“We thought we had been forgotten…. When you came, you did not just bring food, you brought hope.”
These are the words of a woman supported through SGA’s Widows’ Project. Funds were provided to a local church that is now reaching out to some of the most vulnerable women in its community.
As winter approaches, this is a scene that will be repeated across Eastern Europe and Central Asia, as local churches reach out to help both Christian and non-Christian women alike.
Those who are supported will include older widows who are struggling, often alone, to make ends meet, younger women who are caring for children after the loss of a husband, and spiritual widows who, abandoned by their husbands simply for coming to faith in Jesus Christ, now face persecution in Muslim-majority communities. Then there are the conflict widows who are grieving the loss of husbands killed in war.
Bulgarian widows supported by the local church
Widows meeting in Vendichani, Ukraine
Nataliya is one conflict widow whom SGA supports in Ukraine. On the day that she was expecting to celebrate the fifth anniversary of their wedding day, her husband Serhii was called up to fight. Without hesitation he packed his bags, left for training, and soon found himself deployed right at the heart of the fighting.
A few short days of leave were granted soon after, but unknown to them, those days would be the last that Nataliya and Serhii would spend together, as the very next month Serhii was killed in action.
Serhii, supported by his wife, had been a deacon in his local church and had been active in ministering to the sick and elderly within that fellowship. Now Nataliya is raising their two young children alone and seeking to support other grieving widows. She continues to be a constant witness to God’s faithfulness, despite her very difficult circumstances.
All those who are grieving the loss of their loved ones need help – and more so, they need the hope that is found only in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Pray that God in His grace, will continue to use SGA’s widows’ ministry to bring hope by meeting not just the physical needs, but the spiritual needs of many this winter.