Thank you for praying and giving to help reach the Ukrainian people for Christ. Long-term Christian workers and their local partners actively minister to Ukrainians, escaping the escalating conflict. With over 5.1 million internally displaced Ukrainians and another 6.2 million who have fled to other countries, your faithful intercession and generosity provide emergency supplies, water, shelter, and clothing and share the gospel through trauma healing, Bible distribution, and an online gospel witness.
War costs everyone. The war in Ukraine has caused prices to skyrocket, so many elderly and struggling families dropped into poverty. When the local people heard the church had established a feeding program for internally displaced persons, they came to the pastor and asked if they, too, could get food. Many had not had a regular meal for weeks, and some for months. They were scraping by with what little they had.
God uses few to impact many. Before the war, the small Baptist church in a border town ran about 30 people on a Sunday morning. Instead of feeling too small to do anything, they decided to help in any way God opened the door for them to serve. At the start of the war, they partnered with other churches to find housing for displaced people. Often, church members took in families and fed them at their own expense. The need for help with hot meals soon became apparent as many displaced persons could not afford gas or electricity.
The church started cooking soup with a little apartment-sized electric stove top by setting a large cafeteria-sized pot over the four small burners. Soon, displaced people volunteered to work alongside church members. As donations grew, the church hired one of its members as a full-time cook and another to oversee the needed changes to the building.
God continues to provide. Someone donated a large professional gas stove. Then, one man in the community heard about the need, took the gas stove top out of his own kitchen, and donated it also. When the pastor called to order gas lines run into the building, the gas company said sending someone would take three months. The pastor explained that the feeding program cooked over 500 meals daily on a small electric stove, and they sent a worker that afternoon who stopped on his way home from work. The man said he could not install two lines, one to each stove. Because of the high demand for new lines, the company enforced a strict one-line-only policy and then gave the pastor a wink. When the pastor entered the kitchen, he found a valve, allowing them to hook up both stoves from one line.
The church feeds people spiritually as well as physically. They hold evangelistic services daily, with about 30 people at each weekday service. Due to space constraints and language, Sunday services are divided between a standing-room-only inside meeting and another service in a tent in the courtyard. They recently had eight baptisms; another eight have gone through basic discipleship and will be baptized soon.
God’s provision is enough. The hired cook told our teammate that every night she goes to bed and says, “Lord, I am too tired to continue,” but when the alarm rings at 4 AM, God gives her the strength to get up and do it again. She works from 5 AM to 4 PM daily, then goes home, cooks for her own family, hoes the garden, and does other chores. She often goes to bed after 10 PM and then gets back up at 4:00. She says she is totally reliant on God to give her strength for the job because she has no more strength to give.
God is at work even in the time of war. It does not take a large church to make a difference in the Kingdom of God, only the faith to follow His leading. This small church has impacted the lives of thousands of people in their own town and hundreds of thousands of their countrymen. The church plans to keep the food program after the war, feeding the local poor and delivering food to neighboring towns with church plants.
Thank you for partnering with us to reach the nations for Christ. We appreciate your sacrificial giving and prayers as we labor together to solve the world’s greatest problem: lostness.