Ukraine

My heart hurts for Ukraine right now. It is so heartbreaking to me what is happening there right now. I don't really have the words to express my sadness and anger and helplessness I feel about the situation.

I'll just share some pictures of people I met and places I visited while living in Ukraine as a missionary. (I lived there from February 2005 to June 2006).

Beware this post is kind of long. 

I've been looking at pictures from my mission and reminiscing about the people I met and the experiences I had while living there.

I lived in two different areas in Kharkiv and this was in the second area I lived in, Novwe Doma. (I lived in 4 different cities on my mission but 5 different areas (2 in the same city) but I'll only talk about Kharkiv in this post).

The girl getting baptized in the picture above (Alisa) had friends who were members of the church and when my companion and I moved to the area, she was ready to hear the lessons. We taught her all of the lessons within a week and a half (we did it in a hurry because her family was moving to Russia and she wanted to get baptized before they left. We got special permission from the mission president for her to be baptized so quickly.)

She was a teenager at the time and although it took her dad a little bit of time to warm up to his daughter getting baptized into a church he knew nothing about, he eventually allowed it. Actually after the family moved to Russia and the dad was still in Ukraine tying up some loose ends, he ended up taking the lessons from the elders so that he could know more about the church that his daughter had joined.

This was also in Novwe Doma, Kharkiv. This was outside of the school building where we had church on Sunday. The members of the church in Ukraine are amazing! There weren't a lot of members in most of the branches I served in, but the ones that were there were strong and steadfast.

I met some awesome people while living in Ukraine and hope they're doing okay, but I have no way to contact most of them.

A street scene of Kharkiv near the apartment we lived in in Novwe Doma.

This was in my first area I lived in in Kharkiv, Severnaya Soltavka. 

Antonina and Dima, mother and son. Such a kind and good family!

Oleg and Natasha and their two children, Tanya and Alyosha. This family is awesome! The whole family has a really good sense of humor and loved to sing and play musical instruments for us when we visited them.

Severnaya Soltavka, Kharkiv. 

Ira and I don't remember the dad's name and their two children, Vitalek and Yulia.  

A good and awesome family and strong members of the church!

 

 The Rinok near our apartment in Severnaya Soltavka where we often bought food.

 

A church building they were building in Kharkiv, the first in the city at the time. It wasn't finished before I left the area, though, so I never got to meet in it. In both areas I lived in in Kharkiv, we met in school buildings for church.

Annunciation Cathedral in Kharkiv. Isn't it a pretty church?! (Us, missionaries, affectionately called it the candy cane church and you can probably tell why).

So my passport was stolen while I was on my mission. Although Kyiv was not part of our mission, my companion and I had to travel there so I could go to the US embassy and get a new passport. 

We ended up being able to do some sight seeing while in Kyiv so my companion and I walked around some of the popular sites there. 

This man was playing outside one of the churches we visited. He was a very nice man and played his instrument really well (I don't remember what kind of instrument it is).

I don't remember the name of this church, but it's somewhere in Kyiv. 

Liberty Square in Kyiv, where a lot of the Orange Revolution peaceful protests happened in 2004.

Another view of Liberty Square in Kyiv.

I was going to keep this post short and sweet, but that ended up being harder than I thought. Once I put the pictures up, I realized I had a lot to say. I just wanted to show some faces of Ukrainians who are living through this nightmare that is happening in Ukraine now (assuming they still live there and are still living). I also wanted to show what it looked like there 17 years ago before Ukrainians' hometowns started to be destroyed.

I cannot even imagine what kind of emotions the Ukrainians and other people who live in Ukraine are feeling right now. I hope and pray that this stupid stupid war will end soon with Russia leaving Ukraine alone and the Ukrainians getting their homeland back.