A Go-Bag by the Door Cheryl Warner Since 2018, Charley and I have lived in Irpin, Ukraine, home of the Ukrainian Baptist Union headquarters. We work with the Baptist Union to help churches develop plans to care for the missionaries they are sending to other countries. We also teach Ukrainian missions students a course on the spiritual life of the crosscultural missionary. Being part of Irpin Bible Church has been a highlight of living in this rapidly growing suburb of Kyiv. We live in a house across the street from the field office of Mission Eurasia, founded by Peter and Anita Deyneka. Anita was one of my professors at Wheaton College Graduate School and having Mission Eurasia as a neighbor is a sweet connection with my Wheaton world. The house is ideally suited for hosting overnight guests and groups, and we offer it as a place of rest and renewal for visiting missionaries and students, as well as a gathering place to study the Bible and pray. In November we hosted global workers supported by Irpin Bible Church during missions month—one woman working in Kazakhstan and a Muslim-background believer from Morocco who works among Muslims in Odesa. This believer’s wife is Ukrainian, and their four children brought a lot of life into our home. In December a couple who did youth ministry in Tajikistan and a former student who worked in Uganda came to debrief pray about future ministry.
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We are one of three host families for a small group from our church that meets on Tuesday evenings. Every Wednesday women meet in our home to study the Book of Acts and pray for each other. One is a brand-new believer who is eager to learn and has never missed a week. Our group now meets on Zoom, but we are missing lingering after the study with a cup of tea by the fireplace. When we left our home in Irpin on December 13 to spend Christmas with our daughters, we had no idea that in a couple months we would not be able to live in that house ourselves. Charley returned to Ukraine January 17, and my return was delayed and rescheduled for February 1. But by January 23 tensions between Russia and Ukraine had escalated sharply, and the U.S. State Department issued a level four travel advisory, urging U.S. citizens to leave the country. Upon the advice of our mission leadership, Charley left on January 27 on a flight covered by our evacuation
