Resilient Faith Chad and Leanna Wiebe
Ukrainians well remember 2014. It was the year of Maidan, the turnover of government in Kyiv and the startup of war in Donbas, eastern Ukraine. Church buildings were looted, Bible school campuses overrun and turned into military barracks. Families were forced to abandon their homes, leaving behind everything they owned. Believers well remember how by God’s grace they responded to the waves of refugees coming from the east. In churches, mattresses were spread on sanctuary floors and church offices to make room for those needing places to rest. Soup kitchens were created, and trucks of food and clothes sent to churches in the east. Words do not express the pain that Ukrainians still feel today. It was not an easy time, but it was a time of unique
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opportunities to show and share of the love of Christ. It was also a time when more and more churches were talking about the call of missions—a call to take the gospel to places and peoples with no witness or access to God’s Word. A coalition of churches gathered in Kiev for a missions conference to discuss “Missio Dei”—The Mission of God. The word “unreached” began taking root in the missions vocabulary of certain Bible studies, churches and Bible schools. Some churches, while helping refugees, continued sending teams to work with the unreached in Russia and Central Asia. We watched as believers, battling with feelings otherwise, stood to commission teams to go where they felt they might not be well received. Feelings of fear and hurt were overcome by long earnest
