Mission Group Collecting Donations to Help Ukraine
The eyes of the world are on Ukraine as it fights valiantly to maintain its sovereignty in the face of Russian aggression that began on February 24. For a Vidalia doctor who has spent many hours in Ukraine as a mission volunteer, the war is personal.
Dr. Geoff Conner, who volunteers medical services for Discipling Ministers International, has a relationship with people in Ukraine that goes back for 10 years. “We’re hungry for any kind of news,” Conner said of himself and others working with DMI. “We don’t know from night to night how the people in Ukraine will be affected.” In particular, he is worried about a Ukranian Protestant continued from page
minister named Sasha, who has become a close friend. “He lives in the suburbs of Kyiv (previously called Kiev) with his wife and children, and they are having to shelter in the basement of their home. They hear shelling, their grocery store is out of food — all the things you would expect from a country being attacked.”
Conner said, “Since this has happened, I think about all of the things I take for granted — getting a good night’s sleep, buying gas for my car, going to the grocery store. These are things they cannot do now. Almost overnight they went from functioning normally to this.”
Amazingly, the Internet is still working, and Sasha is able to get word to his friends via Zoom or email. In a recent post to his friends at DMI, Sasha thanked them for their emails and prayers before discussing the gravity of the situation in Ukraine.
”We definitely don’t know what the end of the war will be, but every hour I’m getting information from different regions (in) our network of contacts.”
He listed some of the issues the country is facing:
• Destroyed houses, apartments and vehicles. “Repairs will be needed.”
• Refugees. “For now we have a lot of people who left everything behind, and if parts of Ukraine they used to live in will happen to be under Russia, they would never come back even under peaceful conditions. Such people will need to start up again. If the whole of Ukraine will be under control of Russia with Putin’s puppets running the country – immigration abroad for many people.”
• Medical help. “I’m receiving notes on injured people all around.”
• Economy in general. “Nothing is working now and every day of war makes things worse.”
Sasha said he was pondering a fund at DMI where donations could be made to help Ukrainian people. “No need at the moment to wire the funds over here. It doesn’t work. Most stores are closed, at least in my village, and the one still open is empty. They still have cookies but not bread.” He said other regions of the country are faring better than Kyiv, but no one knows for how long. Sasha, who operates a ministry called Light of the Resurrection, or LOR, which is sponsored by DMI, said the organization’s bank account in Ukraine still has some funds “and we use them even if they were designed for other programs. Like today we paid $1K for 40 refugees to get settled in another region — just to get some food, medicine and clothing. Another $3.5K we spent for 4 power generators in the areas where there is no electricity.” He explained, “We spend what we have here, and then later on when the situation will allow, we will somehow get the funds from DMI.” Sasha described the scene, “It is loud out here. Just were 4-5 big explosions in the direction of Kyiv. They’re trying to take over Kiev (Kyiv) and the area this night.” Then he signed off, “In Him, Sasha Sent from my iPhone.”
Dr. Conner explained that Ukraine is predominantly Christian, with both Eastern Orthodox and Protestant churches spread across the country. He pointed out that churches provide a prominent social network and it’s important that they continue to function, which is one of Sasha’s, LOR’s and DMI’s objectives. “We have kept in close contact with people like Sasha who run the home bases for the missions,” Conner said, adding that helping these people to fly below the radar is critical so that they won’t be targeted by the Russians.
Through his mission work, Dr. Conner has made 7 or 8 trips to Ukraine. DMI first made a connection with Ukraine when Russia fell apart about 1992. DMI began work in Ukraine in 1993, and Dr. Conner was recruited about 10 years ago by a Vidalia pediatric nurse practitioner named Sam Oates. Dr. Conner and Oates were part of a medical team that augmented the mission work of DMI. Their job was to provide medical evaluations and medicine to the people of Ukraine through mobile clinics set up in the rural areas of the country. Ukraine is a contrast of well-developed areas and impoverished rural areas, Dr. Conner said. “Most of the structures I saw were Soviet-style buildings left over from the previous regime, but the country was improving.” Dr. Conner began his mission work in Donestk. “They had a nice medical mission there that was disbanded in 2014 when separatists took over the area. The people who ran the facility (including Sasha) moved to Kyiv and used their home as a base for outreach,” Dr. Conner explained.
Dr. Conner made his last trip to Ukraine in February of 2020, and after the worldwide health pandemic broke out, he and his fellow missionaries found themselves temporarily stuck in Ukraine after their return trips to the United States were cancelled. At that time, the mission group was working out of the port city of Odessa in Ukraine. Since then, Dr. Conner and other members of the mission group have kept in close contact with the friends they left behind, but lately, their concerns have intensified.
Sam Oates, who has been doing medical mission work in Ukraine for 23 years, said she is still in contact with her friends in Ukraine, including a doctor in the western part of the country under Russian control. The doctor told Oates that the Russians had instructed the medical personnel there to take up arms and fight against their countrymen. “It is a direct conflict with the Hippocratic oath. It’s horrible,” Oats said.
She said that she is also hearing from her friends in Eastern Ukraine, but it is a totally different situation there, so far. “They can hear the shelling but they have not been directly impacted.”
Oates said she was recruited to join DMI’s mission work by fellow nurse Linda Ring, also of Vidalia. “We were in the parking lot at Meadows Hospital and she asked me to go on a mission trip to Ukraine. All I heard was the word ‘go,’ ” Oates said. Two years later, she kept her promise as she and Ring were among those who made the first trip with DMI to Ukraine.
How to Help
“We want to make people aware of how they can help,” he said. DMI has set up a “Funds for Ukraine” program that accepts donations in two ways: DMI, PO Box 69, Culloden, GA 31016 or www.disiplingministries. org. “One hundred percent of the donations will go directly to Ukraine for humanitarian needs like repair of destroyed homes, medical help and refugees resettlement.” The donations cannot be wired to Ukrainanian accounts because of the financial disruptions there, but DMI will get the funding through to those who need it by alternate means, Dr. Conner said. “We may have to wire it to Poland, convert it to cash, and get someone to literally carry the cash into the country. We have had to do that in the past.”
About DMI
DMI is a 501C3 organization which ministers to people through God’s word, medical clinics, financial support or pastors, churches, rehabilitation centers, children’s day care and orphanages. DMI pastors and medical teams have served in all of the regions being attacked by Russia. Some 23 years of DMI’s mission was spent in Donestsk and Luhansk regions, which have been under Separatist control since 2014.
