Vera in Ukranian means ‘faith’. At 85yrs old, never married, Babushka Vera is the only believer in her village. Her parents were Baptist believers before WWII, in fact, so was her grandmother. During WWII, at the age of 16 she was taken by the Germans and shipped off to work. For 7yrs she lived away from her family in Germany, returning to the same home she grew up in. She’s been there ever since.
This house is over 100yrs old, it’s made of mud and various forms of concrete over the years. It’s without a foundation, only the dirt underneath it that’s kept the walls and roof up all these years. We tried our best to fill the gaping cracks in the wall with foam, and painted her windows and door while Eugene and his wife cleaned out her house the best they could.
She was definitely blessed by all the activity, she was thrilled to hear that we will come back and have some prayer and singing with her next week. She is the last living member of a church that used to congregate the next village over. At one point she said the church had 80 members which is really quite substantial considering the size of these villages. I asked her why the church had not been able to reach the next generation.. she frankly replied, ‘nobody will listen.’
We are praying that God will open the ears and hearts of the people in these surrounding villages. Pray that God would use this dear sister in Christ to bring others to the Lord – and that our next steps would be pleasing to Him.
Thank you to those who gave yesterday, it was a joy to take some of that money and truly bless this woman. We also bought her a single top electric range as hers was really old and was overpowering her ancient electrical system.
