Light in a Dark Place

Posted on February 15, 2025 by Nathan

Back in November, I took part in a missions trip. That, in and of itself, is not that unusual. I have taken part in many missions trips over the years. But this one was different. Usually, I have a pretty good idea of what to expect, because I am one of the organizers of the missions trip. But not this time. I knew that Joshua Steele, Ben Sargent, and I would be meeting up with Oleksandr Ilchenko (whom I had never met) in Zhytomyr (located in northern central Ukraine), that we would be heading to southern central Ukraine to areas that had been occupied by the Russians, that we would be distributing humanitarian aid and preaching the Gospel, and that Oleksandr had a plan. But what that plan was, I had no idea.

What happened next was a testament to Oleksandr's organizational skills, and to the Body of Christ's ability to come together for service. Prior to our arrival in Zhytomyr, Oleksandr's church had been assembling hundreds of aid packages and shipping them ahead to the target area. The packages were then received by another church and stored until our arrival. A group of believers stayed up all night baking bread for us to distribute. All throughout our trip, Christians were hosting us, feeding us, and helping to gather crowds of needy people for us to share aid with, both physical and spiritual.

This crew baked hundreds of loaves of bread for distribution, and the lady in the glasses also fed us several times!

Over the course of about a week, we visited 11 different locations, distributing aid and sharing Christ. As a rule, we would pull into a town, and there would already be crowd waiting for us, usually gathered by the town leadership, but sometimes by local Christians. We would then introduce ourselves, share the Gospel, distribute aid and literature, and then spend some time with the locals before moving on to our next destination. As we trundled along the roads, Oleksandr would often be on his phone, coordinating future stops.

Sharing the Gospel.

As you might imagine, all along the way, we saw evidence of the war's devastation. Some villages were almost completely reduced to rubble, while others had escaped relatively unscathed. But even in the villages that seemed to be in good shape, a closer look would often reveal abandoned homes, shrapnel and bullet holes, blast craters, or piles of spent Russian ordnance. Signs, or sometimes just ribbons tied on bushes would warn us to the danger of mines if we were to venture off the road, and sometimes we would pass a demining crew painstakingly working their way through a field. All along the way, we heard stories of battles that were fought, civilians fleeing for their lives, and atrocities committed by the Russians.

Ben poses with one of many spent rockets that once contained cluster munitions that were dropped on and around this particular village.

Not surprisingly, the war has left a lot of needy, hurting people in its wake. While we couldn't undo what had been done, and there was very little we could do to fix what was broken, we were grateful for the opportunity to do what we could, and shine a light of hope in a dark place.

To see pictures and a video from our trip, click here.

War News

In part due to record-breaking warm weather this winter, power blackouts have essentially been a non-issue, for which we are very thankful. I believe the last outages we've had were in early December, after a large Russian attack on Ukraine's energy infrastructure.

Speaking of air attacks, while Russia's launching of drones and missiles against Ukraine is an almost daily occurrence, things have been relatively quiet on our end of the country.

Family

As far as my health goes, I'm a little over halfway through a four-month herbal protocol, which has been bumpy at times. I'm looking forward to whatever is next, which will likely be decided in April or May once I get some more testing done.

On the other hand, Lydia does seem to be feeling a bit better in her battle with Lyme. She still can't walk very far before she feels like she's run a marathon, but it does seem like things are slowly trending in the right direction.

Just when we were starting to hope that the "real" winter would never arrive, it did! Despite the colder temperatures, Katelin still makes it a point to get most of the kids outside every day. Everyone is working hard on school, and Katelin and the kids recently finished a big unit study on the pioneers. Sometimes life feels hard, but if we compare ourselves to the pioneers or especially to the folks whose villages were occupied by the Russians, we really have a lot to be thankful for!