People with disabilities are often abandoned in war zones and have trouble accessing traditional shelters. This week, Joni and Friends worked with our in-country partners in Ukraine to help evacuate 35 people with disabilities and their families. Listen as Joni Eareckson Tada shares about the courageous efforts of our in-country partner, Galyna, and her network of churches.
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Please, I am asking for urgent prayer for Ukrainians with disabilities.
I’m Joni Eareckson Tada, and I will cut to the chase here. Our Ukrainian in-country partner, Galyna, is working hard with her team and within her network of churches to help us reach countless Ukrainians with disabilities. Earlier this week, Galyna even led a caravan, driving across the embattled western part of Ukraine, making a dash to reach the Polish border. In those buses and vans? There were Fifteen people with profound disabilities, along with their caregivers and family members! That right, in the early morning hours there they were anxious, but this huddle of paraplegics, quadriplegics, young people with cerebral palsy, and more… all of them felt the love and the power of earnest prayers lifted up by Christians connected with our ministry at Joni and Friends.
I talked with Galyna late yesterday and, thank heavens, the vans, and buses reached the Polish border without incident and, what’s more, they did not have to wait in long lines. Because once cleared they were happily received by our partners in Romania and Poland. And from there? We are working with our contacts in the Netherlands and elsewhere to relocate these precious people into welcoming homes where they will have food, blankets, medical care, and urgently needed hospital supplies – things even as simple as catheters for urinary drainage.
Galyna, however, did not linger long at the border. I made a video call to her yesterday. She had rushed back to her city to organize more evacuations. When I spoke with her, she was huddled in her basement, making calls and tapping into her network to find more people with disabilities with the most pressing needs. And this is where you come in. This is where we need prayer!
Because as I speak, rocket strikes are stepping up and front-line skirmishes are occurring in Ukrainian cities whose names I cannot even pronounce. But what I need you to pray for the vulnerable people with disabilities in those cities. Whenever there is war, especially in a developing nation, its people with disabilities and the elderly who often are abandoned in care facilities and their homes. They live on upper floors in apartment buildings, they cannot just rush downstairs at the warning of the sirens and make a dash for the border to safety. They cannot even defend themselves from those who might use them as a shield. So would you please – I implore you to pray that the churches in these cities which are under attack; would you please ask God to move in their hearts of God’s people to remember, not forget, but remember the disabled in their neighborhoods? Galyna is doing the best she can to commandeer churches and action, and I know that brothers and sisters in Christ will rise to the occasion; they will be moved into action through your prayers; through the call of Christ on them to “go out into the streets and alleys and find the disabled,” it says in Luke 14.
Finally, we are in constant contact with Galyna, our in-country partner, and her team, and I know she would love hearing that you are praying. So if you have a heart to join us, you can even post your comments to our Ukrainian partners on my Facebook page. You’ll also find updates on our activities to mobilize churches to locate disabled people, sequestered behind boarded-up rooms, apartment buildings, basements. Pray for the clarion call of Jesus Christ in Luke 14. Now is the time, as never before, to go out, find Ukrainians with disabilities, and let’s bring them to safety.
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