News from Ukraine
SEMINAR IN LVIV
Our recently experienced week-long seminar in Lviv, Ukraine. The training was led by Dr. James Hall, psychiatrist from Birmingham, and Rev Gerry Harwood, Presbyterian pastor from Chattanooga.
The following two entries are (1) Lyuda Betina’s report regarding the seminar, and (2) Jerry Harwood letter to our team.
Pathway is so grateful for the commitment, courage, and sacrifice our presenters made (Jim travelled through Kiev, Odessa and Belgorod-Dnistrovsky to visit our counseling work and Refugee Center), and for their love for our beloved Ukraine.
Lyuda’s Seminar Report
When the acacia trees bloom, our small town is filled with their sweet fragrance. The beauty of the flowering trees offers a gentle distraction from heavy thoughts and inspires us to keep living with gratitude and joy for the blessings around us.
May has always been a beautiful month, bringing flowers, warmth, fragrance, and hope. This year, perhaps more than ever, we feel the importance of these simple gifts as we long so deeply for beauty and peace. At times, if we set aside the news for a moment and ignore the sound of drones passing overhead on their way to attack Odesa, it can almost seem as though the world is filled only with beauty.
This month, the counselors from our counseling center traveled to Lviv for a conference. Lviv is a beautiful city in western Ukraine and is generally considered safer than many cities in the south, north, and central regions of the country.
Along with learning and professional training, the conference gave us a valuable opportunity to rest, enjoy fellowship, and worship together. The theme of the conference was “Integral Approaches to Mental Health and Family Therapy.” These are topics and questions we encounter every day during counseling sessions and group therapy with people who have experienced deep pain and many difficult events.
We came to the conference carrying not only the stories and struggles of our clients, but also our own stories, which have become many during these challenging times. We are deeply thankful to Jerry Harwood and Jim Hall, our speakers who traveled to Ukraine during such a difficult season. They shared valuable knowledge and practical wisdom with us, answered our questions, met with us individually, and did everything they could to encourage, support, and strengthen us in our work and ministry. After the conference, Jim Hall willingly traveled with us to Odesa and Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi, where he spent several days meeting with people and supporting us in our counseling ministry and daily work.
We were very glad that Vasyl was able to attend the conference with us. Vasyl is our new military counselor who has endured many difficult experiences since the beginning of the war. He defended Mariupol and was later taken into captivity, where he spent almost two years. Yet these hardships did not break him. He continues to serve in the Marine Corps as a squad commander. Vasyl and the soldiers under his command regularly patrol the sea and help protect our town by shooting down drones flying overhead.
After returning from captivity, Vasyl began pursuing a second degree through distance education so that, alongside his military service, he could support other servicemen who have gone through experiences similar to his own — combat, captivity, trauma, and the difficult process of recovering from PTSD. His brother, Serge, who lost his both legs few months ago is recovering and will soon be getting prosthetics.
A week ago, Dr. Anya returned home for a few days, and we were glad to see her at church on Sunday. She has asked for prayer. Her medical team has received orders to redeploy, but a group of soldiers from their unit who were on the front line cannot be evacuated due to ongoing danger and have been there for an extended time. The doctors do not want to leave the servicemen without medical support. She asks us to pray for this situation, that the soldiers may be safely evacuated from the danger zone and brought to safety.
And we would like to share one more prayer request for two boys from an orphanage. For two years, we have been in contact with a group of children in a local orphanage, praying for them and asking God to provide what every child needs most—loving families. Over the past six months, we have begun to see answers to these prayers. One by one, the children have been adopted, and we rejoice greatly for each of them. Some were adopted by families in our own town, and we are able to see them and stay in touch.
However, two brothers, Serge and Art, have not yet been adopted and have recently been transferred to an orphanage in another city. Please pray for them, that God would provide a family for them. It is especially painful for them to see their friends being adopted while they remain behind, and they are struggling with this waiting and uncertainty.
Thank you so much for standing with us in prayer and support during these difficult days. Your care and faithfulness mean a great deal to us. We continue to see both sorrow and hope in our work, and we are grateful to walk this path together with you.
May God bless you and give you peace and strength. We remember you with gratitude and prayer.
Please, send your donations to Pathway Ministries: http://www.pathwayministriesinc.org
In Christ,
Lyuda
P.S: Here are photos from our training in Lviv: our group of counselors together with the speakers Jerry Harwood and Jim Hall, the photo of Vasyl, the two boys from the orphanage Serge and Art, and Dr. Anya speaking at the church.
Jerry Harwood’s Letter
Again, it was my honor to come and teach. More importantly, I was honored to be part of the stories of you and your staff. Please know I was truthful when I said I would be praying over my notes on each person. This morning as I write this (and please forgive my spellings!):
- Vova – I pray for his wife and daughters as they continue to live in France. I pray his work in the rehab center may lead others not only to sobriety but to faith in our Lord where true peace is found.
- George – While I know his own story of recovery is powerful and used in the lives of many as an inspiration, my primary prayer is for his son. I pray for his son and George’s communication, for the son’s discernment of what he needs for health and how some of his current coping is keeping him from the true joy Jesus has for him. As a parent of a wayward child, George is on my heart often. I pray he will keep the faith and be present and available and ready for the opportunities to connect with his son.
- Vasili – Praying that his experience in the war and captivity continue to give him permission to speak boldly into the lives of others. I also pray that his childhood experiences of seeing his dad follow faith and the difficulty with his mom remind him that we sow the seed, but it is up to the Spirit to bear fruit. That can be discouraging in one sense, but freeing also. Praying for his ministry to other military.
- Sergei – So talented and capable but recognize the deep burden of seeing assistant pastors drafted. It makes the shared work harder when more and more falls on his shoulders. I pray for safe return of his assistants but also for perseverance as he ministers to people in a trying time.
- Alayna – The word refugee is top of my prayers. I can only imaging how that must feel to see the world you live in as a refugee away from your home. Yet, I pray she will find joy in the amazing work she does with moms and wives of soldiers. And with teens who are starting to think the world of war is the only world available. For those with PTSD. For her own husband and for her daughter as a stdent.
- Syvlana – I pray also for your story of being a refugee. The Lord, I know, has set you in the path of many who need your wisdom. You are gifted with children and pray for those whom you minister to and with. Such a difficult world for them to navigate and I am thankful they have you in their lives. Also, I pray for your own family, your husband, sons, grandchildren.
- Victoria – Praying for you and your family including those in Brussels. I know you came to the university and psychology after a career in engineering. The Lord will use these two fields to reach people who might not listen to anyone else. Your ability to see the world through the pragmatic lens of an engineer will give you such wonderful insights. I pray you continue to see this as a blessing and tool in your tool box that the Lord will use. Continue to read your Bible (I pray this for all of you!) and the Lord will meet you there.
- Valerie – Prayers for you, your husband, and son as you, too, live in diaspora. Yet, I hope you will find a home in your new city. I am thankful for your work with special needs children in particular. I pray the Lord will continue to give you blessing from the work and that through you many families will benefit not just with good coping skills and techniques, but with a joy for their child who is an image bearer of our Lord.
- Tatiana (sp?) – Praying also for your family, including your son in the USA. I am so thankful you are working with families. When the war ends, there will be much devastation to family units and Ukraine needs counselors like you to speak into the gap. And I am thankful you are bold in speaking to sex issues. We did not cover this as a topic, but it is one as Christians we can not shy away from. Thankful to the Lord for you and your work.
- Lyuda – Thankful to again be with you and Sergei. Thankful to reconnect to your ministry and see how the Lord has blessed you. You truly are not just a counselor, but a counselor of counselors (and everyone knows we make the worst patients!!). Praying for the many hats you must wear and that the Lord gives you work-life balance, respite from the hard, difficult moments, and wisdom as you lead.
“All the days of my appointed time will I wait.”Job 14:14“A little stay on earth will make heaven more heavenly. Nothing makes rest so sweet as toil; nothing renders security so pleasant as exposure to alarms.The bitter quassia cups of earth will give a relish to the new wine which sparkles in the golden bowls of glory. Our battered armour and scarred countenances will render more illustrious our victory above, when we are welcomed to the seats of those who have overcome the world.We should not have full fellowship with Christ if we did not for awhile sojourn below, for he was baptized with a baptism of suffering among men, and we must be baptized with the same if we would share his kingdom.Fellowship with Christ is so honourable that the sorest sorrow is a light price by which to procure it.Another reason for our lingering here is for the good of others. We would not wish to enter heaven till our work is done, and it may be that we are yet ordained to minister light to souls benighted in the wilderness of sin.Our prolonged stay here is doubtless for God’s glory. A tried saint, like a well-cut diamond, glitters much in the King’s crown. Nothing reflects so much honour on a workman as a protracted and severe trial of his work, and its triumphant endurance of the ordeal without giving way in any part.We are God’s workmanship, in whom he will be glorified by our afflictions. It is for the honour of Jesus that we endure the trial of our faith with sacred joy.Let each man surrender his own longings to the glory of Jesus, and feel, “If my lying in the dust would elevate my Lord by so much as an inch, let me still lie among the pots of earth. If to live on earth forever would make my Lord more glorious, it should be my heaven to be shut out of heaven.”
