News from Ukraine March 17, 2023

March 27 ( Day 397)

News from Ukraine

The weekend brought us a lot of joy. We received the bags with humanitarian aid. The bags are full of toys and dippers. Gathering toys for us was an action organized by a boy named Gideon from Birmingham, Alabama. The child was imbued with love and compassion for the children of Ukraine, who hear the sounds of sirens every day and live in a state of war. Many children have donated their stuffed toys for kids here and the message was “We want them to know that they are loved”. Yesterday we showed the video of Gideon addressing the children of Ukraine and the kids in our church (some of them are refugees) received toys. We saw how love was transmitted as they were holding and hugging the toys.

In general we are doing well and our town is so blessed by the Lord. These last two weeks the enemy intensively attacked Odessa region. We had several alarms every day. The rockets were flying in our direction and we are so thankful that our air defense is able to destroy them before they fall. Few days ago two rockets were heading our town and heard them explode right above our heads. We felt the shaking of the air around. Praise the Lord, they were destroyed and did not ruin the places here and did not kill people.

Two last months Russia made numerous attempts to advance on our territories, they attacked our cities in the east and in the north again and again. But our army held out and did not give them any chance to move. We hope so much for the advance of our army this spring.

We do not hear much from Paul. Sveta, his mother, says that they are very busy now and do fighting mostly at nights. We miss messages from other people we know who are at the front line. We pray for them all the time.

Dr. Anya had a surgery on her wrist last week in the hospital of Nikolayev. She is going to come home for a week or so and we are looking forward to see her. Because they had to move their medical unit from time to time, they carried heavy boxes a lot and probably it caused the problem of her wrist. She was in pain and it was hard. We pray for her recovery.

Our refugee group is becoming bigger and we are glad to see more of them in the church. It’s good that they all are emotionally stable and can function very well. The weather is getting warmer and we will organize a picnic outside soon.

Our counselors continue working very intensively with people who have war trauma. George is very active working with war veterans, his dream is to organize a rehabilitation center where the soldiers with PTSD can get help and adjust to peaceful life.

Please, pray for our counselor Vika. She works with the members of the mission group that works on liberated territories, do exhumation and document the war crimes. The bodies that they find have signs of terrible tortures. They hear sad stories all the time. One woman who is an interpreter in that group was screaming and crying during her time with Vika. “Why does God allow me to see that?!” Vika’s state is also difficult as she work with this group.

Dear friends, thank you for your prayers and for your support. We will defeat this evil together.

In Christ,
Lyuda

P.S. There are photos of our kids in the church who received the toys and the photos of our refugee group meeting.