Voice of Ukraine

From Lyuda Betina in Belgorod Dnestrovsky (Day 642):

Yesterday we had a severe snow storm. Everything was covered with snow and the wind was so strong that knocked down trees and tore off the roofs of some houses. We did not have electricity and water, but it’s good that the storm lasted only one day. In the evening it began to calm down and water and electricity supplies were restored.

Despite the weather, we had great joy in the church. We had a baptism and three new people joined the church. One of them is our refugee Svetlana, who has not only attended church for a long time, but also actively participates in its life. Lita, the girl from our youth group, was preparing so seriously for this day.

She spoke to the church and said about her first day in the church, it was when the war had just started, her grandmother invited her and her sister to go to the church. Lita agreed just to please her grandmother but expected it to be boring. She could not even imagine then how many friends she will find here and how her life will change. Now she is a part of our music group where she can glorify God singing and playing the piano.

It was symbolic that Sergey’s sermon was “ Partakers of God’s Nature”, he spoke about how God answering our deepest needs brings into our life His divine nature and then as a result of it we want to know Him as deep as He knows us and to be open for Him as He is open for us.

It was also nice that when the lights were turned off in the whole town, it was light and warm in our church. We want to express our deep gratitude to everyone who donated money for the generator for our church. Our elders decided instead of the generator to buy accumulative solar panels. And now, even when outages occur, we have electricity in our church building. We can hold all the events that we plan and the families of refugees that live in our guest rooms are warm and comfortable.

The situation at the front remains very difficult. Intensive fighting is going on. Last year, soldiers often came to the cafe where we were having meetings with the refugees. We had the opportunity to talk with them, share the good news, give them booklets and new testaments. Those were the soldiers that were having training in our town preparing to go to the war zone.. Now the soldiers that we see from time to time in the café are very different. They look very serious, we see fatigue on their faces and their eyes express heavy thoughts. These are soldiers who have already been in battles and came home for a short vacation. Sometimes they come with their families and we watch them talk as they have coffee. We don’t approach them now because we see that they are not in the mood to talk. We pray for them and ask the Lord to show us how we can serve them.

Our counselor George works now with a Veterans’ Hub organization in Odessa. He does counseling there and leads groups with soldiers, he also works with family members of the soldiers who often need counseling now. He has started a new group which is a group for widows, this is the group for wives and mothers of the soldiers who died in the battles.

There are so many needs and so much pain around. Please, pray for us to see where we should move in our ministry.

Thank you for you support.

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

P.S. There are photos of soldiers near Bakhmut ( a hot spot), the photos of Lita singing and playing the piano in the church and the photos of our streets after the snow storm.