Voice of Ukraine

From: Lyuda Betin in Belgorod Dnitstrovski (Day 720)

“Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered: let them also that hate him flee before him… Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation.” Psalms 68:1,19

One of our Bible groups in the church studies the Psalms. Yesterday they studied Psalm 68. How amazingly the psalms depict our life. We cry and call for help, then we rejoice, praise the Lord and sing Him praises, we experience fear and helplessness when we are unable to stop the evil that attacks us, but then we come under the roof of the Almighty and rest in His protection.

On Saturday we had a church dinner, we celebrated our church birthday. 28 years ago we had our first worship as a church. We have so many memories. There were different periods in the life of the church: joyful and happy, difficult and sad. Now we are going through this difficult and bloody war. But the Lord has always been faithful to us. He never let us down. We are so blessed. That’s why we have hope now. We know that He is walking with us through the valley of mourning and He will bring us into the valley of joy.
One of the hymns we sing in church is called “Peace Amidst War”, His church can have such peace.

Attacks on our cities and villages continue, it has become a kind of routine, there are air raids at night and in the morning people recover and move on. Kiev, Kharkiv, Odesa, Kherson are constantly bombed. A few days ago in Kharkiv, an entire street of private houses with people in them burned down. It happened at the same time when Russian dictator was demonstrating his view of history to the rest of the world.

Another sad news is blocking of the border with Poland. For almost six months now Polish farmers block the road for Ukrainian trucks with grain and do not let tham enter Europe. They do not agree with the decision of European Union that allows Ukraine to import grain duty-free to Europe.

Last week they began to dump our grain on the road that became a shock for us. It is hard to imagine how farmers, who know how much effort it takes to grow it, can relate to grain in this way. Mined fields, shelling and fires in the fields, these are the conditions in which this grain was grown. Ukraine could not export grain for a long time, because the enemy bombed ports and ships at sea, missiles and drones also flew at trucks on our roads, and now the problem is at the border.

We continue to support our soldiers as best we can. This month we are again sending parcels to different subdivisions. One man in our community, who does fishing, addressed our church with a proposal to help soldiers with food. He can supply fish and one family from our church started making canned fish. The home-canned fish turned out to be very tasty. We sent packages to the soldiers and received a lot of good feedback with gratitude.

We have many good plans for this week. We are furnishing and equipping living area for a new family in our refugee center. There are also plans to make some changes in the church building. The ministry of our youth group is growing and our elders decided to equip a room for the youth where they can meet, prepare their events and study.

Thank you for your faithful prayers.

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