When the war ended, a missionary used a stove and blankets to warm the Ukrainians

Ken Ward's co-workers likened the missionary, who spent more than two months in Ukraine, to the well-traveled people of the Bible. Ken Ward, third from left, with members of the Odessa People's Church and aid recipients in the village of Pervomayskoe on January 28. October 19, 2023, in Ukraine. 

 

(RNS) — It wasn't the drones or the explosions he heard recently that haunted missionary Ken Ward on his many trips to Ukraine since Russia invaded its neighbor. . These are people like those in a "small town", he said, outside Kherson, in the south-east of the country, which was bombed in December. There, he saw destroyed houses and heard stories of villagers who buried the "small" body of a dead woman while trying to get others to safety. "We've started going to all the streets in the city," Ward, 66, said of the small team he's working with to deliver the relief supplies HelpingUkraine.US provides. “It's sad. 

Ward, a veteran who also worked as a police officer and detective, helped found churches in Moldova and Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s and recently helped with the homeless ministry in the US state of Georgia. where he lives. . But in recent months, he has focused on helping Ukrainians survive the winter heat and the negative effects of the war that is approaching its first anniversary. Since November, as a team leader for HelpingUkraine.US, Ward has delivered blankets, burning stoves and fire extinguishers to Odessa, Kherson, Dnipro and surrounding towns and cities hit by Russian rockets, and more and companies that have become. relays. for displaced people.

Emory Morsberger, an Atlanta urban development expert, founded the foundation to help Ukraine last year. After visiting the country decades ago, Morsberger decided after the Russian attack that "I want to do more than just pray or speak or write a check," he told supporters in a video clip. Zoom shows Ward.

Morsberger worked with other members of the Rotary Club of America and the faith-based organization Friends of Disabled Adults and Children to import medicine to Ukraine. In November, together with FODAC and Ward, other Rotarians and several churches brought the city and the village.

"Ken returns to Moldova after working in Ukraine all week and is able to shower, warm up and eat a hot meal," Morsberger said of Ward. "But on Monday morning at four o'clock in the morning, he returned across the border, passing through Odessa, where he has many friends. He also works in the southern part of the Ukrainian war.

 

Ask Ward or a missionary or an aid worker and his response is that it is nonsense. He said: “When you love others, you will love God. "It's one."

 

Morsberger said Helping Ukraine raised $650,000 for medical equipment and supplies that Ward helped distribute. It hopes to raise another $2 million in the coming months.

Donations from individuals, Jewish foundations, and Morsberger United Methodist Church in the Atlanta suburb of Lawrenceville, which donated $3,500 from donations received at its flying Christmas light display. Ward was introduced to several Ukrainian pastors during a visit in June, when Pastor Marcel Dascal, head of the church in Moldova, told Ward about their situation. Dascal began to serve as his translator, placing him in various churches that, in turn, could help the Ukrainian exiles. The work, as Ward and Dascal say, has become more difficult because the temperature is in the winter and the war is approaching its first year.