Ukraine Fights..God Protects

Hey, this is Mike Zwick from If Not For God Podcast, our show.

Stories of hopelessness turned into hope. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. What a treat we have today on Lantern Rescue. We actually have Mark back with us.

Really just a fresh out of a trip from the Ukraine, and so we got quite an update, don't we? Hey, Robby. Good afternoon, or good morning to our listeners, depending where they're at. Hey, wanted to start the show again by always thanking Truth Network and you, Robby, and the production staff. I don't know if our listeners actually know that you guys are part of donating so much time, effort, and production to us. Without Truth Network, this show would not be possible, and so you guys are a key partner because your donation to us and efforts to put this show out there and help us raise funds. And so you're really our biggest partner when it comes to fundraising to the general public. And so thanks, Robby.

You get that. Oh, we're honored. Yeah, we're absolutely honored, believe me, to be able to take part in what God's doing with this. Yeah, and I tell you what, it's incredible.

I meet people who I'll be in the country and they will see us. I'm wearing a Land and Rescue logo and I say, oh, hey, I listen to that podcast or I listen to that radio show. And I'm like, oh, that's great. And they're like, yeah, I listen. And some people, God bless them, man, they listen to all the episodes.

And I don't know how many episodes we have now, but I think it's about a hundred. And they will listen straight through, Robby. From the first one to the last, they'll be like, yeah, I just binge listen to it at work or while I'm a truck driver, I listen to it all the way through. And I'm like, oh man, because I can barely listen to one, you know, for us. You know, you just feel so awkward when you're hearing your own voice or when you're talking. And I've had a couple of times someone say, yeah, Mark and Rin, Alan, CC, you know, I just listen to them. I'm like, man, that's awesome.

And then they don't, I don't think they know that I'm Mark. So it's always fascinating to me. I must have a radio voice that I hope is better than my real voice. Yeah, I know the feeling.

And I know for years I could not listen to my own show in any way, shape or form because it just... Okay, good. I'm not alone. Okay, good. Yeah.

You're not alone. Yeah. Well, thanks to our listeners who do listen and are faithful. And for the people who are encouraged, it's all God in his favor and what he's done through this show and what he's done through Lantern.

And my, wow, how amazing God is that, you know, back in the day when this show started, listen, it was four people volunteering, you know, yeah, we had a lot of skill set background, but it was, you know, four people working in parts of the world and doing the best we can to now today, you know, so much more. And today we're going to talk about a division of Lantern that is, we don't talk about it as much because everyone knows our counter-human trafficking effort, our teams around the world, they are, you know, in hands with our support and law enforcement in those countries, amazing agencies and so forth that they are arresting somebody literally every day, rescuing that child every single day. And I mean, that's the sustainable program. That's the hope that we want to bring to the fight. That's the difference we want to see. We want to see people arrested. We want to see them prosecuted. We want to see lives change.

We want to see young boys and girls and all ages of girls, really. We want to see them freed and given hope, given a second chance, third chance, an opportunity to move into a better position in life and then to heal from all the wrong that's been done to them. So, and the lives that they have been fed.

So that's incredible. So, and then today we get to talk about what we call our crisis and conflict teams, our crisis and conflict division, we'll say that. And we've introduced this a little bit on the show because we've done some previous ones about, you know, particularly Afghanistan and Ukraine and where this, in case someone didn't hear a previous show, you know, where we began crisis and conflict task force and team was because we found that when conflict broke out in an area, we most likely were already there working to counter trafficking, or we had relationships that were critical to be able to deploy on the ground or do the things we needed to. So, you know, Afghanistan, we still are, we're still there, we're still working, we're still moving and changing people's lives. We're still doing medical support, humanitarian aid, doing all that we can to, you know, take care of people. Then with the terrorist acts of Russia and the invasion, the continued invasion of 2014 into Ukraine, we decided that we would be part of what we could do there because people were being, lives were being destroyed.

And the effects of it are so beyond what we are even seeing. I know there's, this is, there's an aspect of this war that we've not got to see a lot of, and that's this digital aspect. But I will tell you for being there, it is, it is very much what I would have in my mind, what World War Two was like, you have trenches, and you have extreme poverty in areas, and you have soldiers who are just volunteering to just protect their cities and their towns and to regain their streets.

And it is it is very, very much when you're in the snow in the cold, it is very feeling of, you know, World War Two, I was obviously there, but it has that feeling to it. And the people that I encounter there, I want to say thank you to the people that I encounter there. I want to share in this show, just a little bit about some of their lives, because if you want to see the war, you can go get on social media, you can look at the news, you know, if you want to politically talk about it, that's not what this show is about.

I want to just talk about the heroes in that country. You know, the first is, and I think the nose that Ukraine has been able to defend this home place because of their courage and the tremendous amount of men and women who volunteered, you know, I have spent an incredible amount of time at the front line there and all over Ukraine from Belarus to the Black Sea. And I have seen men that are working at the front fighting unit, that after discussion, I find out that they initially, or still are a complete volunteer group, volunteer, they're not being paid, they've lost their home, they've lost their family structure, their wives have fled, they've sent them back to Poland, or they sent them to the east, excuse me, the western part of the country.

And they have no other objective in life, except to defend and to fight. Now, some of those volunteer units were, you know, has been brought into the military, but a large number of people at the front are volunteers. For example, I would just give you the oversight of one incredible unit, incredible unit writing that right in the heart of it all, I look at this one guy, he seemed probably more educated, and he's, you know, he's a drone operator, and I'm talking to him, and I find out, I said, What did you do before, you know, you had to put the uniform on? He said, Well, I was, I was a professional soccer player. You know, I coached, I coached soccer, and then I became a professional soccer player. And he opens his phone, he starts showing me a video of him, you know, juggling a soccer ball in an arena, large arena, I mean, clearly this guy, that's what he did. And of course, he gave up those hopes, dreams and lives to go do this.

The next guy who, you know, sitting there running some intelligence. And I said, Hey, what'd you do before you had to put the uniform on? He said, I owned a, an IT company at a small shop. I repaired phones, I repaired computers, you know, and because of this, I'm, I'm good at technology. So this is what I do.

Right. The next guy, you know, he's a big guy, you can tell he's athletic, you know, and I say, to him, I say, Hey, so you know, what'd you do before you put a uniform on? He said, Well, I was a high school, high school basketball coach. You know, I said, So you're telling me, you know, a few months ago, you were coaching basketball? He said, Yeah, but my school, the school I coached that has been destroyed. You know, here's, here's a, you know, it's just example, example after this, I, you know, a commander of another unit, I didn't realize for a long time, until I asked him one day, and he said, No, I'm not being paid. He goes, I ran a logistics trucking company, my wife was a prosecutor, she's a lawyer. That's why she works in my office.

She's my right hand. So the courage of these people should be, it should be honored, and it should be recognized, because they believe and they are truly fighting evil. And they are fighting not just for themselves, but for the rest of the world.

You know, I think it's over, I think it's over. It's a high number of Ukraine identifies as Christian, having been on the frontline, where we train, but we have, you know, biblical time and training for them as well, where we do, we have communion, you know, we do things like that. I've not met any soldier who discredited the Lord, or his support or his help or their need for him.

And I've met hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. And they are they are seeking God's favor, they are seeking his help in this situation in this in this war. So from the front, I you know, I share a few understandings of who these people are, and what they're doing and what they're hoping for. Darrell Bock So as I, you know, Mark, as I'm listening, you know, I kind of have a few questions, like, if they're not getting paid, are they at least getting fed? Mark Mark Oh, rather. Yes, but that the feeding Mark a frontline environment is, is, is pretty, pretty difficult.

Okay. It's pretty difficult food. I mean, you know, you stay there, you're cold.

Things are cooked over maybe a small wood stove, at best. You know, it's a pretty rough environment, Robbie. And that's why I say it's very much like what I would think, you know, the Great War and World War Two was like, and then all war other work I've been into or not, they're not glamorous. They're not at all what TV movies like to display or show them as or even as, you know, we sometimes act like they are, they are, they're very bloody. They're very dirty. They're very hard.

They're very tiring. They exhaust the men that are there. And those men who are volunteers, they have been there now for a year, okay, for a year, they they are, they're costing their families, they're not seeing their wives, or if they have, it's just been for a very short moment, you know, so we need to pray for them. And we need to pray for those guys. We need to pray for those girls. And they are believers.

Most of them are Paulians, as I said, after the Lord. And they just want this war to end, you know, they want it to end. That's their prayer. That's what we pray for. Darrell Bock I know, I speak for all the listeners that we're so glad to get, you know, this face of the war that we that we otherwise wouldn't find out about. And so I know you're anxious to hear the rest of it.

But we got to go to a break. So we'll be right back with this update literally from the, from the front on the Ukraine war. We'll be right back. Transcribed by https://otter.ai Darrell Bock Welcome back to Landon Rescue with this vital update from the front and the Ukraine war.

And Mark, you just been back a few days, right? Mark Well, six of our mobile advisory team members are in Africa, having meetings with multiple nations concerning human trafficking. We've got, you know, on the CSAM front, we've got trainings for judges and prosecutors, we have people coming over, we've got expansion in the countries that we're in, plus expansions in other countries in South America. So God is just really pushing us forward. And we're, we're gladly going there, we're just trusting him and taking every step that we can that will be provided. He's got us here.

And I don't believe he's brought us this far to fail. I think he's brought us this far to save one more life. And so, Landon, we, we rescue not just the exploited, but also the persecuted and also the displaced. And so today's show, we're talking about the displaced people in the war, and we're talking about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

And I really wanted to take the second half of the show, if I could, and just share a couple of stories of the, one of our ministries. So one of our lanes of effort in Ukraine, many may know from other shows that we have a internally displaced people support center, where they can come and receive therapy support food, just everything they need is they are fleeing the frontline or as they have become homeless, and they are registered IDP. So we've seen a huge influx of that right now due to an increased airstrikes, missiles and shelling.

And I say that from firsthand experience, there is just a enormous, a constant flow of artillery. And so but and one of the things though, that we have really developed in in our supporting to our locals there is a women's crisis center, forgive me, we've not even named it yet. Okay.

We haven't taken the time to get a marketing name that maybe is anything but what it is. It's a it's a crisis women's center is for women and children impacted by the war, who have all who have turned to other solutions such as drugs and other things. So we have an incredible women's center and my wife and my one of my children actually was just there and they were handing out gifts and spending time and I like to go there and hang out with the kids and just play with them. But I would just tell you a couple of stories.

Maybe we've got time for two. I'm going to first tell you about Alina. And I got to hold Alina's baby for quite every time I go by the women's center, I grab hold of the child and hold her in love on her.

But Alina, she's 33 years old. And she is the mother and this is her testimony. She said I am the mother of two beautiful children.

One is 11 year old one is an eight month old boy. And she says this now we translate this, you know, her her time, we translate from Ukrainian to English, but it's still a powerful, powerful words. She says a drug that definitely comforted me from the loss of a loved one comforted me from the war, from all difficult life circumstances, a drug that dragged me deeper and deeper into the abyss. After using it, I began to degrade as a woman as a person. And as a mother in general, I can no longer refuse drugs even when I was pregnant, I was not stopped by the understanding that the baby could be born with a pathology that the older child could be taken away that sooner or later, I could end up in prison, that I could die from an overdose. But the Lord led me to the mother and child center, where I'm currently undergoing rehabilitation. The Lord gave me a chance it's scary to think what would have happened to me no matter how I got to this situation. Thank you to the director and to the mentors of the center. I was able to get rid of my bad habits come to my senses and understand that I can't continue to live like this. At the moment, I'm doing well, I'm trying to be the best mother for my children.

In the future, I want to help the same girls and women that I was, I want to serve for them. It is an example of the fact that God gives everyone a chance that rehabilitation centers significantly help to change life for the better and get on the road to recovery. I, you know, we have so many credible testimonies. This is just one, Alina, I just, uh, we love her. We love the way our staff loves on her.

And we've changed that happening, not just in her life, but in the next generation, both of her children. Oh my goodness. Yes. And you can imagine that somebody is struggling with any kind of addiction with the kind of pressure those people are under right now.

What a time to try to kick those habits. Yeah. Yeah. And we have a full program. So, you know, it's a, it's a lengthy program where we do integrate them into, uh, you know, um, it has legal ramifications. We tie them to that. We tie them to, you know, social services and, and we, we make sure they get back up on their feet. We make sure they have the gospel.

We make sure of all of those things. I'll tell you about, uh, uh, Oksana. Um, she's also from the war zone and she has two children.

Um, both children are around the age of 10, one boy, um, one girl, three Sundays ago, she and her children came to the crisis center for mothers with children to look for a better life. And Oksana herself was brought up in a boarding school. So there's, she had no parents. There was no one to raise her guide her.

So life would work the way it should. And then obviously, uh, when the war happened or her life just crumbled because she was already following from after boarding school, she had, she went to prison for robbery. And then after she passed, she was released, but the man she was with beat her. He used drugs and he taught her to use drugs. So this is where she turned to during this conflict. The two children were born in their family, uh, earlier, previously at the beginning of the war in 2014, but her husband continued to beat and abuse her. He was put in prison. She was free, but she wasn't freed from the drug.

And it's such a family relationship. The daughter developed epilepsy and now that child, uh, we have to have medications or health is not deteriorated and we're medically trying to take care of her. Well, um, just the other day, Oksana's health, it got really bad. And when she went to the doctors for tests, she found that she had a cyst in the middle of, uh, of her body.

It was 11 centimeter cysts. So we were on site with her at that time. We got a letter to us right at this moment. And thank God in the doctors of our city that we operate in it, we hospitalized her and performed a very, very difficult operation. And you know, when you're, you know, I marvel at these doctors because, you know, when we were there running operations where we lose power, where there's air raids, air sirens, air strikes, you know, missiles over, over cruise missiles over your head, you know, and they're trying to save this girl's life right now.

We can just praise the Lord. Her condition is stable. And even that Oksana, she understands something. She understands that God gave her a chance to live and she stayed alive because of the women in crisis center. And so she's obviously starting a new life, uh, from this, after the surgery and with us or children, we have them going to a new school.

They've already made friends. Um, so she really valued the support that we're giving her. She knows that life can be different than what she ever thought before with God as her savior. She's excited that we're helping her take care of her children, even right now, while she's still recovering from this surgery. But this, this is a life that was on the brink of death.

On the brink of destruction, war pushed it over the edge and thank God our people were there to, to, to catch her with the Lord's hand. So we're excited about that one too. Yeah. And all those volunteers and that's what they are. A lot of them as well, right. That are, that are helping take care, you know, these people aren't being paid, but yet they're, you know, they're always standing up for their country.

Yeah, exactly. We do have some, so we have a paid therapist, like, you know, side colleges counselor, we have some paid staff in this women's center, but let me tell you, we have 50 beds. We're taking care of, you know, 21, uh, women and their children, full therapy and the full program, education, everything.

And it's, it's running us less than just under $4,000 a month. So, you know, we took this on because of the need. So later in the crisis conflict, we're looking, we're going to there's women and children in harm's way. There's women and children who we can't just move safely to another point.

Like they are, they have a life problem that has to be fixed. You know, they need Jesus. And so we embraced this idea with our locals and everyone to, to do this. And did we have the budget? Did we have it all?

No, we didn't probably like we did, but I'm telling you, we're doing it, you know, and God just provides. And so if there's a listener that says, I want to, I want to help, please do, please help us. Um, if there's a, if there's a, if there's one donor that can go by, you know what, three, four grand a month and I can impact that many lives, uh, you know, we just got a generator for the housing situation and we've got a beautiful campus.

The reason we have a beautiful campus is we, we've got a businessman in Ukraine who donated to us, right? So this all works because people are all doing what they can do. And if there's someone out there who would like to help with this, we, we definitely would appreciate the help because in faith we're taking this on and, uh, you know, we're, we're almost a year in.

We started it just after the war started. So, um, you know, we're, we're just in faith, continue to move forward with it, praying that God will provide because it's changing lives. I've, I've got more I could cheer on the, on the show here, you know, just one after another incredible, uh, women and children's lives are being changed. And, you know, since we're coming up, we're going to have about a minute left. Could you kind of share from your heart the prayer and needs that people can stand up for, for the soldiers and for all that's going on that you saw firsthand?

Yeah. You got to pray for the soldiers. They're, they're vastly outnumbered. It's a miracle. It's a miracle of God. It's, it's not just the courage of the soldiers.

Yes, it's exemplary, but it's the, it's the favor of God that has kept evil away. And, um, they need our prayers because, uh, this war is going to keep going. Uh, they are outnumbered. I know there's support worldwide coming in and, uh, you know, the whole world's trying to avoid World War III. We're, we're basically having it through a financial battle right now, but let's, let's just pray this thing ends.

Let's pray it in. Nobody else needs to die. You know, Russia needs to return. And, uh, there is, it's scary. What's the ideology of Russia right now is very scary, not just to Ukraine, but to the rest of the world. And we should all be concerned about it. The second thing is just, Hey, whatever you think about war, whatever you think the politics of this thing, listen, there's women and children that are suffering. They need our prayers. They need our support. They need our love.

I get embraced. I wish I could share all the hugs that we get Ukraine. They are so grateful and thankful for the American public. They are so grateful for the Christian American.

Okay. And all the NGOs and all the organizations doing such incredible work, you know, to help people, but we got to keep praying for them. We can't forget about them. Um, and, uh, you know, just, I think it's a, it's, it's an incredible revival really what's happening in the country.

Probably it's a, it's a, it's a revival. There's 40 million people that the number of churches that have grown because certain pastors that I'm not leaving my church building, I'm staying, it's growing, it's growing, it's growing, it's growing. So let's keep praying for that revival. You know, we're so thankful for you, Mark, and your courage in the situation as well. And we definitely need to be praying for your team.

Um, as they're over there as well. So God bless you, Mark. Thank you for this vital update. We really, really appreciate it. This is the Truth Network.