"Please Pray For Us This Winter"

November 2025

Dear friends, I hope you will have a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends in a couple of weeks. This year, we should be thankful for all of God’s blessing and favor, since Jesus loves us beyond measure. I know that you are very special to me and I thank you for your love, prayers, and generosity. Thank you so much!!!

While Ukraine doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving the same days as we do, they don’t have much to be thanksful for this year. Usually, my friends post Thanksiving celebrations in their churches, but this year, I don’t remember seeing any photos or updates, which breaks my heart. Again, with around 2.5 million men killed or injured, it is hard to celebrate, as you can expect. But I know our partnering churches in Ukraine that God for each of you – I know this to be absolutely true!

As I wrote last month, our region of Kharkiv was hit hard recently, and the Russian military took out the power plant, so electricity and natural gas are in very limited supply. On November 8^th, the aggressors targeted critical infrastructe once again and the entire region is back under emergency power outage schedules/usage, with rotating blackouts throughout the city and region. Some parts have also lost water resources, which is very concerning to me too. Our friends have asked us to pray for this winter because they are expecting it to be very difficult. Here is one article: https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-society/4056522-in-kharkiv-power-outages-cause-problems-with-water-and-heat-supply.html.

To add even more sorrow and to show the depravity of this war, a Russian drone “intentionally” targeted a kindergarten with 48 children inside. The kids were trapped, until finally they were rescued. Here is another article: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9q1w9ypl8jo. Please pray for the children in this war; I am so sad for all the children that are permanently affected by the horrors that they see and experience.

I have mentioned for several years now that the Ukraine government had moved to a foster care system for many of the orphans because early in the war, the Russians were bombing the orphanages and schools. Well, it looks like they are back at it again. This makes me so angry, because we love children, and much of our ministry before and during this war has been to take care of the kids.

We have already begun sending wire transfers to our ministry partners in Ukraine this past week, trusting our beloved partners like you will continue to be faithful this Christmas season too. Why so early? Every year we ask our ministry partners to buy somesort of special gift for the children that is practical (coats, hats, gloves, shoes, pants, and sweaters), and toys and candy for the smaller kids. But this year, with very little heat and electricity, we gave the money with no strings attached. We said, “You can use the money this Christmas however you want – gifts and candy for the kids or firewood to keep people warm; all we ask of you is to please buy firewood for families who have children.” I want all children to have a good Christmas and if enough money comes in we may send money twice. However, I believe children would prefer to be warm all winter over having one gift.

Below are two testimonies from earlier that didn’t make it in on time for our Christmas updates, so I will post it here as a preview of things to come for this year:

“My daughter Valeria and I are very grateful for the Christmas celebration held at the Light of Life Church. We are especially grateful for the shoes we received – they were a very precious and meaningful gift. Valeria's mother died, leaving her in the care of her grandmother. My life wasn't ideal for caring for my daughter and she grew up without proper care. Now that I've become a Christian, I really want to make up for lost time, but financially, things are very difficult for us right now. I'm unemployed, and I couldn't afford to buy her the shoes that she desperately needed. They were an unforgettable gift; now my daughter's winter walks will be comfortable. A huge thank you to everyone who helped make this celebration a success.” – Veleria’s Dad

 “Hello, My name is Inna, and I want to express my deep gratitude to the church for its assistance. I'm a single mother with a disabled son, and due to the war, my son and I are also displaced. I can't go to work because I care for my son. So, we have to survive, thanks to the help of believers. Pastor Zhenya and Anya have always helped me and never turned down my requests. It was especially wonderful for my son Yaroslav to attend the Christmas celebration at church. My son was very pleased and we were filled with joy to celebrate with God’s people. It was very interesting and fun, and, just as importantly, the gifts you gave us was so wonderful. My son received some winter boots, which we really needed. My son and I are very grateful for such an expression of love. Thank you so much for blessing our family this Christmas!” – Inna

Thank you for being a huge blessing – we try to steward your gifts for God’s glory and to help many children. Happy Thanksgiving!

In Jesus’ love,

 Ron