Voice of Ukraine

From Lyuda Betina in Belgorod Dnestrovsky (Day 551):

“And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” Philippians 4:7

Last week was relatively calm for our region and although there were many air attacks, the missiles that flew at us were repulsed. We were afraid that the enemy would launch a massive attack on Thursday, when we celebrated Independence Day, but this did not happen.

We were warned not to organize mass meetings, because it could become the target for the enemy so mostly it was home celebrations. Our youth gathered in the yard of our elder Valeriy and cooked shish kebabs. It was so good that Paul, who is our brave defender now, was still with them on such a day.

Yesterday our worship was special. First of all because two refugee- ladies took vows before the church and became our church members. We expect some more people to join the church soon, they are attending communicant classes that Sergey is leading. We had the Lord’s supper, the music and singing was special. Our musical group is growing in number and in the level of performance. We were glad to congratulate Ivan and Lauren with their first anniversary of marriage life.

Svetlana and Alina, the ladies who joined the church are very active and hard-working. Svetlana is the lady who lives in our refugee center and keeps changing our yard there into a beautiful garden. Alina helps with many things in the church, they both started attending the church from their first days in our town and we began to feel them as a part of our church long ago.

Alina from time to time has problems with depression, it happens because she stopped taking the medicine for it and she has some periods when she feels very miserable, she cries, stays in bed and doesn’t eat. Once when she got depressed, I suggested her to go for a walk. We took a long walk and it was a good opportunity to talk about different things, to share some struggles and pains. By the end of our walk Alina began to smile and she felt hungry and was ready to eat. Since then we decided to have walks together when we have time.

Our counselor Vika came from Odessa on Saturday and led the meeting of our support group on Saturday. She taught a new method of relaxation and worked with some people of the group individually later. Then we went to our Refugee Center and spent some time there.

It’s good that our refugees start coming there, to have tea, help Svetlana with garden work and just to be together, to chat and have fun. So we spent some time with the group there making yard arrangement plan. After we finish the renovation of the building, we will create the rest zone in the yard- with benches and tables for people to spend time in the open air.

Our counseling center mostly worked with war traumas, refugees and soldiers during eighteen months of the war and now we think about new directions of our work. We decided to start a new project for children. We hear from many parents that children have difficulties with studying, they are closed and sometimes nasty and unpredictable.

We ordered the therapeutic books for children with a story of a little bird whose life changed because many scary things began to happen and his parents acted strangely, too which was even more scary. The bird did not know what to do and because he was scared he started behaving in aggressive way. But then he decided to talk to somebody about his feelings and talked to his sister who also felt that way, then they talked to their parents and found out that they can be together in a difficult situation and support each other. I had a class with our church kids and talked to them about strange situations we sometimes have in our life like war or a serious disease of somebody in the family. I gave them books and they looked at the pictures in the book and then I asked them to draw some strange situations they had. I think it was very helpful. We plan some other things to do with children and we will do it as a group work.

Please, continue to pray for our work and for our spirit. Your prayers are very important for us.

Please, send your donations to Pathway Ministries
E. Langston Haygood,D.Min.,Ph.D.
Pathway Ministries, Inc.
288 Huntington Parc Circle
Birmingham, AL 35226
(205)835-3325
http://www.pathwayministriesinc.com

In Christ,
Lyuda