Some stories from our time in Izyum...

On Friday we left early in the morning to take a two hour drive to a city that  had 45,000 people before the War started and now is less than 17,000. The War here in Ukraine started on February 24th and many young people fled the region within the first few days.    

Izyum had been liberated after 7 months of ferocious fighting!  The residents there had heard about me and had asked several times if I would visit their church while I was here. My friends said it would be a nice thing but it still had land mines and boobytraps and wasn't safe yet so maybe I should stay in Kharkiv.  But God said 'go'!  There were many military road blocks on the way but by God's grace we got through everything just fine.  When we arrived at the church in Izyum it was just a small house but one of the few churches still standing! We unloaded our humanitarian supplies and lit a fire in a homemade stove.  There has been no power, electricity or water supplies for months! The people had been hiding in their homes and basements during the whole occupation by Russian troops. If they dared, they would go outside and light a fire to cook something for 'no more than 10 or 15 minutes'- if they were caught outside they were arrested or killed!  There was a mass grave near the church with 400 bodies in it!  People were killed if they had ever been in the military or a family who had someone in the military, if they had any Ukrainian flags or pro-Ukrainian materials all were murdered!   

They were forced to be a part of propaganda films showing Russian troops offering food -  if they refused they were arrested.  The amount of food they received each month was 33 ml of oil ( about a 1/4 cup), 130 g of rice (about 4 oz.) and one loaf of bread. Russian troops ransacked the houses and took anything of value and often would blow the house up afterward.  

They all shared personal stories, often with watery eyes, and confirmed this was their daily experience.    

After listening to these stories for sometime, I was asked to speak. The Holy Spirit has had me talk everywhere I go about "God's Love and Forgiveness", primarily for Russians, and "Thankfulness".  So far, people have been miraculously open and tender about the destructiveness in our own hearts when hate rules, but I was pretty sure in this little church I had a good chance of being thrown out the window!  But just the opposite happened!  After speaking for about 35 minutes, an elderly woman stood up and told everyone this was the  teaching her mother had given her as a little child and it is how she met Jesus!  She said," we can do nothing else, we must forgive and we must love!" And one right after another said the same thing!  I felt like weeping - that God lived in this place of horror and He refused to let these people go or fall into the darkness of hatred... they ended by saying even one young Russian soldier came to church to worship one Sunday, and they opened their arms to him!  

We spent about 2 1/2 hours in the church and another 2 1/2 hours going through the places they described and had hidden in.  At the end we went to the house of the dear pastor and his wife and to their garden which had been hit with three rockets and a fourth was half buried 10 feet from their front door - still unexploded!  

Finally, some comments about the pictures above...

1.   Destruction was everywhere...

2.   This is the pastor in Izyum, Zhenya, standing in his back yard that had been bombed!  Neither he nor his wife were hurt, by God's loving grace!

3.   This is a picture of the unexploded rocket, half buried, at his house!

4,   After months of fighting the town of Izyum was devastated!

5.  The is what is left of the church facility that our friends in Izyum were hiding in. They were in the basement while  the top part of the church was on fire from a rocket attack! 

6.  This building was not hit by rockets but lot on fire while people were still inside and many perished...

7.   We picked up a 52 year old soldier on our way out of Izyum who hadn't been home for 8 months, but now had weeks' leave. He was very interested in our mission and kept asking one question after another... he wants to stay in contact.