“Are you nuts?” I asked my wife, Eileen. In February, we were at the annual meeting of a Ukrainian Christian mission board she serves, and she’d just floated the idea of volunteering to be part of a team going to Ukraine in the summer of ’24. “Have you not heard there’s a war going on there?”

Later, after being assured that it was reasonably safe in Kyiv, where we would be spending most of our time, the idea did have a strange and inexplicable appeal to me. I’d never been inside a war zone, and to go as part of a team to support and encourage the mission’s staff and volunteers sounded like a once-in-a-lifetime experience. 

Off we go

So, on June 18, our flight left for Kyiv, Ukraine. Except these days, you can’t “fly into Ukraine.” We flew to Warsaw, Poland, then took a 19-hour, overnight train ride from Warsaw to Kyiv, which was like no train ride I ever experienced. Sleeping on the top bunk in a non-air-conditioned, 64-square-foot cubicle wasn’t exactly great sleep. Before we crossed into Ukraine, the Polish police boarded the train, woke us up and checked our passports.

Then, when we crossed the border, Ukrainian police did the same. Shortly after, the train stopped for about an hour to “change the wheels on the train.” Yes, you heard that right. The gauges of the Polish and Ukrainian railroads are different, so that’s just a fact of life when crossing the border.

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I’d been to Ukraine once before in 2019 and was hoping to see some of the impressive Ukrainian agriculture that I’d seen then — rich, dark soil, growing corn, wheat, soybeans, barley and sunflowers. They’re harvested and hauled with modern American-brand machinery, such as John Deere, New Holland and Unverferth. 

But it was not to be on this trip. On the train, we could only get occasional glimpses of Ukrainian agriculture due to trees and invasive species bordering the tracks. We discovered a country in which every conceivable aspect of their society, including agriculture, had been severely affected by the Russian invasion of February 2022.

First appearances deceiving

Upon arriving in Kyiv, our team of six was surprised to see a city, which, at first glance, seemed to be normal, with only minimal remnants of Russian bomb damage. People went about their daily business.

But scratch just below the surface, and the effects of two-plus years of war were ubiquitous. Memorials were everywhere, honoring hundreds of thousands of fallen Ukrainian solders. Widows and orphans had been left behind. Families were torn apart, with mothers and children living in other countries while husbands and fathers fought in the east. Their economy had been severely battered by the loss of employees-turned-soldiers and many other factors. Air raid sirens would go off randomly. There were rolling blackouts, with generators keeping businesses operating.

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But despite incredible hardships, our team found people who were resilient, defiant and determined.

We got a firsthand look at the mission’s multifaceted ministries doing great work — with widows, orphans, special-needs children, internally displaced individuals and their children, wounded soldiers, families who have been traumatized by war, and more.

We also experienced a great outpouring of heartfelt gratitude for us. They were glad that we “would come so far” to offer support and encouragement, and that we would spend a few days walking with them in their trials. And there was gratitude for the support from the U.S., without which they would have ceased to exist as a nation.