Look to the Lord and His strength; seek His face always. 1 Chronicles 16:11
Let us pray for perseverance in good works. St. Augustine says, “When the Saints pray in the words which Christ taught, they ask for little else than the gift of perseverance.”
Augustine of Hippo in The Lives of the Saints by Alan Butler, 1894 (Global Grey edition, 2019) 14 April reading.
When we walked through Saltivka, east of Kharkiv, we were moved by the damage to residential buildings. While some rubble has been cleaned up, few homes been rebuilt.
This one struck me. Andrey Kratsev pointed out the word painted on the wall on the left side of the photo above. It reads “people” in Ukrainian. Some live there despite having no running water or power.
Why paint that word on the wall? It sends a humble message to please not plunder from us though our building looks destroyed. Real “people” live here, 18 miles from the Russian border.
Andrey’s ministry, Hope Family Center (HFC), has two locations in Saltivka. Watch a video about his ministry here. I preached there and the people thanked us repeatedly for coming.
It seemed like every building in Saltivka had some form of damage. The city gets hammered almost daily. We had sirens go off twice urging us to take shelter.
Before we left, we gave HFC a gift of money from GTP. I will never forget his response. “You won’t believe this. I need to pay two staff today and I had no money. God supplied through you.”
Sometimes it’s hard for Andrey. His wife and young daughter are in the States. He prays to keep doing good works and saving lost and hurting souls one day at a time. Perseverance.
Their closest call: “On a cold day when a fellow pastor was providing soup for people on one side of a large apartment building, a missile hit the other side of it.”
With a healthy sense of humor. He said, “You only need three things to minister in Salivka: a helmet, a bulletproof vest, and a diaper.” Because some days you might soil yourself.
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