Every once in a while, I catch myself reminiscing about the time that I spent with a group of international missionaries in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk. It now has been 11 and a half years since I last saw any of them, but my memories of those people never seem to fade.
I spent the first 5 weeks of my grade 11 year visiting / working with a tent-outreach ministry group called "Christ is the Answer", or Христос есть ответ, the Russian equivalent. The weeks' activities would include home, prison & hospital visits; street evangelism; evening church services in the big, circus-style tent and youth / child outreach activities in the smaller, adjacent tent. It sounds like a lot of activity, but while we were doing it, these ventures didn't ever really seem to feel consuming or draining. We always had enough time to sit and eat simple meals together, either right outside the small mess trailer or at a house-on-wheels of one of the families in the group. And there were Bible studies and corporate worship times and prayer meetings. It was awesome.
I will never forget the people in that ministry. People like Timon—a Belgian boy (at that time) who was my age—his sister, Ortja & their parents who spoke English, Flemish and some Russian. Their family oversaw the ministry's activities. Or people like Oleg, the man who used to work for the Russian mafia but then found Jesus. Sasha, the college-aged guy who hung around the camp with us in his free time; the little blonde-haired boy, Max; Margarita, the little girl from (if I remember correctly) Latin America and her parents. The two or three women with the name Natasha, one of whom was a national-grade athlete. And, of course, the dozens more whose names have begun to fade from my mind, but whose faces are permanently emblazoned into my memory.
Their lives were simple—the families lived in trucks or small campers/trailers, while the single team members lived inside a converted tractor trailer container: where freight once was stacked on palettes, now bunk upon bunk was found stacked one on the other to accommodate those who were serving God in this area. I lived in the "guesthouse"—a passenger van whose seats were removed to & replaced with a plywood plank and a thin mattress—along with another Canadian fellow, Marty. There was just enough room to sit up & crawl out of the front doors, but it was ample enough for our needs.
While serving with these people; while eating borsch or toast with jam or even sala as the hornets buzzed about our heads, devouring the few meager crumbs that escaped our maws; while praying or even while visiting the market on daily errand runs, I have never felt a stronger sense of community and kinship elsewhere. They are, to date, the only group of people over whom I've shed tears when I left, knowing that I probably would never see them on this earth again. They were—and are—a group of Christians that inspire me, and even today, still encourage me with the knowledge that true Christian community can be had on this earth, and that true brotherly kindness and love can exist—even in close proximity for extended periods of time among people from all corners of the world. Their exceptionally wielded secret was this: they knew Jesus Christ, and they knew that following Him with 100% of their beings was the best way to live. And they knew that Christ is the Answer: that Christ is the Answer to all of the questions that life presents.
