Yahidne – Finding His Sheep

Update from Buddy, missionary

Unless I miss my guess, you would have never heard of the village of Yahidne in Ukraine, if you hadn't just read it here. I think there were some foreign reports about it and maybe you read one, but 99% of the world wouldn't know the name. It's not surprising since there are only 318 official residents there and there is no reason to go there if you're not one of them. However, it is one of the places our teams comes through sometimes as we are going to Donbas region taking aid or bringing people out. There is a little school there in that village and on the eighth day of the war, Russian soldiers forced practically the entire village, 300 people, into the basement of that school. There they remained for the entire month of March. There were 77 children among the group, the oldest person was 93. During that month, 10 people died. It was constantly dark, damp, no toilets, no ventilation, and rat infested. The people wrote their names on the walls so that someone, sometime, somewhere would know who was there. When the Russians withdrew from the North, they simply left these people there. No food, no water....no explanation. Over time, the people broke down the door and made their way back into the world that was their village, and after two months they are trying to do life in that new, but suddenly terrible world.

I tell you that story to let you know that there are dozens of Yahidne's and thousands of stories like theirs all over Ukraine today. You won't hear the vast majority of the stories...ever. Yet, they are happening as you read this. And...I tell you because a new passion has arisen in me over these past four months to find the Yahidne's and the other little villages and peoples across Ukraine that have been missed, overlooked, or simply gotten lost among all the other travesties... because there are so many.

I am reminded of the story of the Lost Sheep in Luke 15. There were 99 visibly needy and helpless sheep right in front of the Shepherd. Their needs were awesome and no less important than any other sheep anywhere else within His area of responsibility. And yet, He went way out of His way to search for and find the one that had gotten missed, overlooked,...lost among all the other stuff that was going on. My point is, that there are needs obvious without searching for them all over the war zone. We must certainly help, Kiev, Kharkiv, Mariupol, and Slavyansk. We have been, we are, and will continue. But we can't simply drive past the Yahidne's in order to get to the masses of sheep. We must find the "one's", the lone villages, those stuck in basements waiting to die or waiting for relief. They may be out of the way and not even on the map, but they are there. Along the way, we will hear a cry of distress, and that is the direction we need to go. I think that's at least part of the principle Jesus was teaching...no village or peoples, children or grandfathers, are out of His heart and mind. He's always searching to bring them to Himself. We want to do this as well.

Our team was in Yahidne this past week and we have plans to make it one of our stops in this next trip in. There is a corridor now and a period where the war has shifted for a time to get there and, as we said, places like this along the way. The needs from the war are becoming more obvious as we go deeper into the country and deeper in time. There will be aftershocks in the lives of these people that the Love of God can heal and that will be needed for many years to come. I want to sincerely, sincerely thank all of you for your support in every way as we seek to know how to better meet these needs as we search for and find these "sheep" in every corner of this ravaged part of His Kingdom.

Some of His sheep we’ve been able to find and help along the way.