Ukrainian Students

On August 12 we had an amazing “mission spotlight” from the youth rush program . Here is a quick summary:

We heard from Eric Isaia, the Director for Student Literature Evangelism and Youth Rush programs here in the Southeastern California Conference, and 5 miracles…

Ira, Polina, Mark, Danyil, and Denys all escaped the war-torn country of Ukraine to study at Milo Academy last year.  Several months ago Eric went to Milo to recruit for this summer’s Youth Rush program and the Holy Spirit impressed these five to join the program… but without pay…

Since they are international students, they cannot be paid directly as other students can, but a fund was set up to help them. Donations to this fund go towards their school bill. Milo Academy also stepped out faith to give them a scholarship to help them.

We then heard some amazing testimonies for these young people.

Polina’s Testimony:

This is my first summer at Youth Rush, I've never done anything like this before and didn't know what to expect. My first days here were the hardest, I wanted to go home and never come back. However, now I am grateful that I stayed and received many experiences, thanks to which I grew morally and became closer to God. On this program, I improved my English, stopped being afraid to talk to people, got many new friends, and most importantly, I realized how important it is to grow spiritually and share God's word with other people.

I remember during the week I prayed that I would meet someone who was really interested in devotional books. Throughout the program, I wanted to sell one of the spiritual books to a person who is looking for God and needs our books. So I prayed for days about this, and at one of the last doors of that day, I met a woman. She said that she had not been going to church for a long time and she needed something that would push her to come back. We didn't speak for long, but in the end she took Great Controversy and Pease above the storm, thanked me for what we were doing and we prayed together. At that moment, I realized why I am in Youth Rush and how important what we do in this program is.

Ira’s Testimony: (did not grow up Adventist)

I came in a middle of the program and was full of misunderstanding what I supposed to do here. I had a lot going on in my life before coming here. But what really changed my attitude to God was when I saw other young people who were full of love and fire of God. During program I grew spiritually the most important part is that I started to pray again. Now it’s my biggest achievement in my Christian way. And as my teammates and leaders remarked that I started to smile more.

I remember one time when I came to my last business in the morning. We have prayer changes before drop and I asked to pray about Ukrainian person. I came in and started to canvass a young man but he said that he didn’t understand English well for read and advise to go to another two women. I started to canvass them and one asked me where am I from. I said that I’m Ukrainian and she immediately responded in Ukrainian. After I found that we from the same city. My city is the smallest city in Ukraine. We spoke a lot and she said they she was born in US but her parents always took her one’s a year to Ukrainian to show her country. Now she support my country with donations almost 1 year and few months. She was Christian and decided to take 3 book from me. I was impacted because it’s really important to me that I met someone who know what we going through.

Danyil’s Testimony

For all of my life, even though my dad is a pastor in Ukraine, I always felt like God has been my parents’ God. I would read through the Bible and also Ellen White books just because I wanted to be a good influence to other people and also because I wanted to be a good son for my parents, however I never had any personal experiences with God. I heard many people like my parents, parents of friends, as more tell me that they had answers to prayers, and they saw that God cared for them in every situation, being with them in any place that they were. Even though many people told me that, I had never seen it in my life. When the war started in Ukraine, I went to stay with my grandparents in West Ukraine since it was safer, and then I went as a refugee to Germany with my mom, which was the place where I learned about a special program for Ukrainian students at Milo Adventist Academy in Eugene, Oregon (close to Portland). I got to know about Youth Rush because of a Ukrainian woman named Olena who’s a staff member at the school and was figuring out places for us to be able to work during the summer. I also heard about it from my girlfriend Polina who was looking for options to be able to share literature. We were able to be accepted to the program by Eric. During this program, every day we would pray and ask God for specific requests. I would always doubt that these requests would always happen because I had never seen it before, however even though I was praying doubtfully, many of my prayer requests were answered. I would see many of the students reading their Bibles in the morning, and I would think that they were “Jesus freaks” and God would still answer my prayers even though I would think that they were all just coincidences. I was thinking a lot about this throughout the summer and was looking for answers as to why they would continue happening, but after Eric Isaia gave his testimony one Friday, I fully understood that the “miracles” and “answers to prayer” and other things that I thought could happen to other people but not me were actually happening to me. It was that night that I decided that I wanted to get to know God more by getting baptized.

I was in a military neighborhood where there were no soliciting signs in each door. People were answering but weren’t interested in the books that we had, but there was a young Japanese man that I talked to at one door. He was interested in the Great Controversy, and after some talking I learned that he was Christian, and he was really interested in learning about the history of the Christian church. Within the books that we carry, we have a devotional set, a health set, a kids’ set, as well as a prophecy set. This man ended up getting one book from each set - a Steps to Christ, a healthy cookbook, a book on Bible stories, as well as the Great Controversy. After he donated, his mom came and said that they usually never do donations for people who come to the door since the whole neighborhood is supposed to be no soliciting, however there was something special about me that caused them to open the door for me. I told them that if they have any questions about the Bible or about Christianity, we could stay in contact. The most powerful thing about this story was that this young man who was 19-20 years old was very interested in spiritual things. This young man ended up being my last door of the night, which is what we canvassers call a “Last Door Experience.”

Denys’ Testimony:

During the summer, I've learned many different things. I’ve learned about Americans, about language, but especially about power of prayer. Before Youth Rush, I had "blind belief". I knew that I had to believe in God, however I had never seen Him really at work, and so my belief in God was dry and blind. I didn’t pay much attention to spiritual things since they always seemed uninteresting. My life was my life and God was somewhere there just during Sabbath. During Youth Rush, I had many experiences where I like pray for something from God and then very soon after that prayer would be answered. Now, when I see all those immediate answers to prayers I feel that I'm really working with Him all the time I can know for certain that He is with me in each moment.

One day I was praying for get more devotionals out, since not many books had been going out that day. And in next couple doors I met a man that didn't want any books, but was really interested in what we were doing. He gave me a donation but didn’t want any book, telling me that later I could pass a book to someone who really needs it. Suddenly, that man pulled out 50 dollars and said "I see God is working through you. Please pass a couple books to people on this street. Keep doing that and God will bless you for your service". I was obviously shocked, and I started to pray to meet those people who really need those books.

Mark’s Testimony:

In Youth Rush I grew spiritually and as a person, I got a lot of experiences with God, as well as improve on my English knowledge. I also had a lot of experience talking with a lot of different people and even learned a little bit of Spanish! My favorite experiences to have are ones where someone at a door has a lot of spiritual interest and we have a good, deep spiritual conversation.

It was my last drop, so it was 10 minutes until the end of the day. At the first door the man was busy, so I went to the next one, where woman was watering the grass and talking on the phone. I came and said that we are students working on a scholarship project, and she interrupted me, saying that her husband died one week ago. I asked her “Can I pray for you?” and she answered sure and she didn't have any prayer requests so I just prayed that she can have peace and that she can handle with every problem in her life. After I prayed, I gave her a Steps to Christ because some people earlier gave me money for nothing. She started to cry when I gave her the book for peace, saying that she really needed it right now. I gave her a hug afterward and she was very happy that I came.

If you are impressed to donate to the special fund that was set up to help these young people you can give using an offering envelope or online to Ukraine Student Fund.  We are hoping to raise another $10,000 to help them.

Let’s pray for these young people as they have one more week to go!