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Victory is shining forth!
For the last 80 full days, Russia has been destroying its own future for decades to come, turning itself into North Korea 2.0. Of course, we in Ukraine are bearing the brunt of the suffering for now—but we believe the tables will turn soon enough. Ukraine is fresh off a victory in the Eurovision contest last night—a huge song contest for all European countries in which the winner is chosen by popular vote. The Ukrainian artists who won used the stage to beg for help for the Ukrainian soldiers besieged in Mariupol. Today the ruscists (Russian fascists) cynically wrote dedications on their bombs to the musicians.
This contest is only a small symbolic victory. The larger victory for Ukraine is coming soon. Russia continues to pull back its military aims in light of its many failures. In their pride, they have bitten off more than they can chew and continue to slowly choke on it. The Russian troops have also now pulled back from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city in the east.
Most importantly, we celebrate the true victory shining forth every Sunday. Christ has defeated the devil! All those who serve him, including all those in and under the Kremlin, are doomed to lose. Last Sunday we had a picnic with many of those serving refugees in our church—over 20 people as part of the core group, not including many other volunteers. The incredible thing is that more than half of them are refugees themselves, some of whom only became Christians after fleeing the war and ending up in our church. During the picnic, one of the new believers and I set a date for her baptism this summer.
There are more and more refugees who are making Svitlovodsk their longer-term home. A number of them have plugged right back in to serve other refugees along with our church, despite the fact that they are not Christians yet—though they tend not to stay that way for long. Today I had the joy of learning that another 3 refugees put their faith in Christ during the service: Lena, Sergey and Anya. This makes at least 14 that have come to know the Lord’s salvation that we know of just through our church in almost as many weeks of war—the previous saved soul a week ratio, by God’s grace, has been eclipsed at only 11.5 weeks of war! Our “home fellowship” on Friday nights (pictured above), women’s fellowship, men’s fellowship and Sunday services have never been so full!
We continue to serve hundreds of refugees every week through feeding them (as most are without jobs now) and continuing to do evacuations as needed and housing them in our church building for the first while until longer-term arrangements can be made. We are grateful for those of you who continue to serve alongside us through your generous support! The needs are not going away. If anything they are growing, though for some ministries their attention has already shifted. We realized a few weeks in that this is going to be a marathon rather than a 100 meter dash. Only God knows how much longer this will last, but we also trust that He will be our strength. Please continue to pray:
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