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stay & serve in ukraine

~ adapted from an article by pastor Vasyl Ostryi of Irpin Bible Church in Ukraine ~

To us in Ukraine, the book of Esther has become real. The decree is signed, a 21stCentury Haman has the power to destroy a nation. The gallows are ready. Ukraine is the target.

Missionaries have left as have Western embassies and citizens. Oligarchs, businessmen, and those who can afford it have left, saving their families from war.

My wife and I decided to remain in our city near Kyiv, to stay and serve the people of Ukraine. Irpin Bible Church, where I joined the pastoral team in 2016, has bought a supply of food, medicine, and fuel so that we’ll be able to help those in need rather than burden them.
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piety & mercy

Kirstin Downey’s biography Isabella, the Warrior Queen acknowledges that scholars debate who were the first non-Americans to step onto the shores of the New World: Norseman, Welsh, Africans, Polynesians, Chinese? Some or all of these may have arrived before Columbus.

They looked, but they left.

Queen Isabella of Spain was the first to recognize the possibilities of the Western Hemisphere. Alert to its value she claimed it for her imperial self, then launched an enterprise that resulted in one of history’s most dramatic transfers of wealth and shifts of population.
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