Your Help is Making a Difference—Ukraine Update
5.16.2022
Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.
—1 Thessalonians 5:11, ESV
Dear Friend,
I just returned from another trip to Moldova and Poland, and I can tell you firsthand that your prayers and support are an unending source of help and encouragement at each of Mission Eurasia’s refugee assistance centers in these countries.
If you were standing with staff and volunteers at our center in Chisinau, Moldova, as I was recently, here is what you would see—
First, you would see an army of believers praying together before opening the doors to a long line of hungry, hurting, and homeless people.
Then you would see volunteers unloading 55,000 Gospels of John in Ukrainian and Russian that just came off the presses. They add a copy to each of the iCare food boxes that will soon be loaded for distribution to different church ministries in Moldova. From there they will find their way to refugees who are in urgent need of food and life’s basic necessities.
Exactly at 12 p.m., a line of Ukrainians starts to form—family after family, including the very old and the very young. They are so grateful to receive the food that they need after being away from their homes for more than two months.
There are around 70,000 refugees from Ukraine in Chisinau now, and as many as 150 people come to the center every day. Among them are refugees like Vera and Natasha from Odesa, who were so grateful to receive iCare boxes of food and Scripture to encourage their children and grandmother . . .
They share, “When we left our home at the beginning of March, we thought it would only be for two weeks. It’s now been more than two months. We have to sleep on the floor and haven’t had hot water for a long time. We just hope this will only be for a short time and that we’ll be able to go back to our homes and to our husbands who no longer have jobs. But they are not just waiting for the war to finish. They are helping refugees from Kherson and Mykolayiv where heavy fighting is taking place right now. They are providing water and food for them, and many times they even give them our children’s clothes because many of those children don’t have anything. We are receiving everything our children need here and we really are very grateful to you for this timely answer to our needs.”
The pace here is hectic because the needs are so great. People are desperate to share what’s happened to them and to confess their worries. But when they learn we are Christians, they want to know the source of our hope . . . which we joyfully share.
Please continue praying for all the people our team is serving at the refugee assistance center in Chisinau, and please give as you are able to ensure that iCare boxes continue to comfort people who have so little left of the life they used to know.
Please pray also that hearts of the unreached will open to God. Pray for families who are separated by war. And pray for staff and volunteers working at our centers, that God will strengthen them to continue sharing love, hope, and healing with the war-weary Ukrainian people.
Thank you again for the difference you are helping to make in the lives of Ukrainian refugee families. We couldn’t do this important work without your prayers and support.
In Him,
Sergey Rakhuba
President