Voice of Ukraine

From Lxxx (Day 157): Dear brothers and sisters, It’s a nice morning after a quiet night which brings thoughts of peace peaceful life. What kind of life will it be when we finally have peace? Will people return to their way of life they had before, will they return to their jobs, to their hobbies? I am afraid that our life will be different in many ways and I hope it will be different. I am sure that the reassessment of values that is happening now will teach people to value life, relationships, to be satisfied with the little that we have, to be patient and understanding towards each other.

Yesterday was the last day of Evangelism Explosion seminar. It was a very good and useful event. We were glad to see many young people participating in it.

We hope evangelism training will continue because the program implies that those who have been trained will train others.

Friday evening we usually have a Zoom meeting of the counselors of our center where we talk about our experience and feelings of the work during the week. It’s a good time when we can share and support each other. Our counselors constantly experience the witness trauma because they hear the stories of their clients and live with those stories. Yesterday we had a good talk about the importance of taking care of ourselves as we work with people in trauma.

Vxxx had a difficult case this week. In crisis chat she was contacted by a 14-year-old girl (people often don’t reveal their real names in chats and use nicknames). The girl lived in Mariupol and she experienced all the horrors of the war, surviving under bombs, seeing many deaths and sufferings. Her parents chose to go to Russia and they live now in St. Petersburg. In addition to her traumas, the girl is heavily influenced by racist propaganda and does not understand what is happening and why the war is going on. The people around try to entertain her inviting to the parties with fireworks and dancing which makes her state even worse. She began making cuts on her body and getting hysterical. Her parents took her to the psychiatrist and now she thinks she is going crazy. Vxxx began to work in crisis chat with this girl but after some time the girl disappeared from the chat. Now Vxxx lives with a pain for the child who desperately needs help of somebody who understands what is going on with her. Please, pray for the girl. May God send her help! Also, please, pray for Vxxx to have peace.

After so many months of war, after so many monstrous events and tragedies it would seem that nothing should surprise or shock us in the behavior of the enemy who came to steal, kill and destroy. But we grieve again and again as we hear the news and can not accept it. Yesterday the enemy destroyed with a bomb the prison on the occupied territory where they kept our soldiers who were taken captives. There were the defenders of Mariupol, starved, wounded and weakened. We know that they were tortured there and many have already died of tortures. The orcs destroyed the prison to conceal the facts of torturing.

“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” Isaiah 5:20

Please, pray for the light to shine in the darkness of the war we are going through.

In Christ,
Lxxx

P.S. In the photos attached you can see the members of Evangelism Explosion seminar, the young people who received the certificated of completing the course and our counselor Vika with her dog Lucas.