First Time in Church - Ukraine Crisis Story

Today was the warmest day since the beginning of the war, 17 Celsius (63 F). And this warmth heated up not only our bodies but our souls also. In this way the Lord invigorates us during this dark time for the country. And God inspires us to care for the refugees.

Yesterday, we got closely acquainted with one man from a conflict zone. Up to this day he had never been in an evangelical church and among his acquaintances there was no one who had. We met him in the city when we were handing out bags of groceries and evangelizing. He wanted to help us and today he came to us at the church. Today he not only for the first time fellowshipped with Christians and was in a church, today was the first time he prayed together with other people.

I asked him to write down his story, a very difficult story:
"I was the son of my parents' old age. My dad was an invalid due to his old age and I took care of him. In the last while he really suffered and on February 18 he passed into eternity. Because of the quarantine and other reasons the opportunity to get him from the morgue and bury him kept getting delayed. On February 23 I was supposed to pay the funeral home, but God caused that not to happen, and on the morning of February 24, I was awakened by the shelling of the city. I still kept trying to bury him but because of the war it didn't happen. After a few days that morgue and the hospital were bombed by planes and rockets... I was never able to bury my father. War is a dreadful evil. Russia is annihilating both the living and the dead."

Please continue to pray for the men, women, children, and families who need our support. Pray that they would, like this man, be receptive to the Gospel and learning more about the love of God.

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