Odesa has been badly hit over recent days.
The Orthodox Cathedral in Odesa has been destroyed. We are asking, why target a Cathedral, when Putin and his thugs make all the pretense’s of attending services at a Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Moscow. Maybe it’s because Putin lost the support of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church when his Russian Rebel Army attacked Eastern Ukraine in 2014-2016, and they severed ties with the Russian Orthodox Church. You see, if Putin can control the Church, as he does in Russia, he can control the people, who revere and fear the church.
A Jewish Orphanage with 120 children has been destroyed by missile fire.
In one of the worst nights of destruction in Odesa since the beginning of the 16-month war in Ukraine, the city endured relentless missile and bomb 
attacks on Saturday night, with panic-stricken residents seeking safety in any available shelter as devastation rained down from above.
“The whole city is shaking,” said Rabbi Avraham Wolff, director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Odesa. “We’ve had an incredibly challenging night. The entire population has moved to shelters. We’ve never had such an influx of people to the Chabad centers around the city of Odesa.
Rabbi Wolff and his wife, Chaya, direct the Mishpacha Children’s Home. “We’ve been through a lot of difficult moments since the war broke out. What happened tonight was particularly hard.”
The children and staff rushed in their bedclothes hastily seeking refuge after midnight in the building’s basement.
We offered straight away to take them into the House of Hope. The Jewish sector of Odesa knows of us and the House of Hope because in 2022, the first year of the War in Ukraine, so many Jewish people and families, came to the House of Hope asking to be evacuated with the orphans and homeless children, and the single-mother families, to Western Germany. Sasha, our European manager, and I had ministered a lot to the Messianic Jewish Fellowships in Dusseldorf, Cologne and Bonn in preceding years, training them in Evangelism, and in return the Messianic Jewish Society offered to accommodate the refugees in their old village. In the first six months of the evacuations from Ukraine, many Jewish families and elderly Jewish people, were amazed at the youngsters on our 26-seater vans talking about Yeshua (Jesus) all the time and referring to their beautiful picture Bibles.
From reports in the Odesa media and also the Ukraine official media outlet the invading forces are scanning social media for information confirming results of there attacks and to adjust their tactics. They have also been posing as representatives of foreign media for the same purpose. With this in mind we will not publish on the website photographs that either identify people or locations, similarly towns, other than those regularly mentioned by the media will not be named. Some names have also been changed in this report.
If you receive a direct copy of our news letters please do not re-publish any part to social media. Thank you for your understanding.
Schools re-opening in the Odesa province and some de-occupied areas in Eastern Ukraine
I have been thrilled at the request that came from our managers, Andrej & Avigail, at the House of Hope in Odesa, “For August is it possible for us to keep up delivering hundreds of Rescue Packs of food, medicine and Bibles to Kherson and the Odesa province villages, and also create Rescue Packs for the schools that are re-opening in the bombed areas? We keep receiving requests from schools and people in “de-occupied areas” about this need”. They thought this would be a huge break-through right now.
This week we’ll be in touch with the food suppliers and work out what the essentials should be for the school-children’s packages. This is a great need, as long as we also keep delivering Rescue Packages to the poor people in dire need in the bombed villages in South-Eastern Ukraine. That project is vital because it’s keeping the elderly, the poor and single-mother families alive.
We also want to buy more children’s picture Bibles for the school-children’s Rescue Packs. It won’t be a problem to get permission to share Jesus with the children in their schools, like Peter and we used to do before the Covid-19 two-year period started in February 2020.
We are checking to see if the Child Protection Services still operates. I know we helped many from that department evacuate from Ukraine, but they helped Peter and our teams to get into many schools to present the Gospel and distribute Bibles. Sasha has just found that they still operate but in a very limited capacity. Avigail said that because the whole region has been shelled and bombed excessively, a lot of shops and government institutions remain closed.
Towns in Eastern Ukraine being totally evacuated declared “Condemned & Unsafe”
Ukraine has announced that 37 Towns in the east have been told to evacuate all their residents, especially from the Kharkov and Kopiansk areas. These areas have been thrashed by Russian bombings that even their own Russian people living there, have to leave – to go where – into Ukraine? I can’t imagine that they can move to Russia because those routes may have been mined. These destructive and bullying tactics are so senseless – as if to say, “If I can’t have Ukraine, no one else will”.
Marina, an orphan in Poland, whose older brother and sister lived in the House of Hope
In March 2022 Esther, our house- mother in Germany, was so close to getting paperwork finalised to take little Marina into the House of Hope to join her older brother and sister. Then the war broke out and evacuations of orphans took place immediately. Marina was taken from her area to an orphanage in Poland. Esther has been trying for more than a year to get her released from the Polish orphanage to join the House of Hope kids in Germany. This has been a long, arduous process of going backwards and forwards between Germany and Odessa and signing copious documents all of which cost lots of money. Finally in April this year Esther was granted guardianship of Marina, and she was hoping to go to Poland to get her out. The Polish orphanage wanted a payment of $5000 USD as a "bribe” to release the child. The Ukrainian authorities say they can't do anything about it and that we should just pay the money. Such corruption over the life of a child! Please pray with us against this wickedness that the Polish orphanage will be overcome by the fear of God and release the child to join her older brother and sister in Germany, shown in the photo visiting her recently in Poland.
Our Budgets for this month
Please pray and stand with us for our budget for Ukraine, Germany and Norway.
| $ | |
|---|---|
| Rescue packages for poor villages – 400 food parcels x $25 | 10,000.00 |
| Purchase of Bibles for the Ukraine | 5,000.00 |
| Salaries of the workers per month | 5,600.00 |
| Esther Missionary support | 1,500.00 |
| House of Hope utilities and maintenance | 4,840.00 |
| Maintenance of Rescue Vans | 5,000.00 |
| Kherson rescue packages - 600 parcels X 20 | 12,000.00 |
| Plus - wages for drivers | 1,000.00 |
| House of Hope Children’s Driver – fuel and support in Germany | 2,550.00 |
| Melitopol Music Group – Ministry in Norway | 830.00 |
| Total current monthly budget | 48,320.00 |
