Serving in Ukraine

Report about LifeNets Ukraine Summer 2011 Mission by Gregory Zajac

In July, LifeNets sent me, my sister Stephanie, Oleh Kubik, his daughter Natasha and niece Heather to Vinohradiv, Ukraine, to teach English at a children’s summer day camp run by Vasil and Irina Polichko, pastor and wife of a Sabbatarian church there. 

About 30 kids enrolled in the camp, ages 7 to 18, including children from the community and boys the Polichkos, along with another couple in their congregation, have adopted. Many of the children in the program are poor or come from broken or abusive families and the Polichkos use the camp to show these children the love of God.

I was especially eager to become involved in this project because of my Ukrainian heritage. My father’s parents fled western Ukraine during WWII at a time when the country changed hands between the Nazis and the Soviets. After the war, they immigrated to the United States in 1949. My father grew up speaking Ukrainian, and he taught the language to my siblings and I. Being able to speak some Ukrainian was a blessing when teaching classes and learning about our hosts.

Our primary responsibility at the camp was to teach English classes at the camp. One day for class, Oleh Kubik and I tried to challenge our group of a dozen or so teenage students by setting out a few flash cards with beginning English words in front of them. We reviewed the words with them, then took away some of the cards and asked them which ones was missing. We started the game with six or eight cards but soon realized that the children were strategically working together to identify the missing cards. The students were splitting up the cards so each of them only had to keep track of a few, rather than all of them. We eventually played the game with the entire deck of 60 cards. This class showed me the children’s resourcefulness and ability to think creatively.

We also tried to incorporate lessons about Christian living in our classes, often times drawing material from Bible studies the Polichkos had with the children, or from posters about common proverbs and bible verses.

For example, while on an afternoon excursion to an old castle in Vinohradiv, Irina took us on a detour to a camp of Gypsies, or Roma, near the city. The Roma and the Ukrainians have a difficult relationship and a lot of mutual mistrust and suspicion exists between the two groups, but a Baptist evangelist recently built a church in that neighborhood. The Christian presence has produced some positive changes in the community and Vasil and Irina were also able to establish a relationship with the Roma community by visiting their church.

We stopped our vans on a dirt road between crumbling buildings. Dozens of smiling children in tattered but bright clothing, with dark skin and bright eyes, greeted our caravan. Many of our children were confused and nervous about being there, but once some of us exited the vans the Roma children started singing a hymn for us. In return, our children sang a couple of the English praise songs that we had taught to them. That day, I saw the Polichkos loved not only their church, but also all of God’s people, and they were teaching the children in the camp to do the same.

Stephanie with Alina and Erika, two young sabbath-keepers who helped at the camp Stephanie and Heather teach a new song during class.

Group shot with Stephanie, Gregory and several students who continued to come to the mission for class after the conclusion of the camp.   Ivan and Yuriy, foster children the Polichkos care for.

Earlier in the program, we introduced a poster in class quoting the famous scripture “love your neighbor as yourself,” and taught the children to translate and recite it. The day after visiting the Roma camp we brought that poster out again and asked them, “Does God love the Roma?” and “are they our neighbors?” two questions which the children answered “Yes!” I was glad that we could use our classes to not only teach a few words of English, but also reinforce what the Polichkos were teaching.

I was also amazed by how God had called and blessed the Sabbath-keepers in Ukraine. Vasil Polichko’s family learned about the Sabbath from studying God’s word in 1947, when he was only 10 years old. God similarly called others to do His work and the truth spread through Ukraine despite Soviet persecution that forced Sabbatarians to worship in secret. Today, there are Sabbath keepers all across Ukraine and the largest congregation has over 200 members.

Shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, Sabbatarians from America traveled to Ukraine to establish contact with the Sabbath-keeping groups there. Today, the relationship continues and one of the ways LifeNets assists Sabbath-keepers in the region is by coordinating volunteers to help in the Polichkos’ camp.

God did not call the Ukrainians through my church, the United Church of God, or our evangelizing efforts. He called them Himself. I learned that God can miraculously call anyone to learn His truth, share it with others and prepare themselves for service in His Kingdom.

I learned that even though God can do anything Himself, He also chooses to use His people to do His work. On my first Sabbath in Ukraine, a member enthusiastically handed me several copies of literature their church distributes. I looked over the stack he gave me and recognized it as the United Church of God Bible Study Course and two of our booklets translated into Russian. I asked the member if there was anything they learned from UCG’s literature. He replied that they learned about the Holy Days and that they now keep them.

His answer made me smile. God called us to the knowledge of His Sabbath independently, and while we might not be directly affiliated, God chose to use us to teach and edify one another from thousands of miles away. God’s work truly is amazing, and it was a blessing to witness it.