Blessings in Ukraine

This is Stu Epperson from the Truth Talk Podcast, connecting current events, pop culture, and theology, and we're so grateful for you that you've chosen the Truth Podcast Network.

It's about to start in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, and please share it around with all your friends. Thanks for listening, and thanks for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. Welcome to Lantern Rescue. Today we have a real treat, as we have Mark back with us, and he's even got another special guest. We've got Anya back with us, and so Mark, give us an update. Hey Robbie, and hello everybody, and I appreciate everybody who listens faithfully.

Again, I think I say this every time that I'm on at least. Just so grateful for folks who listen in to be informed, not just about Lantern, but to be informed about, you know, the vulnerable people that we're trying to help. The exploited, the persecuted, and the displaced, and so our lives are full of that. We have, if I give a quick update, Rob, before we start this complete show, we have an incredible number of cases, probably in the history of Lantern right now, where we have the highest caseload that we've had, which is due to, you know, just being in more places than we have in the past, but also really trust and responsibility from being given to us, both from the governments and the countries we work in, the task force members and our teams, the police, and everyone that we collaborate with, you know, we just really, really got a lot on us, and so we would appreciate prayers. You know, we've got one case with 12 minor girls, another with probably over 20 girls, another one with 40, one with maybe over 100 in one continent, and then there's just individual cases all over the world that we're working and trying to do, you know, the best that we can to see these people rescued, and so today we are excited to have Anya, and I'm glad she made it safely here from Ukraine to come into the States and do some work and speak and share and then have some other things. You actually, you just came off of a conference. What was the name of that conference in Poland? World for Ukraine. World for Ukraine, and that was exciting because probably when you're in Ukraine and you're working so much, you wonder, does anybody know all that we're going through?

Because politics just dominates the horizon when it comes to Eastern Europe, you know, it's just all politics. Meanwhile, there's a reality of women, children, people, you know, in the last 40 hours, a missile hit and killed 51 innocent people in a, you know, in a street that I'm pretty sure I've been through, you know, that area, and so you got to go to a conference where there were like-minded people who were just focused in on the vulnerable people and saying, how do we help in the midst of this, you know, crisis? So that's what we want to talk today about, Robbie, and I'm glad that Anya's here to share, and really, if I can tee it up too, we do a lot of what I like Anya to talk about is we do a lot of humanitarian responses there, as we do in other parts of the world, but then uniquely in this crisis, we see the need not just for humanitarian, but for therapy, and maybe you kind of define that for Robbie and all our listeners.

If you take a second and just talk. First of all, I'm very grateful for coming. It's my third time here, and for the third time, I feel like I'm in the middle of family, and I'm saying that not personally from myself, but from all my church and Christian community, which we have back to the intro, and also from our daughter church in different parts of Ukraine, we are very grateful to everyone who is caring and praying about Ukraine and about our church community, especially, and we feel this bonding and this connection and the Jesus Christ body, but we're still struggling with a lot of different questions and back to the conference. I'm glad that Ukrainian speaking not about the reaction to the war, because even last time that conferences topic were about surviving in the middle of the war, and now we are talking how we will respond on all that trauma, which we will face after the ending of the war. So it means, first of all, people still believe that this war will end, and it will not just be a peaceful agreement, it will be victory for Ukraine when Russia will be defended, and when they will say, we obligated to pay for all our crime and for everything we did in other countries. So we believe that we will still have this victory, but also we understand that with all our sober minds, that we will not have a fairy tale after the victory.

Maybe it will be celebration for one, two days, but then we will need to work even harder than we're working right now, because thanks to the air defense alarm and air defense protection, it's improved in the beginning of the full invasion in 2022, and now the central parts of Ukraine and the western parts could pretend that we have civilian normal life, but still the frontline is very hard, and our soldiers are dying because we have funerals almost every day in our civilian cities. So we understand that all that family which lost their soldiers, their close people in the war, all the kids and mothers of their sons, and also the soldiers which were injured on the war, and they went to the frontline being healthy young people with legs and everything, but they came back home and they could feel useless and we need to create that healthy environment for them, respectful environment where they will understand that they're heroes and everything they did is not useless, and also we need to have that kind of programs which will help them to be healthy and to receive this healing and maybe even not healing because we don't know it all up to God, but at least comfort and receiving and accepting of community and our nation, and we understand that human humanitarian crisis is not a question anymore. Even when we're coming with our chaplain mission to different parts of Ukraine which were liberated even last year, there are so many aids, like so many organizations care about Ukraine, international organizations, they are coming and they are helping, they're bringing food, medical stuff, they're repairing houses, all of this is good, but people need somebody to talk and somebody who knows how to talk, who will not say, oh everything will be fine, and this person have no clue when it will be fine and how it will be.

So we need kind of programs and it's really expensive in time and expensive in money to create that kind of environment, programs on governmental level when the country will create professionals in health care, mental care. So this is what I'm thinking and the whole conference where was like 1,500 people attended, all of them were talking a lot about mental care and it means that we understand that we'll struggle a lot of victory, and we don't only care about clothes and food and material stuff, but we care about the soul of people. And I know that even now our team, our volunteers, it's only the one team who is keep growing in our city after two years of the full invasion, because we have God, we have Holy Spirit in us. Every other organization, they are so tired, they are so trying to get rid of thinking about the war because they need to keep growing, they need to keep their own lives, and they don't have Jesus inside of them, they don't have this power.

So by human energy, it's not really very possible to keep going. So I know that it's Christian, it's a task of Christian to create that kind of programs for mental care and for trauma cases. Wow, that's, you know, Anya, it's amazing how God has gifted you to speak for your people and really to share the message that I would think we all really need to understand, because, you know, the price of all this is really, really high. And it's an opportunity for all of us to share in the cost, right? Right, Mark?

It is. And the, you know, the environment, there's a lot of patriotism, and there's a lot of people who care for their countries, but, you know, they ultimately are just changed for their home and their livelihood and what they would like to live and how they would like to be and to be at peace. But there's such disaster, and I still don't think the media is, you know, outside of some local people in Ukraine, you do a great job reporting, we're just not quite grasping the magnitude of devastation.

Mary Uphill, 1 million people, it's a city the size of, you know, Charlotte, North Carolina, completely just destroyed, you know, the city, very similar to a lot of our cities around North South Carolina, Virginia, completely destroyed better than take in all the small 510 15,000 people villages where they've just been leveled, you know, in or there's a few people 100 200 civilians still living there, basement cellars, and these are not, you know, nice basements at all, but they're just trying to survive because they're too old to move, they have nowhere to go, it is vast, vast destruction. And the way that it's playing out is in the minds of those who are surviving and fleeing it is just a feeling of hopelessness eventually, you know, the longer this goes, the more that can creep in. So I asked her about, you know, to describe and we want to talk about that maybe in the next half of the show, we want to talk about why we have those therapy programs, why we are, you know, so invested in those in crisis areas in the world.

And, you know, she kind of stated it, it's, it's the way you build a future, because if people are so mentally destroyed, it doesn't matter if you just put a roof over their house, you know, they've got to have their soul rejuvenated, they've got to have a hope and in God and know that he still loves them, and there's a plan for them. And they have to have a way to express the emotions they have, particularly children, can you imagine children who for two years, they had to deal with COVID. So they didn't go to school in Ukraine. And then a war starts as soon as COVID ends. And now they've spent, you know, almost the next two years, still no school, you know, life is not normal on you said the other day. So one part of since we started school back this fall, it was like really exciting news. Everybody was so excited. And you said a group of girls, you heard them walking by and they were they were this shows just how messed up or difficult site is they were they were excited. There was air alarm, there was air alarm defense, which cancels school.

Yeah. So they didn't have to have school, right. And that's how you know, who wants to hope for an air defense alarm, right? But these are children, they just don't know better. They don't know that every time an air defense goes, there's, you know, their life could end.

Yes, a lot of substantial part of population could. And can you imagine our children in America, you know, facing air defense alarms every day, you know, and also a lot of things. They never started their offline, right? Because they don't have a proper shelter. They don't have proper shelters.

So it's like you're on a lesson. And then the air defense. You don't run to a bomb shelter. Yeah.

If your school doesn't have a bomb shelter, you can't have school. Right. Gotcha.

Oh my goodness. Well, we've got to go to a break. We'll be right back. I'm sure you're gonna want to know what all's going on, how you can be praying and some of the stuff going on in Ukraine.

We'll be right back. Lantern Rescue is a USA-based organization that conducts international rescue operations for people suffering from human trafficking. Lantern specializes in sending former US special operation law enforcement and intelligence personnel to partner with host nations and assist them in creating specialized units to combat ongoing security problems, such as genocide, terrorism, and human trafficking.

As a nonprofit charity, they offer services free of charge to their host nations. Human trafficking has grown into the second largest criminal activity in the world, reaching an estimated $150 billion in annual activity. Lantern Rescue has developed rapidly to combat trafficking. Lantern operates through a trained international network in order to rescue women and children from sex and labor slavery and facilitates holistic aftercare services. They're gearing up for operations right now, and you can go to lanternrescue.org to see how you can support them financially.

Welcome back to Lantern Rescue. And today we've got an update, wonderful update from Ukraine from, again, Anya and Mark. And Anya, I know our listeners would love to know, it's interesting, or I guess it's fabulous, how God has gifted you with ideas on ways to help with this trauma.

And so can you share with our listeners some of the programs that you are involved in now? So we still keep going with our workshop of goodness is the name of our authority program for the kids from my deceased families. So as we mentioned previously, a lot of kids cannot go to school. So they very appreciate the opportunity to come to our therapy and we're not giving them any kind of study, but still, they have some kind of even mental developing, bonding with the kids of their age, and it's very important for them. So for now, we have some kind of struggling with our team.

And it's also my prayer request because our team were consistently the IDP themselves. And these people, they are living in Vinica for another second year. So it's kind of the feeling that you don't have home anymore in your native city, but you're still not home in Vinica because they don't have a proper job there.

They are renting the apartments when they have everything back to their native city. So now, when they finding some kind of other job, because they want to be still in their career, it's a good teachers, it's perfect mentors, psychologists, so they need to keep going to live their life, you know, and they need to survive because they need to pay the rental for the apartment. So we have the struggling with our team, but I can't imagine what we would do without our dad.

Like if you just have any kind of problems, he's answering immediately. And I know it just shows improving how important even this program for him, how these kids are important for him, because we're putting all our trust on him that he will provide us financially, he will provide us with people, right people for volunteers, he will provide us with everything. So for now, we are building another team of volunteers for our therapy and we already have a couple of people who are very passionate about just love these kids. And when they are coming to our therapy, all these kids, they're so excited and we still have some families which move forward, like they moved to another part of Ukraine to settle down or they moved abroad, they texting us, they sending us pictures of their kids, and saying like, we're so missing our workshop of goodness, we can't feel home anywhere because we don't have workshop of goodness here, as we had that in Vinica. So it's also some kind of proven that our project is very important there.

And I don't think we have anything familiar or similar, like something like this in our city. Just so our listeners know too, we've mentioned in the past, but the workshop of goodness, it meets three times a day. And it meets every day of the week. And a child in the program can attend it twice a week.

And of course, it's free of charge. And they're getting, you know, therapy through not just art, but also music, dance, Legos, playing, building projects. But it focuses, it definitely centers around the art and the instruction that's given there.

And currently, it's really been led really well from, you know, therapy type, professor. So yeah, it, it, you can imagine it's also hard, though. I mean, as fun as that is, it's also hard, you know, you see, just children who are suffering, they've lost their homes, their dad's fighting, or maybe they don't have a dad at this point. And, you know, you, you can see it on their faces. I mean, I see the ones, the new ones that come in and how they lack expression.

You know, they, they lack that kind of normal care for, for interaction. But in your experience, I know that changes because I think it's changed. But in your experience, what, what does it take normally? How many sessions where you see a difference in a child?

It's individually for everyone, because some kids are coming very aggressive or close, like they don't want to go anywhere, except just being with their mom. Right. But then after, for someone, it's a couple weeks for someone, it's months.

Someone changed only after six months. So it's individual stories for everyone. That's why it's so important that we have a team on every lesson, at least three or four volunteers. And we have like seven kids every lesson. That means that every volunteer will care, at least we'll focus not on 10 kids, but one volunteer for one or two kids.

So everyone has their attention. And it's also obvious when you have a seven year old, you know, which seems like the average age, they're six, seven, and they've not been in school because of COVID and then the war. So you, you essentially have a seven year old who for four years is not like, he didn't have the chance to go in American terms, kindergarten, first grade, second grade, you know? And so I even see it because you see kids who are seven, eight, and they don't know how to hold a crayon yet. You know, they don't know how to tie their shoes.

They don't know any of that, you know, that just living information. So it's, it's, it's still in a big need. And I wish, I wish for all the crisis areas in the world that we work in, I wish I could have one of these everywhere, you know, and particularly even in Ukraine, you know, if I could have 10 of them, you know, that would be incredible. So, you know, um, isn't there an animal aspect to it as well? Okay.

So that's a separate program. So the workshop of goodness and on, you can talk about the, uh, the bark and the animals, just the therapy. So my brother, she's IDP is I am, and she likes dogs.

She's very passionate about them. And eventually when we moved, he opened his own business. He has customers where he's helping with, uh, training for dogs. But then we, when we saw this opportunity to have like therapy sessions with dogs, we felt that we could connect these customers dogs with kids.

So we provided the whole event when we invite in the families with kids and my brother, she is making the call show, which named agility. When the dog showing what they can do, uh, go into different trials on the time and customers, his customer, they are, had a lot of training to, um, present the show, kids observing that. And after that, they have time to pat the dogs, just to hang out, to make pictures. We're also giving them a lot of different presence and it's, it's such, such a fun for them.

Like even an adult, every adult would like to pat the dog if it's fluffy and everything is, uh, giving you such a joy and just to be in this friendly environment. And we also thinking about like making the whole program about that. We're trying to find that kid, which would like to be the champion of that agility stuff. So we would find the kids who would like to grow in this kind of, um, dog change. And it will give us not only an amount help, but also quality help at least the five kids per year.

And, um, I know that it's a huge problem. It have a huge perspective because we also would like to bring that kids by bus to the horse, uh, range. And we have that opportunity, but I don't think if it's, I don't know if it will be supported in my city, but I know what everybody will see the results of that. They will be just amazed how that could help mentally because animal assistance therapy at something special, which we not have very popular and my personal desire that we would come to military, to hospitals where soldiers have insurance and everything. And I hope that the doors were also open to us in future.

And we could go there and just give the soldiers the opportunity to have some kind of relief and relax. Yeah. So it's, you know, that's a program that can, can really, really offer a benefit to a great number of your population, because again, everybody, parents, everybody's dealing with the trauma, I'm sure.

Yeah. It's, uh, it's an incredible, uh, environment and day. Um, and you know, we've got multiple branches also that program as she started to describe, but the, the way that for a second they can forget that they're in the middle of a war, that a missile can destroy them, uh, their homes or their apartment building.

It is, it is that's, that's one thing. And then it is great for children who, um, you're just locked up, don't talk, don't want to see anyone. And now they're interacting with dogs or they're interacting with animals that, that break down those barriers.

And, uh, they start to smile. I like the games they do too. You guys have great like games centered around interaction with those dogs and it creates a community feel. And, um, it's got an incredible recognition in the country.

Honestly, it's been, and because there's nothing like it, Robbie, I mean, it's, it's the only animal assisted therapy program I know of, you know, the whole country of Ukraine. And, um, it's gotten a lot of recognition on the news, which I think is good. I mean, you know, it's our, our ultimate goal is to have a very large event too.

And, um, I will not live in a great cause. Oh yeah. Individual policemen, couple of them doing some stuff, but nobody's doing anything like show something very cool and massive because you need a lot of volunteers for that. And we have that, we have a lot of volunteers.

And it's so cool. Always, um, Mark, how God raises up, you know, programs like this, um, where they're so desperately needed in so many different ways, you know, uh, but the school program and the animal program and, and again, the people to do all that. Right.

Yeah. We're, you know, we're learning, we're learning a lot from what works for soldiers and people here in the States too. Like, um, um, we keep our eyes out for those type programs that, you know, we as a country have been, we've been at war for a long time and, and we know those, the results of that and what it does to, to our men and women who fought. I just saw a statistic that if, you know, if you fall in the, in the world terrorism, you are six times more likely to commit suicide.

You know, um, it's, that's a high, high probability, right? Oh, I hate, we're about out of time. Um, Mark or Anya, you have some final thoughts, obviously for our listeners to be in prayer for these programs. So we very grateful for your prayers that we asking you to still, uh, be in that spiritual gap for our country because we still believe that it's spiritual work first of all. So thank you for everything you're doing for your support.

Any kind of support is very important, but your prayers is the most important because everybody tired, but we still keep going only because of Christ helping us. Amen. That's beautiful. Thank you guys so much. God bless. This is the truth network.