Voice of Ukraine

From Lyuda (Day 257): Dear brothers and sisters, A new week for us starts with a cloudy and cold day. We turned on heating and the feeling of comfort immediately was followed by a feeling of guilt and thoughts of those who don’t have heating. Our refugees who stay at the clinic and in the church are warm, they have heating. We think that Odessa region will accept more people from other places because our situation with electricity and gas is better.

During all these months of the war, the enemy authorities forcibly have been taking our people from the occupied territories to Russia. It’s hard to track where these people go and there are no contacts with many of them. It reminds what Nebuchadnezzar did with Israel, resettling them and making them live in exile. But we know that people of Israel didn’t forget their culture and didn’t forget God. There is a hope that all our citizens will come back soon and their children will not lose their identity, their language and culture.

Yesterday it was a special day for our town. Few weeks ago there was an exchange of captives. More than 100 Ukrainian soldiers returned from Russian captivity. Seven of them are from our town and yesterday they returned home. Their families and the citizens of our town were meeting them near the town hall.

It’s a big joy to have them back. Our prayers are for those soldiers who are still in captivity, for their families that are waiting for their return and for the wisdom and diplomacy of those who make it possible.

We had a good worship yesterday. There were more kids at the Sunday school. We had a good fellowship after the worship, during the women’s class where we talked about Reformation. It was a good chance to talk to new ladies and answer their questions about our church. Most of them have no church background, so many things are new for them.

We enjoy talking to our grandchildren at the weekend. We talk to our daughter almost every day but the kids are not always at home because they go to school. They are adjusting well are getting used to many new things they encounter. They like their school. Justin with a big interest studies the history of America, the facts about Indians, the native people. They are going to have a field trip to the place of excavation and he is very excited about it. As we talked to him we changed into English we saw that he does well.
I wish you to have a good day and a good week!
In Christ,
Lyuda