Missioning for a Lifetime - Ukraine and France

In September, we joined our church mission outreach to Lviv, Ukraine, and then a short stop over in Rubelles, France, on the way home. We could never imagine what was about to unfold.

John, our Ukrainian born son, decided to join the team for his first missions experience as an adult. The three of us felt that we should extend the mission trip to include two additional cities; Ternopil, where John was born, and Kyiv, where our spiritual daughter resides with her husband and three daughters. Our purpose in Ternopil was for John to seek healing and peace from his early childhood trauma; and Kyiv to reconnect with Halia, who was our translator for the six years we ministered in Ukraine from 1997 to 2003.

Our mission in Lviv was to work with International Partnerships through one of their church plants, The Message of Hope Church, providing ESL, English as a Second Language, training. We had over 60 participants join the four day teaching. We made life long relationships with our new Ukrainian friends and many came to a deeper knowledge of Jesus in the process. It wasn’t all work in that many of our new friends learned the Cupid Shuffle at our closing celebration. See the pic! Interestingly, the church primarily serves displaced Eastern Ukrainians (see picture below) from the war with Russia. Over 2 million Ukrainians have now been displaced by the war. Please pray for our Ukrainian friends.

Ternopil

As the team returned to the US, the Christie family remained in Ukraine and took the train to John’s birthplace. We were met by the now retired Bethlehem Childrens' Home Director, Nadia and our translator, Tanya. It was a great welcome home!

With only 24 hours in Ternopil, we began visiting special places from John’s past. The home he grew up in where he experienced much abuse, the orphanage which is now a state-run preschool, the city centre and the lake area where we first bonded as a family many years ago. While taking a coffee break, unbeknownst to us Nadia made a call to social services to try and locate John’s sibling of whom he had only a vague memory. Vague because they were infants when the police and social services took him away. Within minutes, they were located and Luba, John’s sister, agreed to meet us for dinner in a few hours. Also, Lyubchyk, the brother, was located and as it turned out he is in the army stationed only a few blocks from where we were. With amazing circumstances, it worked out that John’s unexpected reunion with his brother and sister was to take place that evening. The best way to describe the meeting was awkward at first and then spilling over into tears of joy and amazing happiness being reconnected to their big brother whom they weren’t sure existed. Since that evening, we have maintained a daily dialogue with John’s brother and sister and our "new-found children". Luba is 22 and a Dental Assistant and Lyubchyk is 21 and a soldier fighting the Russians to protect Ukraine’s sovereignty. Now we are 5!

Kyiv

We then made our way to Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, and were met by our beautiful spiritual daughter, Halia Mokryk. After a 14 year lapse, we had much life to catch up with. What a reunion!! It was so wonderful to meet her 3 darling children and to reconnect with her husband, Igor. They have been through incredible pain and dislocation because of the war in Eastern Ukraine where the family had relocated and Igor was practicing as a pediatric cardiovascular surgeon in the city of Donetsk. They basically had to pack what they could get in their car and leave everything else. The war has left some of its scars on our sweet Halia. Please pray for her and the family. God is blessing them now in Kyiv with Igor’s successful cardiovascular surgery practice. We ended our 24 hour visit with a big celebration dinner and prayer in the historic centre of Kyiv with the 8 of us!!! The Mokryk’s 5 and our 3!!

France

We had three missions in mind for our layover in Paris. First: celebrate our 30th anniversary. join our Lead Pastor from CBC Highlands to support him with our partner church in Rubelles, introduce ourselves to Wendy Hanna, a forty year veteran missionary in Paris. She is the sister of our friend Sally Curham and ministry prayer partner in New Zealand. All we can say, it is a small world! Wendy is a wealth of information on the issues the church faces in France.

Our work in Rubelles was wonderful and gave us an opportunity to meet the Pastors of Eglise Connexion Vie Church, Anne and Jean Madjling along with their three young adult daughters. What an amazing Godly family! It is such an honor to get to know them as they seek to expand the kingdom of God in a country that has forsaken the creator of the universe. Dr. Gary Hewins, our pastor, did some excellent teaching on Saturday and preaching on Sunday! We were blessed to lead a breakout group on Saturday. A few of the participants are pictured.