Thank you for your concern and for praying for Ukraine and the Ukrainian People
1. Last winter, we were able to provide 1,650 Ukrainian soldiers with $100 worth of warm clothing and New Testaments. Not just any soldiers but soldiers that were directly connected with members of our churches willing to obtain and dispatch these parcels. As we have previously mentioned, we repeated this project this winter through the same application process used last year. In our February 7 Updates, we shared that this winter we received applications representing 1,076 soldiers and that we needed $16,000 more to meet this need. Praise God, $16,890 has come in! This is a huge answer from God to our prayers! The extra $890 will go to meet the needs of additional applications we received.
2. For several weeks in a row, a group of 5 - 8 ladies from a local church have been coming to BIEM and donating a day to sort and pack clothing into boxes for our next war-relief shipment. By steadily working together for a few hours, these ladies have been enjoying the time of fellowship while greatly helping us to process donations. If any local ladies are interested in joining them, they typically come on a Wednesday or Thursday. Or, if your family, Sunday school class, or other group would like to give of your time for a worthy ministry project, we have plenty more bags of clothing waiting to get sorted and packed!
3. In February, BIEM’s Vitaly Bilyak made his 21st evangelistic aid trip to the war’s frontlines. BIEM church planter Sergiy Koop joined him. In each place they visited, they preached the Gospel and shared gifts of other practical items. In Part 1 of their video, they visited civilians. In Part 2, they continue the account with visits to soldiers they know with additional aid, such as tourniquets. You can view that narration here:
https://vimeo.com/user37287229/trip21-2
4. In February BIEM’s director for Ukraine, Eugene Buyko, and a team from Kyiv drove to within 10 miles of the fighting in Donbas. Near a busy intersection, they set up an outdoor soup kitchen, where they offered free bograch (hot, hearty soup with a lot of meat, carrots, onions, potatoes and peppers) along with coffee, tea, and snacks. Of course, the team also offered New Testaments. Eugene and the team had many opportunities to engage in conversations where they listened to people’s trials and prayed with them. In tears, a woman named Lyudmyla told how her house and possessions had all burned during an air raid. Her 2 sons are in the army at the front. A young man declared his father is a pastor and the songs playing over the speaker at the soup kitchen were just like the songs in his father’s church. In one day, Eugene and the team got to have prayer and share the Gospel with groups of people 50 times. That day, over 200 listened to God’s way of salvation, and not one person refused the invitation to join in prayer. Because that location is so near to the front, the sounds of artillery and explosions were regularly heard. Eugene says, “Now, more than ever, people need God, need prayers, need support. So I ask you to continue to pray for me, so that God will give me the strength to do this work and wisdom.”
In Christ,
Sam Slobodian
President, BIEM
