Stories Open Mic Prayer Meeting for Ukraine After a week of war and with ongoing uncertainty about what might come next for individual team member and the ministry more widely, we had the privilege of meeting together to pray with some of those feeling the effects most immediately. Having only decided at short notice to switch focus to the situation in Ukraine for Feba's regular monthly meeting on 2nd March 2022, an encouraging number of supporters and new contacts joined us to pray. We were particularly pleased to be able to welcome our colleagues Igor and Iryna (FEBC Ukraine) live from Kyiv, Alexey (FEBC Russia) from St Petersburg, and Victor (FEBC Eurasia) and Ed (FEBC US) joining from La Mirada. It was extremely helpful to hear firsthand just what is happening with the ministry in Ukraine and Russia at the moment, and the challenges they face. We also heard some moving updates about the impact on the team and their families. The following notes present a selection of the key messages that were shared during the evening. Igor I’m in the bomb shelter in the basement, in the house of my brother. Let me show you: here we are - this is my aunt, my uncle, my brother, my cousin, my wife, and my daughters - aged one and five years old. And really, we are little bit tired about everything that has happened in the last week. And I think not only me, of course. We understand that everything that is happening right now in our country is - for us Christians, for us as broadcasters - it is an opportunity. Many of my friends in other cities and in other countries are texting me asking me ‘Why are you still in Kyiv?’. But I am feeling in my heart that I should stay here - I should preach the gospel to everyone who needs this, because even in Kyiv right now there are still millions of people. Yesterday, we were at the shopping centre just to buy some food – bread, as we still need to eat. There were a lot of people, and people are afraid. We understand that everything that is happening right now in our country is - for us Christians, for us as broadcasters - it is an opportunity. We’re using messaging apps with teenagers and with young people; young people - they're in touch with us through social media, and we're using groups. We share links with them and they’re seeing our broadcasts. Yesterday we were praying with a lot of young people who had never even heard of Jesus. People connect with us from different parts of Ukraine - places like Mariupol where it is very much worse than even in Kiev. And they receive Jesus Christ as Lord! I have even been texting with a lot of people from Russia: I just text them ‘We love you and we pray for you!’ and they are shocked about it - just because they think that we are against them; but I said ‘No, we love you – really, and I pray for you!’. Even today, I know there was one pastor from Russia and many Ukrainian guys attacked him, and he was very afraid. I called him and said ‘Man, I know that you are afraid; we are also, because whilst you are at home I’m in a bomb shelter. But you know, I love you as brother in Christ!’ And you know what - I want to share with you a word from the Bible because yesterday I was very afraid and had some sense of panic in my heart, but we started praying with our family. My five year old daughter went on her knees, and really I was shocked! This was my five year old daughter and she went on her knees, and she started praying about our country and all that is happening, and I felt in my heart God remind me of a word from the Bible. Please, I will read in English – it is Philippians 4 v. 7: ‘You will experience God’s peace which exceeds anything we can understand; His peace will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus’. And after that I understood that only His peace should be in the hearts of everyone. So, where we're standing here, we're praying; we are trying to do what we can. Thank you for your prayers - because it is very important. Right now I have just received a message that we can go out from our bomb shelter, which is good news for us! Please pray really for peace. You know, I have a lot of friends and some relatives in the eastern part of Ukraine where it is really dangerous. Maybe pray especially for that situation. And of course for us [the team] and how we can communicate with people. How we can help them. And what to do. And also for my daughters, because we are sleeping here in our bomb shelter and it's a little bit cold here, so pray that supernaturally they’d feel warm. UPDATE: Please note that since the Prayer Meeting, Igor has relocated to the west of the country for safety - from where he continues to work as detailed above; his wife and young daughters, meanwhile, have evacuated to Poland. Please do pray for them all. Picture credits: One of our Feba supporters was joined by their six year old son at the Prayer Meeting. He was so moved by what he heard from Igor that he drew this picture (plus the banner image on this page) and sent a personal message - including Bible verses - to Igor and his young family. See 1 Peter 5:7 and Hebrews 13:6 for some inspiration today. How precious! Iryna Despite all the evil things that are happening – all the destruction, we see so much love of God for the people who stand, unite, help others – nevermind the fact that some people have gone west, some stayed, some remained calm. My boyfriend is in IT and he has been helping online fighting his fight there. Everyone has his own fight now. I have heard this question ‘How can you stand firm? How can you do something in this period?’ Helping others helps us to stand; when we stand on our own it is hard, but when you can help others it helps you to stand. Helping others helps us to stand; when we stand on our own it is hard, but when you can help others it helps you to stand. Today, I was on air with Olesia through Zoom. We have our studio in Chernitsvi now – it’s safe – so we make programmes on air, and also share videos that are inspiring. We work with social networks such as Instagram, Telegram and Facebook. Now is a golden time to just say it straight about God! Previously, we were perhaps trying to be sensitive to people who didn’t know God; now, people are just open to God. We used to do some ‘pre-evangelism’; sometimes now we just read the Bible. On some posts we have 1,000 comments. People say ‘I pray, I pray, I pray!’. Now, there is no atheist in Ukraine! We just help these people to find the real God – to open the Bible, to pray to Jesus Christ – we try to give them the Word of God. That is one of our prayer requests: that people stay open to the gospel, continue to serve Him, and importantly join a local church – something we work at constantly. Our follow up team and counsellors are very busy. We have a ‘Helpline’ and of course now our counsellors and follow up workers are receiving many more calls than before – and there is a lot of pain in these calls. We do everything we can to spread the Helpline number all over Ukraine. We have increased the hours of the Helpline. We used to operate 10-8 but now it is 8-11, so we have evening calls too, which is important. Pray for the follow up workers because I don’t understand what they feel now – they take a lot of calls – they want to take care of these people – and they have their own needs and worries. They’re real heroes for me! They talk heart-to-heart with people. Pray for safety. I’m living just next to [on the outskirts of] Kyiv – pray for safety for my family in the south of Ukraine. It is a special region with a lot of Russian speaking people. And another place that is very dangerous is Kharkiv. Another huge war is information – against Russian propaganda. Even some of my relatives are under it: they listen to Russian news – they’re separated from reality – they don’t understand what is going on, and don’t see the reality. UPDATE: Please note that Iryna is living approximately 20km from Irpin, which has been subjected to sustained and heavy attacks. Please do pray for her safety. Alexey Thank you for having me. It’s great to be able to pray with friends in the UK, my brothers and sisters from Ukraine – it is precious. Of course, we pray for them every day – every opportunity we have to pray together. I’m thankful to God that they are safe and can continue their ministry. As for us, thank God we are – in comparison to our brothers and sisters in Ukraine – of course, we’re in a safer situation. We continue our ministry even though our government has started to close independent radio or television stations. This is a new era of censorship – it is becoming more and more difficult to share openly what you think, but we still have opportunity to share the gospel. This is the greatest challenge and we want to use this time as much as possible, because maybe later it will be more difficult to do it. So now, for example, they slow Facebook, there are problems with YouTube, but we can still continue through Russian social networks. My biggest prayer request is that we’d be able to stay online and be able to continue bringing the good news to those who are in need in Russia. Of course, some people are really horrified – shocked by the war that was started by our government. Some people are depressed, and people – some of our friends – shared that they are having panic attacks; they don’t know what do to influence this situation. They have friends and relatives in Ukraine. They don’t know how to help them. They’re afraid for their lives. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people blinded by propaganda – they want this war for some reason; it is hard to have conversations with those people, but they still need the good news. Our main purpose - our focus - is to share the gospel, and we need somehow to serve them even though they are blinded by what they hear. I had an experience today: I tried to watch the official news – it was horrible; for people receiving just this information, it is hard to imagine what is in their minds – what is in their head and hearts. I think we have to come through a period of understanding how we came to this situation as a nation. Our prayer is for us to have wisdom how to continue preaching good news in this situation of censorship – when people are losing their hope. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people blinded by propaganda – they want this war for some reason; it is hard to have conversations with those people, but they still need the good news. For the time being, we have some problems with some channels for our broadcasting – including Facebook; we need to use Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) - thank God this is still possible, but it is becoming harder. We can’t do things with the same quality, stability. As we see the range of sanctions, it seems like we’re going to face other technical equipment challenges in future too. Also, the narrowing of opportunities for freedom of speech with the new laws. For all our updates from Ukraine - including videos, please click here. Page created on 6th March 2022 Manage Cookie Preferences