RECCE: Ukraine

“Attention! Air Alarm!” – cue siren sound from the mobile phone on the bedside table. ‘Passport, phone, wallet’ – the ‘mantra’ of essentials, then off to the safe room or shelter while sometimes hearing the mournful, rise-and-fall wail of the air raid warning sirens outside. A regular pattern during the night (especially but not always) during this recce mission to Ukraine.

But rewind a few weeks to the prayerful Zoom calls as the Flame International office team were working their socks off to arrange the insurance for the small team of Jan Ransom, Richard Hutchins (Flame trustee) and Richard Meryon (past Flame trustee) to go into a well-reported and active war zone between nation states. With the purpose of seeking people of peace with whom we could build relationship, for future teams to take Flame’s teaching into an environment that is so clearly going to need it (more on this later). Flame International characteristically visits places of elevated risk because of the work that we do – but this was something just a bit different. The Lord was good, everything was in place in time for each aspect of our trip; and this will benefit future missions having made our arrangements even more robust than they already were.

We arrived in Lviv station, and honestly there was so much of “life as normal” around and about – while at the same time there are signs pointing to the Shelter in every other station we have visited! Language was always going to be interesting until we met our interpreter – you may be able to guess that the top word in the picture is ‘toilet’ – but which way to turn?!

A quiet night in Lviv was followed by an early start (5.15am) for the 5-hour drive to Zhytomyr, to attend Kompass Church (a Baptist Union church) for their Sunday service, and meet their pastor, Vasily Povorozniuk, and his team. This was different to a “normal” mission trip, and we were uncertain whether we would be able to share Flame’s teaching and how relationships with the Baptist Union would develop – but as always God is Good! We joined the morning service with about 120 adults and 20 children; 40% of the congregation are military or have lost loved ones in the war. David James preached, and we shared communion with our new church friends. (David and his wife Linda are from the European Christian Mission who made the introductions necessary for this mission to go ahead.)

We shared lunch with the church leadership team before meeting with the ‘Hero Families’ (war widows, parents and siblings who have lost soldiers to the war) in the afternoon. They meet for Bible study, fellowship, worship and food distribution. There were about 160 people who had lost loved ones – in the groups there were some tricky questions, many deep thoughts shared and in Jan’s group (with Jane - Vasily’s wife as interpreter) hugs and tears were shared! As we gathered for a short worship service the major breakthrough that opened up the rest of the week happened – when Jan was invited to give a 15-minute teaching to these families. She spoke on healing the broken hearted and it was clear that many were touched in that moment. This was a pivotal moment in this recce mission as the local people recognised the anointing of Holy Spirit on this teaching and from there on, we knew the Lord had touched the heroes in this church.

We were able to spend more time with the church family and hear about Pastor Vasily’s amazing breadth of vision: for 1200 volunteer military chaplains working between the front line and their home churches, in his role as head of the volunteer army chaplaincy service; and for a new facility to help reintegrate injured soldiers into a society that sees disability as weakness.

On Monday morning, we travelled on the next stage of our journey eastwards – Jan had time in the first leg of the journey to speak with Vasily, with Roman (a Baptist Union pastor) translating, as we travelled in a pair of vehicles. The cost of the war on individual lives was brought home by our visit to war graves in Zhytomyr. Pastor Vasily took us to the graves of some men who have been lost from his congregation; the child of one of them is in one of the orphanage houses as their mother died in 2018 of cancer. There were two mothers grieving at their sons’ graves, and Jan was able to pray with them and hug them in this precious place.

Our next stop was Irpin, just outside Kyiv, and the furthest point of advance of the Russian invasion in 2022 towards Kyiv. During the journey, Jan was able to hear more of Pastor Vasily’s vision and to share more about Flame’s ministry. Building on the breakthrough of the day before, Pastor Vasily was keen that Flame should return to run a teaching conference for 25 chaplains and their wives to train them as trainers in ministry into trauma. He is also very keen for Flame to run a retreat for the Hero families of widows and mothers. The family retreat has previously been run in a location in the southwest of Ukraine, away from the most immediate dangers.

In Irpin, we met with a Deputy President of the Ukrainian Baptist Union, the Operations Secretary Volodymyr Kondor; and after lunch provided by the Baptist Union headquarters, we had fruitful discussions and it was very clear the Pastor Vasily was very keen to see Flame return (when Jan said we only come by invitation he said, “I have already invited you!” – and suggested 40 days to come up with a plan for our return!). Vlodymyr spoke of the deep need for some way of helping people with trauma, telling us that the Deputy Prime Minister had shared estimates of 10 million traumatised people by the end of the war, with 4 million being seriously psychologically damaged. The government is looking to the churches for help and the Baptist Union is keen to make use of Flame’s ministry to train themselves. We pray this will multiply as we return to minister to Volunteer Military Chaplains, many of whom are Church Leaders who we hope will go on to train both the military and civilian churches.

We continued our journey a further 4 hours or so to Poltava to our accommodation in a church hostel located at Salvation Church – another Baptist Union site.

The following day we left early in the morning for a location about 100km further east – the name of the place is sensitive because of the military hospital that we were privileged to visit; it could become a target for Russian strikes. At the hospital we were giving out hygiene parcels of towels and toiletries to 60-plus soldiers and medics – and had the opportunity to pray briefly with many of them. We were able to share a good amount of time with the 5 volunteer chaplains who are ministering there that week, hearing about their spiritual battles and hopes/fears for the future; and joining in as best we could with some very distinctive Ukrainian worship at lunchtime.

As we departed the hospital, we heard about a missile strike in Poltava that happened about 3 hours after we had left; this strike killed 51 and injured over 270 at a cadet training centre. We had thought moving eastwards was toward greater danger, but the Lord’s hand was on us to move us away from this hazard.

We left Poltava the following morning to drive back to Kyiv with 2 hours looking around this amazing city. We also had the opportunity for an unscheduled visit to Vasily Khimich, the leader of the Ukraine Military Christian Fellowship – a Military Ministries International contact of Richard Meryon. We found a spirit of great unity with the rest of our visit, with Vasily K making it clear that he had handed the role of chaplaincy lead to Vasily P and they were in good relationship; he was also enthusiastic about the potential role of Flame in Ukraine and wants the Military Christian Fellowship to be part of it too! God is so good!

A short (5 hour!) taxi ride took us back to Lviv for our final night there – and two last opportunities to take shelter from drone attacks; one drone was shot down about 2 miles from our hotel, setting fire to parked lorries in an industrial area. Not all shelters were as austere as the Lviv one…and note that it is not packed with locals. The Ukrainians have very good social media channels to inform them of likely strikes, so on the whole they don’t react in the same way that we did!

This was an amazing and fruitful recce and the Lord’s hand was so clearly on everything that we did. We have built relationships with the Baptist Union and are sure of our invitation back to minister to Hero families in their trauma, and to volunteer chaplains through training them in their ministry to the traumatised. We were unable to obtain train tickets for our return to Poland, so took a taxi and “walked the border” instead – another good experience as it shows what has to be done if train tickets aren’t available.

“He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day…” Psalm 91:4-5

God is good – and we were ever under his wing and in his protection. Psalm 91 was shared at our devotions one day and has a whole new level of meaning from this experience.

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