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Churches wiped out!

400 Baptist Churches have been wiped out in Ukraine by the Russian Invasion

There have been hundreds of churches in the Ukraine that have been completely wiped out since Russia invaded the country that started almost six months ago, reported by the President of the Ukrainian Baptist Theological Seminary.

Yaroslav Pyzh said that about "400 Ukrainian Baptist congregations have been lost" since the start of the war, that began on February 24. It's not only the churches that have been leveled to the ground, but the church leadership and congregations have been lost.

Yaroslav said that volunteers are helping the people that have been helping the uprooted people fix their battered homes. The real challenge in all this is to rebuild the pastoral leadership in the war battered cities. Yaroslav said, "Since the war started, six months already, we lost about 400 Baptist churches. And so the real build is the rebuilding of leadership capacity because if you rebuild buildings and you have no pastors to lead churches, I don't think it's going to do any good. So the real challenge is not so much rebuilding walls and windows and doors."

He also said, "The real challenge is similar to Nehemiah challenge, the Bible story of Nehemiah. It's not only rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, it's rebuilding the nation of Israel, of worshiping God. That's the same thing here in Ukraine."

Many pastors were forced out of the areas that had all the fighting. This left many areas without "godly hope," Yaroslav explained.

The All Ukrainian Union of Churches of Evangelical Christian Baptists said, before the war started, there was 2,300 Baptist congregations in the country. Yaroslav said, "Our main challenge in the future, when the war will be over, is to bridge the gap in leadership that we lost. And sadly, the longer the war goes, the more the gap's going to be. The church is not buildings. It's people leaving the place and relocating to the United States, and with people relocating to Germany, or people relocating to other places. And with those people, pastors left too."

He also said that many of their pastors have decided to stay in their communities regardless of the war, and they are helping people by giving them much needed hope. "The biggest thing the community has in these moments of being destroyed and bombed is fear; it's hopelessness. And the only one who can relief and bring hope to the hopeless are pastors, churches and Christians."

Yaroslav also noted that donations for all the centers have fallen off with the war nearing the end of six months. This led to the seminaries helping the centres more. UBTS is also giving students a no cost education during the war.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is accusing Russia of "deliberately and systematically destroying Ukrainian culture and its historical heritage." Some buildings had survived the battles of World War II.

Human Trafficking!

Over 250+ Human Trafficking Victims have been rescued, 121 Children among them

The FBI have announced this week its agents had located 84 victims of underage sex trafficking and 37 missing children during a nationwide operation that was conducted earlier in August.

Out of the 121 minors they rescued, the FBI said that the average age is 15.5 years old. The youngest victim that was found during this initiative, "Operation Cross Country," is 11 years old. The federal agency had rescued 141 adult victims of human trafficking. The national operation, which overlooked 391 localized action across the country, took place in the first two weeks of August.

United States Attorney General Merrick Garland had issued a statement this week; he voiced his thanks for the men and women of the FBI and partnering agencies, like the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. They helped rescue the abused children and adults. He said, "The Justice Department is committed to doing everything in our power to combat the insidious crimes of human trafficking that devastate survivors and their families. I am grateful to the dedicated professionals of the FBI and our law enforcement partners across the country for their tireless work to rescue trafficking survivors, including exploited children, to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of trafficking crimes, and to provide the services and support that survivors need and deserve."

Also with the unbelievable number of rescues that were made, agents also arrested 85 suspects of child sexual exploitation and human trafficking offenses.

The FBI Chief Jose Perez said that these kinds of operations are very successful when agents take "a concentrated period of time where we're just focused on the problem of child sex trafficking."

He said, "What we do is we sit down with our local partners and our task forces and identify certain areas where we know sex trafficking is prevalent, and we'll dedicate resources and efforts to identify and remove victims from those areas." Oliver Fladrich, a major with the

Dunwoody Police

Department in

Georgia, took the time to thank the FBI for its partnership in the operation. He said the access to federal resources has been a big help. He said of the FBI partnership, "It's a great force multiplier for us."

The data that was collected by the NCMEC, runaways make up the extensive majority of missing and minor cases that are reported to the non profit organization every year. In 2021, the group worked with families, parents, and law enforcement agencies on the 27,733 missing children cases. The NCMEC found out that 19% of the children that ran away from social services had probably become human trafficking victims.