. I noticed that the next twenty men resembled the first. What were the chances they were all related?

Uncle Fester #1 prayed for the young man. Then he embraced the president and the church leader. As he approached me, I stuck out my hand to greet him. He did not notice. He placed his hands on my cheeks. He held my face in a death grip, stared into my eyes, and flashed his toothless smile.

I had no clue what would happen next.

He kissed me…on the lips…for a long time. When the slobber-fest ended, he pulled back, patted my cheek, and smiled. It looked as though there was one less tooth. Apparently, he enjoyed the moment.

I was in shock. And, no, I did not enjoy the PDA. I began to shake. I needed to wipe away the dribble. I have never been able to read the Textbook’s admonition to “greet one another with a holy kiss’’ without this flashback.

Then, I realized that Uncle Fester #2 through #20 were headed my way. We were on the verge of an international crisis. Do I shove the next guys away? Do I run? Or just scream?

I offered a cheek to the next two uncles. It was not easy to free my face from their vise-like grip. But where there is a will, there is a way. They puckered and aimed for the lips, only to graze the side of my face. As the platform became more crowded, I declared, “No mas.”

I quietly stepped back from the greeting party. I was imperceptibly out of the line of fire. Maybe I could slide back in place if the other side of the church came to express their gratitude for my visit.

The meeting was followed by a Potato-fest dinner with some drink that must have been fermented Orange Crush. I shivered as each man approached to offer me more potatoes. Was this one Uncle Fester #1 or a relative wanting to finish the kiss? Was the kiss a custom or a joke on the foreigner?

Uncle Fester’s kiss made the “horse meat” the second worst part of the trip.

This was not my best moment in my Love First and Love Most crusade.

I do not travel much anymore. I love kissing my wife. I cherish the kisses from my daughter and grandkids. I hug my sons. I embrace all the football players on our team. I am very free and prevalent with expressing, “I love you.”

I will respond better the next time I greet Uncle Fester in heaven.

Pray that I do better at loving first and most.

The currency of love and gratitude never runs out and is recognized in all countries and ethnic groups. We just have to learn not to gag on the opportunities to share the precious commodity.

Practice gratitude until it overflows in every encounter. Be thankful for kind people, as well as those very different from you. Be thankful for our American freedoms and blessings. Be thankful for your family.

Be less critical of potholes. Give thanks for the minimal indentions in the road. It could be much worse. Be grateful for the “potholes” in your life which make you more dependent upon God.

There are people in impoverished countries who appear to be much happier than most Americans. They have far fewer “things” but show far more gratitude. Learn from them to count your blessings and not your complaints.

Be more loving to the less fortunate. Greet them with loving actions. Be more understanding that every person has a need to be loved. Smile more. Embrace when appropriate. Say, “I love you” often.

The #1 Textbook encourages us to be mindful that whatever we eat or drink, do it all for the glory of God.

I once ate Sunday dinner in the rural home of a large family. They served seven dish variations of turnip greens. It was the best they had. I am not a fan of turnip greens. I smiled and gave thanks it was not horse meat.

Appreciate the sustenance God provides with your daily bread. Be grateful for a potato or Happy Meal. Be thankful when you see a horse still standing on four legs.

Whether you are homebound or a world-traveler, find a way to love first and love most.

One kiss can rock the world.