30 Years of Presence in Ukraine. Your Gift Helps Families Affected by the War.

We didn’t come to survive a war. Many would not sign up for that. We came the way most missionaries come, with a calling, a language to learn, and a hope that if we stayed long enough, something small and faithful might grow.

For a while, that’s exactly what it was. A church took root. Neighbors became a congregation. Congregation became family. Michelle and I, with our five children, built a life here, one ordinary season at a time. Ours is the kind of missionary story many expect: patient, slow, nothing that would ever make headlines.

The Orange Revolution came in 2004. In 2008, we wondered if the global financial crisis might send us home. Maidan followed in 2013, peaceful, until it wasn’t. Russia saw its opening and took Crimea and parts of the East. In 2022, Russian tanks sat on the outskirts of Kyiv, leaving a long trail of death and destruction as they approached.

We assumed the war would interrupt the ministry, that everything we’d built for thirty years would have to pause while we simply endured. Instead, the opposite happened.

The day the invasion began, Michelle left for Poland to help our daughter and her family find safety. Quickly, they began to care for refugees crossing the border. Five months passed before she came home to our work in L’viv.

At the same time, our church didn’t close. It became a refugee shelter, sheltering more than 500 people and families fleeing as their cities were being attacked. The relationships we’d spent decades building didn’t just help our community survive the first terrifying months of the invasion. They became an invitation to serve people in ways we’d never imagined.

Our team ran healing-play camps for children, helping them heal from the stress of seeing what no child ever should. One volunteer, an EMT from the USA, traveled to frontline units to deliver tourniquets and train soldiers in their proper use.

It turns out faithfulness isn’t something you build and then protect from collapse. It’s something collapse reveals. You don’t find out what thirty years of showing up was for until the moment everything else falls apart.

There’s a pattern in nature that shows up everywhere once you start looking for it: forests need fire. Not despite the growth that follows, because of it. Certain seeds only open under heat. Certain soil only becomes fertile after being burned clean of what was choking it.

We don’t say this to make war sound like a metaphor with a silver lining. It isn’t. What we’ve watched happen to this country is a real and devastating loss, and we don’t romanticize it. But we’ve also watched something that only becomes visible in collapse: who people really are when the structures that used to hold everything together are gone. For some, that meant staying. For others, it meant an equally difficult path of leaving, and for good reason.

Both choices demand courage, faithfulness, and resilience. This is not a Ukraine story; it’s a human one. We all share the same soil when collapse comes, and once burned clean, new life begins to grow.

Church and community. I still pastor. Sunday still comes. In a season defined by loss, having somewhere to belong that hasn’t changed offers comfort and stability.

Discipleship and spiritual mentoring. This is the work I believe matters most, over the long run. War has left most Ukrainians carrying real trauma, and the faith many inherited is being tested in ways never imagined. Michelle and I meet with people one-on-one and in groups, offering the ministry of presence. Teaching practical tools from contemplative practices helps rebuild a faith that can carry the weight of our life experiences. What follows is real: recovery from trauma, faith restored, families finding their footing again.

Wartime humanitarian relief. In the first months of the invasion, our church became a shelter for families fleeing the fighting. Since then, we’ve purchased and distributed over 20 tons of humanitarian aid to people still living in war-torn towns and villages, and purchased a military ambulance to help evacuate the wounded. During 2022 and 2023, our team visited formerly occupied villages and towns, raising funds to repair 27 war-damaged homes at no cost to homeowners. Today, we continue to fund a range of humanitarian needs as they arise. Recently, we sent $2,000 to a family in Kyiv whose home was damaged by a missile.

Spiritual direction and leadership care. War doesn’t only break buildings. It breaks the faith and stamina of the people trying to lead through it. I offer mentoring to pastors, missionaries, and leaders navigating burnout, faith crisis, and trauma. I draw on my own experience of two long, dark-night seasons of pain and disillusionment, and on my training in contemplative spirituality, to help heal and restore the soul.

We’re still here, not because leaving was never an option, and not because staying is the only faithful choice, but because we feel called, specifically, to stay. For us, presence is the ministry, the kind that encourages others when it matters most.

Join Michelle and me as partners. Your gift today helps someone rebuild a faith strong enough to live in God’s presence in every season of life.

This is what we mean by staying present. If it moves you, partner with us.