This blog is sponsored by the special donations made to help Life Model Works share the love and peace of Jesus with people in Ukraine! Thank you to all who contributed to the Ukraine trip for LMW. We were able to teach passing the peace in the middle of a war. Our team was active in four regions of Ukraine, leaving behind new friends, video recordings, materials undergoing translation, trained counselors and churches in Immanuel Prayer trauma recovery, old ladies weeping because they had not been forgotten, and hopeful girls.
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From Kiev we drove a day to reach a counseling center and church near Odessa. We met with veterans, counselors, and internally displaced people.
The meeting was recorded and is now online at:
We have seen some unexpected benefits from the Odessa videos. Ukrainians in the war zone who could not travel were able to watch.
Lyuda was our translator in Odessa. Below is her account of what happened.
March 15 (Day 385 of the war) by Lyuda
Yesterday was a special day in our church. We received guests who came to teach a seminar on helping people with war trauma. Dr. Jim Wilder, the chief neurotheologian of Life Model Works (USA) and Pastor Thomas Gerlach a trauma counselor (Germany) made a trip visiting different cities in Ukraine with a mission that is very timely now. We had a big group. We invited people from other churches. I was glad to see our refugees are ready not only to help themselves but also help others.
While we were having this seminar enjoying the process of healing, the enemy started a massive attack with rockets right on Odessa region. The sirens of alarms did not stop. When we all were having lunch in the basement of our church four rockets were heading to our town. Praise the Lord they all were successfully destroyed in the air. The parts of one of them fell into the bay very close to us. Later we found out from the news that our town was attacked by planes which came close to our coast and shot the rockets and seventeen Russian ships were in the proximity of our shore ready to attack. We thank God that He did not allow the enemy to ruin our joy and protected us from the attacks.
We learned a lot about trauma and the intention of the enemy to destroy our peace and make us weary. And we also learned about the way of healing, how to bring back positive memories of what God has already done in our lives and coming into His presence, feeling it and experiencing joy of being in closeness with Jesus. It was so nice to see the tears of joy, not sadness, in the eyes of people. When the seminar was over, the audience did not want to leave and people stayed for some time talking and sharing with each other their new feelings that were positive and joyful.
March 18 (Day 386 of the war) by Lyuda
It was a good week. The highlight of the week was a seminar that was very helpful. Yesterday we had a zoom meeting with our counselors, and they all looked so relieved and positive and shared stories about the conference. When Roman, Vika, and George were coming from Odessa to our town they were stopped at the checkpoint and asked about the purpose of their trip. Because of the ruined bridge that connected our town with Odessa we use another longer road now the part of which goes through Moldova. That is why they check thoroughly the people going there. Our counselors were going through the check point at different times and when they were stopped each of them told that they were going to the church for the seminar and they told it with such an enthusiasm that the man who was checking them got curious about it and told George (who was the last to go through) that they sounded as if they were going for some kind of celebration. We can say now that the seminar was very valuable for us. First, because the counselors of our center say that they feel much better and also because we all use this new technique that we learned with our clients. We see remarkable results.
Progress continues with the translation of two Life Model books into Ukrainian. Passing the Peace is ready to be printed and distributed to the Ukranian people while Joyful Journey is nearly ready for proofreading. We hope to translate Living from the Heart Jesus Gave You as the next project.
A group of Germans who love the Life Model are now meeting regularly due to the interest stimulated by this Ukrainian trip. Let’s watch for what God does next!
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We hope you enjoyed this segment about Dr. Jim Wilder’s recent trip to Ukraine and thank you for reading all four parts of the “Ukraine Updates Series”! Continue keeping all our new international friends in your thoughts and prayers.
Donations to further the work of translating and spreading Life Model resources in Ukraine and around the world can be made HERE
