Weekly Update #7:
22nd April
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You can find all the information about our appeal, the work being done, articles and video updates on the Ukraine Appeal section of our website here.
If you are in a position to offer accommodation to a Ukrainian refugee, please do consider registering with our Cross Connect Ukraine linking scheme, run jointly with our friends in the Slavic Gospel Association. We're seeing many Christian hosts and Ukrainian refugees register. It's a real joy to participate in the Zoom calls where we seek to link up the hosts to refugees, and to witness the kindness and care shown by Christians offering a temporary home to people in great need.
As the mainstream media focuses its view on the Donbas region, it would be easy to think that the crisis in other parts of Ukraine and surrounding countries had ended, or at least eased. But of course nothing could be further from the truth, and it's likely that even bigger challenges lie ahead.
Volodia Kostyshyn in Ternopil described what he referred to as the 3rd wave of refugees. These were the people who had been least able to leave the worst affected areas, often elderly, poor or with disabilities, but had finally reached the point of desperation. And while the main warzone is now in the east and south of the country, still missiles are striking all parts of the country, usually fired from Belarus or from the Black Sea, maintaining the sense that nowhere is safe.
The flood of Ukrainian refugees continues, with another 300,000 leaving the country last week, taking the total to over 5 million, with over 7.7 million people displaced internally. This is putting enormous pressure on the resources and infrastructure of the places where the refugees are settling. Ola Cybula in Warsaw told us that over 300,000 refugees were now staying in the area, with over 17,000 Ukrainian children in the schools.
The churches we're working with continue to work tirelessly to do what they can to support refugees, whilst making the most of the many opportunities to share the gospel. Sasha Diankov in Chernivtsi in the west told us "Now a lot of people come from the southern region, Mykolaiv, Kherson and Mariupol regions, also from the Kharkiv region. Many people come to us for help. Some people who received help pass it on to others. The provision of food in the city is good. The problem is that people do not have enough money to live. We talk about God, distribute spiritual literature. We try to keep in touch with people."
But even though the danger even in Kyiv and Lviv is real, and there are missile strikes almost every day, yet people are trying to re-start their lives. And many are eager to return to the capital, but are being told by the mayor of the city to stay away until it's safer.
Please continue to pray for evangelical Christians working tirelessly on the front line, that in the midst of providing all they can in physical support for refugees, they would also have opportunity to share the Gospel, and meet the greatest need of people, the need of salvation.
£687,000 has been received since the start of the appeal.
£341,000 has been disbursed since the start of the appeal.
60% to Ukraine
26% to Moldova
7% to Poland
5% to Romania
2% for across Italy and Hungary, and literature from UK
We continued to put the largest part of our support into aid supplies into Ukraine from Lublin using Ternopil as a very effective hub from which to distribute around the country to over 100 evangelical churches. We are expecting our next shipment to go out on Tuesday after the Easter break in Ukraine.
At the suggestion of a supporter, we've established a link with the Christian Medical Fellowship, who have been working with other Christian medical associations to bring medical supplies into the country, and have a hub in Lviv. This has given Volodia Kostyshyn and our hub in Ternopil the potential to access medical supplies for the churches they support.
Literature: Along with the shipment of aid, we're looking forward to several thousand copies of John Blanchard's "Ultimate Questions" booklet in Ukrainian and Russian from 10ofThose being taken to Ternopil from where Volodia Kostyshyn will be distributing these for use around the country.
You can find an interactive map of all the work which your donations are being used to support here.
Thank you to everyone who has donated. 100% of donations will be passed through to support refugee work in the region, including provision of evangelistic literature.
As mentioned previously, we work through our network of missionaries, their churches and sister evangelical churches to distribute support for refugees, across Ukraine, Moldova, Poland, Romania and Hungary. This has proved effective, and enabled us to support 29 projects working through 19 churches directly and around 120 churches indirectly.
The types of work could be broken down into:
- Providing aid supplies: mainly through Ternopil as a hub.
- Supporting churches hosting refugees
- Supporting churches providing supplies to refugees
- Supporting people taking aid into needy areas
- Providing literature
As churches seek to distribute aid locally, and also to take supplies into some of the neediest (and most dangerous) areas, we've seen a number of requests to help these churches buy minibuses. They are also used to bring people to safety. Last week Pastor Viktor Pugach, a close friend of Volodia Kostyshyn, travelled over to Germany to collect a minibus we'd bought for them, adapted for wheelchair use. He messaged Volodia, as he crossed into Ukraine, "Somebody must be seriously praying for my trip! The queue is not kilometres long but days!!! But we were redirected by the police to another road, do not ask me for what reason, and got almost immediately to the border checkpoint."
Next week, we're hoping that the church in Zaporizhzia will also be collecting a minibus from Germany to support their collection and distribution of aid supplies.
As we see increasing need in the south and east, we're now investigating options to use a second distribution hub, perhaps near Dnipro, to where we can send shipments of aid supplies for them to be distributed.
Minibus for Volodia Kostyshyn's the church in Ternopil being brought back from Germany
For more details of how we are working, to make effective use of the generous donations entrusted to us, please click here.
Please continue to pray for Andrii & Yolanta Kaustov
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For several weeks, we've been asking you to hold up Andrii & Yolanta Kaustov in your prayers. Andrii is a colleague and friend of Vitalii Mariash at Kyiv Theological Seminary. Both Andrii and Yolanta are suffering from cancer, and are undergoing chemotherapy. At one point, they were receiving their treatment in a bunker in Kyiv, before this stopped and they had to move to Chernivtsi to continue treatment.
Recently, they registered with our Cross Connect Ukraine scheme to come to the UK, and it has been a real blessing to us to see the Lord at work, as a Christian couple from Belfast linked up with them, and went out of their way to ensure suitable accommodation near to Belfast hospital, with the support of their daughter, who is a specialist in exactly the type of cancer which Andrii suffers from.
And thanks to the help of supporters, we made contact with the head of cancer treatment in Belfast, Prof. Gerry Hanna, himself an evangelical Christian who had been involved in helping people from Ukraine, and who has been very helpful in guiding us.
Andrii's visa came through last week. But then we hit the problem with Yolanta's visa. She's a Polish citizen, and while the Ukrainian visa scheme is open to close relatives of Ukrainian citizens, the system is requiring her to travel to a visa application centre (VAC), in Poland or Romania. But she is currently too weak to travel.
This morning we raised an escalation with the visa service, and we are now waiting to hear if they are willing to waive the need for her to visit a VAC. We should hear their decision by this Tuesday.
Please pray for Andrii and Yolanta, that they will be able to come to the UK to receive cancer treatment.
Brief Update from Volodia Kostyshyn
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In this short video, Volodia Kostyshyn describes the '3rd wave' of refugees he's seeing come to Ternopil, and also talks about the openness to to the gospel he's seen amongst many refugees - something he's never seen before.
Phil Dunn
(EMF Northern Ireland Representative)
Martin Tatham
(EMF Church Partnership Coordinator)
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