Open Door Foundation: Ukraine

Message from Vitaliy during his visit to St. Mark’s in September 2022:

Vitaliy & Natalia Smolin

St. Mark’s Church has been the launch pad that the Lord has used to multiply our two fishes and five loaves. He is doing the miraculous. There was a reason for me to be at SMC on the 28th of February. God has used that to just explode into His grace, His mercy, His blessings and abundance. We’ve been able to be the hands and feet, and to be the answer and the hope.

Your generous giving has helped many many thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. We’ve been able to feed at least 100,000 people. We evacuated 15,000 people in the first couple of months. We’ve been able to house and feed 2,500 people in our shelters. We held summer camps where we reached out to 2,000 kids. We baked and supported a bakery that made 45,000 loaves of bread. These were given out within the first couple of weeks after the war started.

The only way that has been possible is with God and people like you. Thank you so much for investing into us, for investing into God’s Kingdom. It’s truly a humbling experience to see what God could do when you’re obedient and just say, “I have hands and feet, use them for your glory.”

God is so worthy. He is so awesome and he’s so good to us. These things are only possible through community, through the body of Christ and through your church and through people like you. Thank you so much. It’s just been a huge blessing to be here again and to share how amazing our God is.