Ministry Updates

Serving between Worlds: An Update from Ukraine (Part 1)

September 17, 2024
by Natasha Fish

In February 2022, TEAM Ukraine workers Samantha and Maria (names changed) were evacuated from their homes in southern Ukraine. Shortly after that time, the two shared how God was using them to minister to those in need outside of Ukraine’s borders. Now as the war drags into its third year, these two women continue to serve faithfully. In this first of a 2-part series, we share an update from Samantha. (Stay tuned in October for a similar update from Maria.)

Samantha has served Ukrainians for the past eight years, first in Ukraine, and since the war, in Czech Republic. The Russian invasion disrupted Samantha’s ministry, life, and work, placing her “between worlds” as she figured out a new normal.

Two months after the war began, Samantha shared the on-the-ground reality of learning to serve in new ways after being evacuated from the country she loved and called home. Now, as she returns to Ukraine two and a half years later, she reflects on all that God has done in the midst of unimaginable circumstances.

Ministry Turned Upside-Down

Since evacuating in February 2022, Samantha’s ministry turned upside-down. Overnight, she and her colleagues become unofficial aid workers, not only continuing to meet people’s spiritual needs through discipleship, but also helping them with documents, providing medical translation, and finding them housing, even if that meant texting and making connections at all hours of the night.

For the first year of the war, Samantha worked in Romania and Poland, helping other global workers connect with Ukrainian refugees who showed up with little to no social network, language knowledge, or resources.

The Birth of a New Church Body

During the second year of the war, Samantha helped Ukrainian refugees in a church in Prague, Czech Republic. This body of believers is unique because it didn’t exist before the war. Birthed from the catastrophe of fleeing their home, this small church plant is entirely made up of refugees.

This reality means the congregation is highly transient. Half of the members have left in the past year and a new half have come, totaling about 40 people who are now meeting in a city known for its hard spiritual soil.

God’s Hand at Work

As Samantha adjusted her ministry beyond what she ever expected, she also saw how the Lord had been so good and faithful, more than she could imagine. Even amid suffering, she is a witness to how He is not wasting the tragedy of this war.

Samantha shares, “The Father is still working in the hearts of people, especially those who I always thought, for eight years, didn’t care about the Lord at all.”

The people she has been praying for since the beginning of her ministry are finally asking questions like, “Why are our Orthodox priests nowhere to be found when we have needs? But these [evangelical] churches are the ones at the frontlines giving up their beds for us.”

Local, Bible-believing churches, like this one in Prague, bring Gospel help and hope to displaced Ukrainians.

The Kindness of the Gospel

Samantha shares about many of her unbelieving friends and acquaintances, who have crossed from one end of the country to the other, seeking safety. Where they have sought and found refuge in their perilous journey is at the churches in every small town they went to, “because they knew [the Christians] had to help us.”

This is the power of the Gospel at work, causing people to wonder about the God that enables his followers to risk and to love, even when they’re exhausted after two long years of war. Not only have some of these refugees now been inside a church for the first time because of the way Christians have stepped up to help them in time of crisis, but they are reading the Bible and talking to pastors, too.

Seeds Planted in Peace Sprout in War

Ministry in Ukraine is a distance race of perseverance. Relationships and conversations begun in a time of peace are being watered and starting to grow through the hardship of war.

Even virtually, Samantha is seeing God move in the hearts and minds of Ukrainian friends, scattered throughout Europe thanks to the war. She keeps in touch every week on calls where they ask, “If God is good, how could He allow this to happen? How could He allow my husband to be sent to the front and killed? How could He allow my brother to be a prisoner of war and be missing in action for 14 months?”

These are difficult questions to answer, but Samantha walks alongside her friends in relationships marked by empathy and trust. “We pray through it and talk through it and cry through it. And it’s been a joy to be a part of that,” she says.

The Role of the Global Church

Samantha faced the upheaval of evacuation, found her footing between worlds, and is now facing the challenges of returning to her home in Ukraine.

“I think the biggest way the Church can be helpful is prayer,” she reminds us.

Samantha is a witness to the “incredible physics-changing, scientifically impossible things [that] are happening as a result of prayer.” She says, “We need prayer first because the Lord is the one who is shielding Ukrainian soldiers in the trenches and keeping bombs from falling on friends’ houses.”

Not only do physical miracles happen, but spiritual miracles happen, too. Samantha testifies that, “Many soldiers are repenting in the trenches when they see their whole unit nearly face death. And then they say, ‘Whatever God you pray to seems to be the God that answers. I’m in.’”

God is moving as Samantha, and many others like her, minister to those who have been and are continuing to be affected by the war. As the Apostle Paul reminds us in Galatians 6:9, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

So let us not become weary and not forget Ukraine in our prayers.

Please pray: