Dear Praying Friends and Family,
Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I pray these brief highlights of our most recent trip to Ukraine will be a blessing to you. The Lord graciously provided for another missionary journey into Ukraine during the month of March. I invited several men to go with me, but only one was able to make the trip. Brother Matthew Wallace from Friendship Baptist Church accompanied me and was a needed extra pair of hands. We traveled through Moldova relying on Brother Hamilton’s men and Brother McCurdy to help us with logistics. I was detained at the airport for a while after they scanned my suitcases. I packed 2000 Chick Tracts which, the customs agents insisted were contraband. I was being accused of being a “contrabandist” and was threatened with all kinds of stuff. I stayed calm and told them to explain to me in detail, step by step, what they were going to do. They called the top supervisor who looked in my suitcase and saw the US Army toiletry bag I bought in Germany over 30 years ago and thought that I was military. He immediately lost interest and let me go!
Upon our arrival in Ukraine we spent two days in Odesa dealing with logistical matters for the refugee work and transportation. The Lord graciously provided half the funds needed for a vehicle enabling me to secure one for the future. There was some concern about going into the city of Odesa because of the news we received a few days before our departure. Russia, for the first time since the start of the war, did a “double tap” missile strike killing over twenty people in Odesa. Thankfully things were quiet while we were in the city.
We spent the next two days with the church in Rozdilna. First, in a men’s meeting where we enjoyed fellowship while grilling “shashlik” over an open fire. Two of our men serving in Ukraine’s armed forces were able to get a few days off and visited with us. I gave the men what the Lord gave me from the Scriptures, telling them how the Lord has been leading, giving light to take one step at a time, into His will. They were very encouraged to hear of the Lord’s guidance for us for the future. The Sunday church services were a great time of reunion and fellowship with dinner on the church grounds and several preachers preaching.
There were nearly two months of logistical and administrative preparation before our trip. We had 1,200 prepared care packages; over 5000 packages of rice with dehydrated meat and veggies; 800 loaves of freshly baked bread; and many cases of literature. We spent three days in the Mykolaiv region just north of Kherson, about 15 miles from Russian occupied territory. We found out from the people who survived the occupation, where the worst hit towns were located. We visited seven towns in three days having only a 2008 Volkswagen passenger van to move over eight tons of food and literature. We worked with the local authorities asking them to gather people in advance to save time. In every town, the local authorities were women. Their men had either been killed or were fighting to protect their homeland.
Our first town was Malozhenivka and was not easy to get to. We had to travel through many miles of dirt roads around farm fields. Thankfully, the Lord held off the promised rain for that day. I doubt we could have returned home over those roads with our van had it rained. Around sixty to seventy people were waiting for us, fifty of which gathered in close to hear the preaching. Since I only speak Russian, and not knowing if this would offend them, we had Brother Sasha open things up in the Ukrainian language, then he would turn it over to me. After preaching the Gospel, seven people responded to the invitation and I took them off separately to deal with them. They all bowed their heads asking the Lord to save them!
Travel time and logistics only allowed for one meeting that day. It rained the next day. We drove to Liublyne, which was previously occupied by the Russians who pillaged and killed all their livestock. We hung a tarp over a grape arbor for protection from the rain and a small group gathered. We followed the same format preaching the Gospel and seven more people responded to the invitation. I dealt with them separately and they too called on the name of the Lord for salvation! After visiting with these dear people, we piled into our van to go to the next town but it broke down. We tried several things to no avail. Then I said, “Let’s pray!” Duh! We should have done that first! After finishing with an “Amen,’ we lifted our heads and saw a car coming down the dirt road with a trailer! Before I could even consider what was going on, Sasha had already decided that that car was God’s answer to our prayer and was out the door running down the street to catch it. The driver agreed to help us and, thankfully, we were back in business!
After these delays we arrived in the larger town of Novopetrivka. We met with the local magistrate who politely asked if we could speak in Ukrainian. I apologized saying that I only spoke Russian which was not a big deal to her. She humbly replied, “It has cost us something to speak our language.” Then we learned how the Russians captured her husband along with around twenty other men in their town. They were tortured to death. Somewhere around 300 people showed up in the bullet-ridden meeting place. Around 50 people responded to the invitation! How many were saved? I can’t say. All I know is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was preached, and a clear invitation was given. Then I dealt with them as a group separately asking whosoever will to pray to receive Christ as their Savior. Dealing with that many people, at one time, was a first for me.
Thankfully, we were able to commission two more cars with trailers who helped us transport the literature and aid to Partyzans’ke, Afanasiivka, and Yurivka. In each town the Lord gave us souls for our labor, with around 15 responding to the invitations. We preached in the dark in Yurivka while the war thundered on the horizon lighting up the night sky. We went back to Yurivka again the next morning and preached to a larger crowd before finishing up in Blahodatne. The destruction there is indescribable. The war raged in their town for eight months. Almost every house is destroyed, making it hard to believe that people still live there. We preached to a small crowd of about thirty people with five responding to the Gospel message. The local magistrate gave us some tea after the meeting. While visiting with them, an elderly couple told how their home is destroyed and the magistrate allowing them to sleep in her bed while the magistrate and her husband slept on the floor. She said that they are farmers and that the fields have to be plowed and planted. I asked if the authorities cleared their fields of land mines. She said, “No. We did it ourselves by hand.”
I will write more in our next letter. We look forward to our next trip, while making preparations to return with our family for another term. Please pray for the Lord’s provisions and guidance as we prepare to go. We want to thank each one of you for your concern for our safety and prayerful support of our ministry. Please continue to pray that this war will quickly come to an end. Better yet, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”
That Ukraine May Know Him,
Christopher Rue
Phil. 3:10