COVID Outreach in Ukrainian Village

I want to share a story with you today. The setting of my story is a little village outside of the Ukrainian capital city of Kiev, named Krushinka. Over the last few years we have noticed that the smaller communities outside the major cities are not only places of great poverty, but also seem to have been forgotten by the rest of the world. Many are so far unreached by the evangelical churches because they simply haven’t had enough resources to get to everywhere in the country. To this day, 80% of these places still do not have an evangelical church.

Krushinka is very special place because the message of Christ goes out in a very unique way. High levels of unemployment and depression in Ukraine lead to a lot of substance abuse. So rehabilitation centres are common across the country. Krushinka has one of those centres. I met Max, leader of the centre, a couple years ago when I first visited the centre. Max shared his ministry vision with me and I was just blown away.

Max was sent to Krushinka to lead the rehabilitation ministry there. But he made a conscious decison that leading the rehabilitation centre was not enough. He decided he wanted to reach out to the entire community. He did that just because he felt that he should, that there were things he could do to bring hope and share Christ with the people around him. Max enlists the centre’s residents who are ready to interact with the world again to help run soccer clubs, make renovations to homes in disrepair, and deliver aid to those in poverty. This made an impact on me.