LOVE DRESSED IN WORK CLOTHES Mindy Henson, Kyiv, Ukraine

Thousands of Ukrainians have fled from eastern Ukraine since the war with Russia began in 2014. They are desperate to find places to live and hope for the future. In June, a team from Valley View Community Church (Columbia, Missouri), together with a team from Spring of Hope Church in Kyiv, Ukraine, spent a week in a small village about 100 kilometers from Kyiv, rebuilding homes for refugee families and sharing the gospel in the village.

Sergei and Lena Fedotov, with their family of 14 children, lost their home and livelihood, and had no means of buying food. They prayed, and as other families fled the east, they gave food to the family, enabling them to survive.  Finally, they, too, were forced to move. Through the kindness of believers, they found a very small house to live in. And they continued to pray.

As Sergei relates: “We wanted – actually, we were just hoping for something small – perhaps just to add one room. However, through the help of a brigade of construction workers, the Lord made it possible to have a new room and to have the roof replaced, too!  It is amazing to us that God made a miracle through total strangers, who had never met us before. The Lord brought these people to us to do what we could not do on our own.”

 Now they can eat together as a family, and the new roof has given them loft space to add more rooms in the future.

 Lena commented: “What you have done here – working with your hands and sharing the gospel – will be remembered in this village for years to come.”

 On our team t-shirts were the words: “Service – it is love dressed in work clothes.” And for a week in Ukraine, we served these families and shared the love of Christ in word and action.