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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Ruslan Khmyz, the president of Kiev Theological Seminary (KTS) wrote, “God gave an amazing opportunity to provide the trauma recovery seminar on the platform of Didasko School of Children’s Ministers. The seminar was exactly the answer for our need in KTS.” Participant comments were all positive. Here are a few:
“God’s security for us lies in protecting our identity. That is, God did not promise that Christians would not suffer, but in that suffering He preserves our soul.”
“God can speak to the unbelievers, and they understand it more clearly. While believers often face the dilemma ‘are these my thoughts or God’s?’”
“It is important to focus on the eternal, not the temporary, and see this eternity in every person. God is always with us, even in the most difficult circumstances.”
“God takes us through the valley of deathly darkness, and we must not look at the enemy, but what God has in store for us.”
“In any situation, we can find God’s presence and rely on Him more than fear what we face in our lives. Then we can receive peace and tranquility from the Lord.”
We met with Fr. Nicoli of the Ukrainian Orthodox church while he attended the training at KTS. He actively supports a community of internally displaced refugees. The Ukrainian Orthodox churches are in a kind of identity crisis due to their past connection with the Russian Orthodox, but Fr. Nicoli was having no such problem working with forgotten people.
The next two days we were invited out of the seminary and into the towns around Kiev to meet people from destroyed villages and military family towns. Our team spoke to community gatherings near Bucha where the massacre happened last year. Slava took us to see and speak at two of his tiny community centers where we saw destroyed buildings and people without heat making the best of what was standing. Most of those gathered were not Christians but came for company, food, and warmth. Soon after we left, Slava wrote us that the government gave them permission to use a large room for community gatherings. Only, the building has been through a war. Slava’s attitude is, “God will take care of it.” They need about $5,000 to make it happen.
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We hope you enjoyed this segment about Dr. Jim Wilder’s recent trip to Ukraine. Look for the next Ukraine Update Part 4 of 4 “Recordings that Reach & the Translator’s Journal”
Donations to further the work of translating and spreading Life Model resources in Ukraine and around the world can be made HERE
