Heating Program
In November of 2024. We stated a “heating program” for the poorest of our people who we know don’t have enough money to pay their heating bills this winter, and will pay their heating expenses from the middle of November to the middle of March. 2025. After looking at each person’s situation, we will also provide some electric heated mattresses, electric heaters, wood for heating systems, rechargeable lamps (so they will have light when the electricity is turned off which sometimes 18 hours a day), and blankets. We are helping over 70 people to survive the winter.
Each month we collect their heating bills and go to the gas office and pay them. In 2026, we extended the program to include April because of the long and harsh winter.
For people in the villages, we bought enough wood to last them through the winter.
Myckola has CP and Down’s syndrome and lives alone in a small house since his mother died. Each month we give him food and all winter we have paid his heating bills. He is so very thankful for being warm during the winter.
Following is a thank you letter from Nadya Serdiukova:
“Our dear friends Thank you so much for the help you provide at holidays and usual days. It is a big, big support for us. Thank you so much for your care. It helps us a lot. Without your help we would die. It’s true. A lot of thanks to you and wish you good health, success, and keep doing your work.
One woman in one of the villages almost got hysterical when she saw all the wood and that it was so nice. She just kept saying, “I don’t understand why you would do this”. Having the privilege to bless people with the provisions God has given us is such an honor!
Feeding Program
When people come to us requesting a mobility, we deliver them to their homes and spend time with them this gaining an understanding of their living conditions and if they have family members who are able to help them. A relationship with them is begun, and because we are in their homes, we truly understand their needs.
Because we saw many people living in really bad conditions and realized that there was no one to help them, God laid it on our hearts to begin a feeding program in 2016. What started with approximately 40 people has grown to over 100 people we provide food for on a monthly basis. The food we give provides for a month’s worth of necessary staples. For many it is literally the difference between having to choose to buy their medicine or buy food.
Following is a story of just one person who receives our help:
Our Luba Gumenuk visited one of our people, Ephrosynis Klymenka. When Luba got there, Ephrosynis asked her, ‘Who sent you?”, and then told Luba that she had been planning to kill herself that day because of the burden of all the problems she had. She lost her disability retirement even though her sick leg is not healed. She is unable to pay her electricity bill, and her son was wounded in 2015 when Russia invaded the East. She is alone and no one cares for her.
It is God alone who directs us to such people. That day she got food, was listened to and cared for, and they prayed together for all her problems. Today life has a different meaning for her, food is delivered every month, and Luba continues to visit her regularly.
Each visit has a sad story, but we have the big privilege of telling people about the infinite love of Christ, and how He cares about each one of us. And especially that He won’t leave us if we invite Him to live in our hearts.
Clinics
Christmas
Easter
Annual Picnic
In 1999, we held our first picnic for people with special needs. Twenty five of them, along with their caregivers a mission team, and my staff came. For many of them, it was the first time out of their apartments since they became disabled (for many more than 5 years). In our city of Bila Tserkva, it was the first time people had seen people with special needs out in public! You see, at that time people with special needs were hidden away at home or in orphanages. I was actually told by a Ukrainian that there were no such people in Ukraine.
I had planned for our picnic to last 2 hours. We would feed them a hot meal, I would speak for a few minutes, and then we would get them safely home. But something wonderful started to happen as, for many of them, they discovered that they were not the only ones with special needs. They began talking together and exchanging phone numbers, and something new and wonderful began on that day!
At the end of 6 hours I had to tell them, “sorry, but we need to get you home before it gets dark.” And so this became an annual event in Bila Tserkva, and eventually grew to over 400 people, with volunteers from 5 or 6 churches and a mission team from Impact, helping us in picking up people, serving the the hot meals, providing entertainment, and taking them home.
Then came COVID, and for the first time since 1999, we couldn’t hold the picnic. And as COVID was finally becoming less and less an issue, the war began. We were no longer permitted to gather large groups together.
Almost 3 years ago we decided to hold a smaller picnic for our “kids” with special needs and their moms. We searched for a more remote location, and found one partly hidden by trees, near to a lake, with about 75 people in attendance.
Last year we also held a smaller picnic for the local rehabilitation center for soldiers with extreme PTSD.
We continue to dream of a day when we can once again hold our picnic in the Park, with hundreds in attendance! Until then we will host the smaller picnic.