Thank you for your concern and for praying for Ukraine and the Ukrainian People
1. Last Friday we shared the news that Vitaly Bilyak was sent home from the Ukrainian army recruiting center thinking and hoping that this was the end of the matter. However, On Monday, February 26, he received a summons to appear at a third recruiting facility, once again with a backpack containing one day’s worth of supplies since if he was conscripted he would go directly into the army without returning home. But it seems all our prayers concerning Vitaly’s previous meetings carried over into this third interview. He was once again sent home! This time, though, Vitaly was handed an official document stating he was exempted from all 4 branches of military service. Praise God!
2. Ukrainian law states that no men between the ages of 18 and 60 can leave Ukraine while the country is at war. However, the law does provide an exception for pastors on official religious business. Obtaining such permission is a process that the Lord has enabled us to navigate several times now. So far, none of the pastors we have applied to bring temporarily to the US have been denied. In answer to prayer requested in a previous update, Igor Fomichov was granted this special permission yesterday! On Tuesday he will be traveling to the US along with Pavlo Usach, another one of our Ukrainian missionaries. Since Pavlo has 4 small children, he does not need this special permission ( men with multiple small children are allowed to leave Ukraine). However, when Igor crosses the border, the border guards do have the authority to overrule the special permission, even if it has been officially granted. The last two times Igor crossed the border, the border guards resisted since Igor is a government official (serving on the city council), and in one case Igor had to telephone and get his mayor out of bed in the middle of the night to intervene. So please continue to pray about this matter, especially on March 4th, when Igor hopes to cross the border.
3. Awakening Baptist Church in the Obolon district of Kyiv, Ukraine, was surprised on a Sunday when a contingent of soldiers appeared in their morning service. In this short video, Pastor Nikolai Rozhnyatovsky explains what happened and why the Special Forces showed up at the church:
https://vimeo.com/user37287229/specialforces
4. February 29th marked the end of our project to provide warm clothing and Scriptures for soldiers. To date, we have received a total of $165,000 designated for this project. Praise God! We are sincerely grateful to all who gave and prayed. You have enabled 1,650 Ukrainian servicemen to receive warm clothing, New Testaments, and Gospel literature. BIEM has received many heartwarming words of thanks from soldiers. We plan on sharing some of these testimonies in the Spring issue of our Challenger newsletter. The Winter Issue (which will soon be out) deals with other matters since work on that began weeks ago.
In Christ,
Sam Slobodian
President, BIEM