Thank you for your concern and for praying for Ukraine and the Ukrainian People
1. BIEM Board member Kevin Gaugler and I are now in Ukraine, where we are making stops in multiple areas where BIEM has planted churches. We are looking forward to a baptism this Sunday in Bilogorodka, where brother Eugene Buyko is the church planter. One of the churches where brother Eugene has delivered war relief aid from BIEM is in Lubyanka, which is in the Hostomel area, which was previously occupied by Russians and was the site of many atrocities. When the pastor there heard Eugene was planning a baptism for this Sunday, he telephoned. Like most Ukrainian churches, the Lubyanka church baptizes in nearby rivers and lakes. However, the pastor explained that the shores around the rivers and lakes near his church are plagued with land mines. Because he didn’t want to risk having anyone blown up by attending a baptism, he asked if his congregation could attend and baptize their converts in Bilogorodka’s pool, too. Eugene gladly agreed! So, we look forward to great fellowship with a congregation that has endured much suffering yet remains faithful and continues to win souls.
2. Back on January 6, we wrote about a refugee family who showed up in brother Yura’s church in Lviv after escaping from an occupied area. They told the heartbreaking story of their 27-year-old daughter who had served in the Ukrainian military. Somehow the Russian military killed her. After this family received notification from the Russian military that they could come and retrieve her body, the brokenhearted family arrived only to be shocked and horrified: her body had been cut into several pieces. We visited Pastor Yura yesterday, and he gave us an update. In the months since this grieving family arrived in Lviv, the local church has been reaching out to them with love and compassion. As a result, the father, mother, and most of the children have been saved, baptized, and become an integral part of this church. Praise God!
3. After visiting some supporting churches in the U.S., church-planter Vitaly Bilyak paused to share his gratitude and some parting words with you friends in America. Please watch this brief video here:
4. Tomorrow we are looking forward to visiting the new church in Nizhylovychi. This is the church that began through our war-relief distributions in that area. Since the congregation’s humble beginnings, there has been exciting progress as the Lord supplied funds to purchase a simple, old house to serve as a church building even though it needed repair work. Since its purchase, we have been able to install a badly needed concrete floor. More recently, additional funds have arrived for a new well, so soon they will have clean, running water. When the church planter showed us photos of some elderly new converts struggling to read their Bibles with little magnifying glasses, we purchased nice, large magnifying glasses for them. We look forward to handing out these new magnifying glasses tomorrow.
5. Here at the Seminary in Kyiv, we are thrilled at the attendance of 32 students for the Fall session. We thank God for such a turnout during this time of war in Ukraine. Because of the war, our students from Donetsk, Lugansk, and other occupied regions cannot come. Also prevented from coming are the students from Belarus. Therefore, to still have 32 students is more than we expected. Praise God! For those students who were able to attend this week, besides learning much from the classes taught, the time together and wonderful fellowship they have been able to enjoy provide their own form of war relief. Of these 32, 8 have newly enrolled just this semester. Once again, we praise God!
Sam Slobodian
President - BIEM