Through our local partner on the ground, GAiN is providing yellow boxes for displaced people in Ukraine. A single yellow box provides a week’s worth of food for a family, and one box is delivered each week until the family has received four yellow boxes. Our local partner also takes time during each weekly delivery to explain an aspect of the gospel message. They share about hope and God’s love for us personally.
During a recent trip to Kherson, two members of our partner organization, Sasha and Tanya, shared about their experience delivering yellow boxes to communities in need and hearing the stories of war survivors:
“We are driving along the streets and see many houses in the center with windows boarded up with plywood. It looks sad. I remember Irpin, Kyiv, and realize that they are being rebuilt much faster than here. We arrived at the church. We meet the ministers [and] share information [such as] how many people have left, how many new people have come [and] whether there are enough ministers left.
We are greeted by a very hospitable pastor [named] Yuriy. His sense of humor and simplicity help us to feel comfortable quickly. We hear the first stories about the life of the church. A woman tells us about the death of her neighbor who did not make it 20 meters to the house. The pastor recalls the first year. There was a lot of shelling because the airport was nearby. People from the neighboring streets started coming to church on Sundays. During the explosions they continue to have worship services. No one wanted to go home afterwards. They would just turn on the Christian music and people would talk for hours. In this way new people appeared, some of whom were baptized and now go to church regularly. Most of them are older people, families with children left after the intense shelling.
[A woman named] Halyna has a son and husband who both died of cancer and now her second son is ill. She said: “If my son dies, I will be left alone, I have no one else.” It is not only the war that causes suffering which makes [people] afraid and lonely.
[Another woman named] Svitlana said that thanks to the war, she came to church. Svitlana’s face shines because she now feels a great need to know God more. She says that she is sorry when the service ends. She said, “I understand, it’s just that I lived without God for 50 years, and now I can’t get enough.”
[We also met] Natasha, [whose] brother serves in the Armed Forces of Ukraine [and] was surrounded by the enemy. [He got] a concussion but is alive and continues to serve. In the first year, her nephew was killed during the shelling in Mykolaiv when he was standing at a bus stop. That’s [an example of] how the war comes unexpectedly, [killing people and leaving their family members] alive in the middle of hell. [Natasha’s] only daughter recently decided to join the Armed Forces. [When I asked why], she said, “because she believes that now everyone should be able to defend themselves and the country.”
Sasha and Tanya’s encounters with people in Ukraine are a reminder of the horrors and trauma that families are experiencing each day. In the face of these losses, we are so thankful for how people are finding community, support and hope in the Lord.
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