New recent amazing Miracle experiences in my life - Part 5
I am writing these stories out of my life to encourage to believe in Jesus for miracles to happen in your life. Things may seem impossible to you but with Jesus, all things are possible for those who believe.
Power point presentation of Ukraine trip:
My trip to the Ukraine war zone - gift of 800 CHF paid for it
Psalm 91:4-5 KJV
He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
A leader from an organisation called AVC, which works in countries where Christians are being persecuted, came to speak at my church. I was deeply touched by all his stories and decided that I wanted to help on a project somewhere in the world. The brother prayed for me and asked the Lord to show me what I should do and that the Lord would provide the means to be involved. Later, I was reading some of their literature and I saw a photo of a young Ukrainian boy holding onto his mother with fear, pain and despair in his eyes. It made me cry and I decided that I would join a team traveling to the war zone in the East of the Ukraine where war had been raging since 2014. I rang a pastor who was leading the team and after asking me several questions and informing me that it would be dangerous, he allowed me to join the mission. Another brother at church was interested in joining but he wanted us to buy helmets, bullet-proof vests and steel boots :) He was also politically biased against the Ukraine. I knew that, like David, we had to go with the protection and strength of the Lord if we were going to be successful. Our mission was to bring food and supplies to the people in the war zone. We each brought finances to help to buy all the food and provisions we would take to the war zone. I was out of work at this time. However, just before the trip, someone gave me 800 CHF for the trip which covered my flight and most of my costs.
There were 4 of us on the trip, 3 pastors and I, including the founder of AVC. The other 3 could speak Russian which made it easier. We flew to Kiev, stayed overnight with a pastor's family and then took a train to Sloviansk where we stayed with the main pastor Peter. He is a great man of God who escaped death in 2014 when 4 of his pastors were tortured and killed by Russian-backed separatists. Peter managed to hide when the separatists took over his church building as their base. A BIG MISTAKE! They captured 2 other pastors and tortured them and locked them in a room for the night. In the middle of the night, the pastors heard footsteps and someone unlocked the door. It was a man with a torch who beckoned the pastors to follow him. He took them into the office, unlocked the safe and gave them their passports. He then led them out of the building and then vanished into thin air. They were also both puzzled by the fact that they saw hot coffee and smoking cigarettes but no separatists. They had all disappeared like the mysterious man (or angel). In fact, they later discovered that all the separatists in the whole town had disappeared!
In the previous days the separatists had destroyed 1800 houses in the town. The church now decided that they would help to mend and rebuild all the houses in the town and would get all the other churches involved to also help people in the whole war zone. They held prayer and coordination meetings every day, organised buses, collected clothing, bought food, trained the mission teams and sent out teams nearly every day to the war zone. They set up small groups In every village and preached to the people who came. At one meeting when we were there, one pastor from my group preached to a group of 50 people and at the end they all received Jesus into their lives. The love shown by believers was overwhelming the people. When we brought them food packets, they told us that they would starve to death if we did not come. With every visit, we would pray for the people and share Jesus with them. The church also brought people out of the war zone and found homes for them in safe towns like Sloviansk. I was asked to visit such a family. We brought them food and were told that their son had a high fever. I prayed for him and later we heard that the fever left. The church also had architects and builders who could build a new family house in 2 weeks! During our trips to the war zone we could often hear explosions in the distance and once we were caught in the middle of a shell attack and saw the smoke and explosions in the distance. There was also danger of sniper fire and mines in the roads which we saw a few times. We also visited a soldier's camp and gave them a 2-hour concert while the soldiers sat on tanks.
On Independence Day, it was feared that Sloviansk would again have a big attack and the atmosphere was filled with fear. I gathered all of us in Peter's house together and said we should pray against the plans of the enemy. We did this and there was no attack on the town. The town was so happy that they had a big celebration party and invited Peter to preach to the crowd. The Lord was faithful in protecting us and giving us a successful trip.