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Dear Friends,
When you hear on our news about peace talks, it gives you hope that this war might come to an end. Very quickly you come back to the reality that things could not be further away from peace than ever before.
Sumy city continues to be hit hard, and when I was speaking with Bohdan on Wednesday, five missiles landed in Sumy during that conversation. Tuesday late evening, I received the dreaded text from Bohdan to say that Lebedyn was under attack, and the windows of his house were shaking. He counted 12 explosions. I’m pleased to say that everyone is safe and doing remarkably well, and are even more determined to do the work they feel called to do. Most of the bombs hit the outskirts of Lebedyn and the main high street, and all our buildings including all the teams’ homes remain untouched. The fuel plant on the outskirts of the town was targeted as you can see from the picture above.
Russia have gained some territory in Sumy county and are only 16km’s from Sumy city. So please continue to pray for all their safety at this time.
Meanwhile, the team continued to bake a large batch of bread on Tuesday, and distributed it at the Centre after several services. They also went out and took hundreds of loaves to help feed the refugees. In order to improve their distribution, they have made temporary racks to store the bread in the minibus. Once again, student dormitories in Lebedyn are crammed full of refugees coming from villages from near the border who have nothing but a bag of personal belongings. See pictures below.
Last week, we spoke about our plans to make up 250 food packs for refugees, and what a response there has been to this. Within a few days we have been able to send out enough funds for 300 food boxes! Thank you all so much as we have been overwhelmed by your generosity. God is good, his plans are always bigger than ours, and we will continue to support more boxes as funds arrive. We look forward to updating you with photos as these are made up and given out.
The team are still preparing for all the camps and the weekend event for teenage girls. Numbers to all of these are expected to be high.
On some good news, we saw on the UK news that around 1,000 soldiers were involved in a prisoner swap. Sadly, our friend Dima, who we have been praying for, was not one of them, but many soldiers from Lebedyn, and indeed from families in the church, have come home. This brought much joy at the services over the weekend which Bohdan took due to Pastor Sergey being unwell and unable to attend. This does put a lot of extra work to Bohdan, but it was to great effect as Margarita, a new attendee in Valentyn’s homegroup, became a Christian. Hope can always be found even in the darkest times.
Above is a picture of Lena. She has been at the church since the beginning in 1999. She has helped at the Centre by leading the catering team, and more recently in the office.
Her story through this war is tragic. She has 5 children and a husband. Her husband has cancer, and is also alcohol dependant, and we are not sure how long he has to live. Her eldest son, Sasha is listed as missing action, but was witnessed being killed in fighting with his body left in a field. His body has still not been returned. Roman her other son is fighting close to the border, and there are reports that he might have been captured (yet to be confirmed). Lena’s grandson from Roman died at only 13 years old after a bomb hit a building which collapsed on him whilst playing near it. One of her daughters died before the war began, another daughter’s husband has been fighting and has just returned home with significant injuries leaving a scar the length of his torso from shrapnel injuries. How much can one woman endure? Yet her faith in God remains strong.
She continues to be part of the church family reaching out to help others. She grieves and feels the pain of how this war has torn apart her family, yet her love for God continues to grow. Lena is not alone, as there are many people like her in Ukraine who share similar stories. These are the things we don’t see on the news, but the team in our region are reaching out to try and help as best they can. We continue to pray for Lena.
Thank you for your ongoing support, prayers and comments of encouragement sent through - it helps us all! Things are still getting tougher, but Bohdan said to me this week – “we will be here to the end to help our people”.
Every blessing
Peter Martin
Founding Director of Hope Lebedyn
