Thank you for your concern and for praying for Ukraine and the Ukrainian People
1. We have received a prayer request from Pasha Usach, our church planter in Zdolbuniv, Ukraine. He has just received our latest container. Apparently, this shipment falls under new guidelines for receiving humanitarian aid, which now add many more reporting requirements. These requirements present an overwhelming task. Not needing to deal with such documentation was a great blessing while the special wartime exemption for such documentation existed. Evidently, those days are over. Pasha certainly needs prayer as he slogs through the monumental task ahead of him.
2. We mentioned in last week’s updates that Vitaly Bilyak from Ternopil in Western Ukraine is temporarily visiting BIEM in the US to speak in churches. Our first meeting was in Kentucky. In that service we met Anatoly, a Ukrainian man who recently arrived in the US as a refugee from the war. He told us that he well recalls my father’s sermons that we broadcast throughout the Soviet Union over international shortwave radio over 30 years ago. What a blessing and encouragement to hear that Anatoly and many folks he knew were regular listeners and still remember Peter Slobodian!
3. Speaking of Vitaly Bilyak, in his 17th evangelistic-aid trip to the south and east of Ukraine, Vitaly ministered to both hurting civilians and the soldiers defending them. But the trip was not without cost. A Russian drone targeted Vitaly’s car with a grenade. By God’s grace, Vitaly survived, but shrapnel from the blast caused extensive damage to his vehicle. In this video, “Serving Those Who Have Suffered Loss,” he shares some of the sights and sounds from that trip:
https://vimeo.com/user37287229/servingthosewhosuffer
4. This week, one of our missionary couples to restricted lands visited the BIEM home office for a couple of days. They brought a large trailer full of war relief items that a service organization had donated for our next container—wheelchairs, walkers, and many boxes stuffed tightly with brand-new socks. While the husband spent many hours in ministry-related meetings with BIEM personnel, the wife spent hours in our warehouse sorting and packing dozens of boxes of donated clothing that needed to be prepared for shipment. What blessings!
In Christ,
Sam Slobodian
President, BIEM