” Pray and do your part!”
This was the answer our friends in Ukraine gave us when we asked them how they cope with the intensity of the ministry they have with the refugees running away from war.
Sunday at 5 in the morning our cars were packed and we were ready to go. We left for Ukraine with two vans and a trailer, going to some old friends who are missionaries there. They serve the people who are coming from the war-affected areas with dedication even though they also had to flee their home in the east of Ukraine and relocate further west. The GPS indicated that we would make it to our Ukrainian friends in about 11 hours. With crossing the border, rest breaks and some checkpoints in Ukrainian villages we made it safely by 7PM.
There, 20-30 people running away from war stop every day at the big house that belongs to our friends’ organisation. They’re mostly women and children.
Last week, day after day, the people transiting were coming from the most affected city, Mariupol, and our friends were just a stop on their journey.
Their ears hear stories that break hearts. Stories that, a while ago -for the modern European ear- seemed to be taken out of a 70-year-old painting, out of the second world war.
A family arrived with an old Lada car, ridden with bullets. They would have fled in their new car they had but it was completely destroyed by a missile so they were forced to ride in their grandparent’s old car.
A small kid, travelling with a group of 19 people was asked: what would you like to eat? His answer was short and without hesitation: “Anything, as long as I get a full plate!” He spent the last 10 days in Mariupol, in an underground shelter together with other kids and a few adults. One of the adults would go out of the shelter trying to find something to eat and some water. When they came back, the food and water was divided. The child explained that being a child was better, because then you’d definitely get something to eat. The adults were often left with nothing.
Every day, a new group. Night after night, the volunteers take care of the children, create wonderful programs for them while the staff sit with the adults and listen to them, pray with them and guide them in their journey to the west, and on to hope for a better life. Then they’d wake up early in the morning, to work in the kitchen, to offer their guests a good breakfast.
All of this while our friends are also personally affected by war. In the last week only, one volunteer’s boyfriend died on the battlefield and one missionary family has a boy who can’t leave a city that is being shelled.
Sitting with our friends, I asked them: “How do you cope with the intensity of serving here?”
Their answer leads us to basic Christian life principles: pray and do your part!
Stay in the presence of God, gaining strength from the Source of all Life and then serve others around you.
Pray! We spent an evening and a morning with them and we had worship time in the evening and in the morning. We prayed. People really prayed. Fervent prayers, and sometimes long prayers from people with tear-stained faces to the ground. We didn’t understand much but we heard “Mariupol” many times. They were interceding to God. If you’re not constantly in the presence of God, you’ll easily get overwhelmed by everything you have to do, all of the stories you hear and all that you see. And you’ll end up stuck not being able to do anything.
Then, do your part. You can’t serve everyone, but for the ones you can, serve them with passion. Serve them with love. Serve them showing the love that is in you because God is in you. They told us: “It’s a great challenge and a big pain to know that you can’t serve them all, but we’ve learned that God has called us to focus and serve our guests well and when they leave, we get to serve the next ones coming.”
We went to Ukraine to be a blessing for the others. We believe we were. But we returned very blessed by what we saw our brothers and sisters there doing. They didn’t give us theology lessons or motivational speeches. Just simple lessons from their life and ministry in which the central point is always God and serving others.
Like our friends, there are many that share and proclaim the Light of the World in a gray hopeless world where sirens are constantly sending you down into underground shelters.
Some of them you know, and you keep finding out about others. Pray for them and give where God leads you, serve in practical ways, send messages of encouragement, and do your part!
Pray and do your part!
PARTNERS
