The Bibles have over 30 years of life spent serving, living, and loving their friends, neighbours, and brothers and sisters in Christ across Ukraine. This update comes with details on their context in Ukraine and the purpose of their recent North American travel.
Ukraine is in a crisis situation which will not go away in the near future as we deal with over 6 million refugees scattered around the world, and over 7 million displaced people within Ukraine. It is a heart-breaking situation.
We have been involved in different ways. Some of our staff or their families chose to leave the country and we have tried to help them either get situated or return. We have designated large sums of money for our local church who has processed over 3,000 refugees. Our city of Rivne in the west of Ukraine is flooded with refugees from the east. We also designated funds to help the Baptist Union as the whole office and all of their workers had to flee from the city of Irpin and set up temporarily in Lviv. They are constantly helping and distributing humanitarian aid and processing refugees. But the crisis is increased for them personally as few funds come in to keep the office running and staff paid.
Our regular ministry of holding evangelism and church planting workshops had to be laid down the day the war started. But Abe has trained many men and some of them have written and told him how thankful they are for the training they have received to present the Gospel. In the midst of trouble and distress people’s hearts are open. We have also made available Gospels of Mark to be distributed as well as other resources.
Our daughter Priscilla and her husband also live in Ukraine and have helped processing refugees as they fled, housing and feeding them in their church, providing basic necessities, even driving into danger areas and helping them to evacuate. At one time their small town of 8,000 was flooded with 20,000 refugees as they live near Kyiv. Now, many of these people either have moved further west or are seeking to return to Kyiv and other areas where the Russians have left.
Right now, we are in North America traveling some 16,000 kilometres seeking to raise funds for renewal of Ukraine. Refugees are already streaming back into Ukraine but most of them are returning to nothing. And of course our deepest concern is for the people themselves. They will need humanitarian assistance for a long time to come but they also need to find hope in order to rebuild. They will need a lot of trauma counseling, and they will need to find peace, the kind that only can come through Christ Jesus. We are seeking this fall and winter to establish about 100 “Centers of Hope” across Ukraine to begin building community, provide for emotional and spiritual needs as well as the physical.
And above all, we seek the prayers of God’s people on behalf of the Ukrainian refugees, on behalf the Ukrainians who are helping them, on behalf of the hosts in many countries, that God will minister in and through this crisis.
Visit the Bible's Renew Ukraine website for more details to donate or get in touch with them as they finish their North American tour over the summer.
