First person: Maxym

I am the director of New Hope Center, which serves and supports hundreds of families in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, less than 20 miles from the territory controlled by the Russian military.

Most of these families are mothers with children. Many came to Zaporizhzhia after losing or leaving their homes in the war zone. They do not have enough financial support; they do not have social support. They have lots of grief and sorrow. We do our best to serve them as well as local families who are in similar situations.

Mainly we work with the kids to decrease their stress level, to help them cope with the uncertainty. They do not know what is going to happen. We also help parents by providing a safe place, where they feel encouraged, renew their strength and gain hope. 

When I see how we helped a mother or child, I am motivated to keep doing what I can, to keep serving. 

We have a staff of about 15 now (including psychologists for children and adults).

But when we began in March 2011, it was just the four of us: my wife Anya, myself, and John and Evelyn Wiens, Mennonite Brethren missionaries from British Columbia. They came to Zaporizhzhia to start a church and minister to older orphans. They invited us to join them.

Anya and I had no experience with orphans. These were teenagers who were 16, 17, 18. They had aged out from government orphanages, and we learned how bad it is for them to grow up without parents. We saw so many tragic stories. We really wanted to help them.

Little by little, we began to increase our team. We started a Christian trade school in 2013. Basically, we taught these youth how to live and make a living, things the orphanage did not teach them. 

The year 2014 was very difficult. Our leader and champion John passed away suddenly in January. We felt like orphans, personally and professionally. We had lived and worked with John and Evelyn for three years, like Jesus and his disciples.

One or two months after John died, the Russian military invaded and illegally annexed Crimea. We did not know if New Hope would continue.

But God is great. He had plans. I realized things needed to change, and we needed to look for new opportunities.

John and Evelyn had portrayed Jesus to us, being compassionate and helping the needy and the hungry. We knew we wanted to continue portraying Jesus to others around us in the same way. 

Internally displaced people began coming to Zaporizhzhia at this time. All the nongovernmental organizations were helping them, but there were local families that needed help and were underserved.

So, we began working with local families in crisis. Many of our staff completed their studies in psychology. The vision changed, the audience changed, but the mission is still the same: healing the brokenhearted.

We didn’t know at the time, but the changes we made at New Hope to serve families helped prepare us for when the full-fledged invasion began in 2022, and many displaced families began coming to us for help. 

Early on, as the invasion escalated, Anya and I were home in Zaporizhzhia when a missile landed about 300 feet away. A building was hit and people died. We saw it on the news. So, we decided to move to our country home on the edge of the city. It has a garden. It helps a lot to work in the garden. It is healing.

Where we live, we know they are not attacking us. Most of the bad stuff flies over us. But as soon as you hear a sound . . . your body reacts. Some nights are sleepless since missile attacks usually happen at night. It is the new reality.

Some of our New Hope team left for other countries or western Ukraine for safety reasons when the full-fledged war started. Most have now returned, saying, “We want to be home and continue working with you.”

They believed that God would keep them safe. They believed God would provide means to help and serve others in Zaporizhzhia. And he did. 

As we work in these circumstances, we all need to be renewed — emotionally, physically, even spiritually. When Anya and I, or the whole team, can get some time off work and go to a safer place, like the western part of Ukraine, it helps to renew our strength to come back and keep serving.

I ask people who read this to pray for the war to end. That is number one. Pray for just peace for Ukraine. Pray that Zaporizhzhia stays in Ukraine and is not occupied. We want to continue living here.

Is it dangerous? Yes. Is it hard? Yes. But this is our land. This is where I was born. This is where we have our lives. 

Maxym is director of MCC partner New Hope Center in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. *Full name not used for security reasons.