Our Village Is Dying

By Lisa Carter

On a cold, snowy December day as we drove north from Kiev, Ukraine, we passed an ominous roadsign which read Chernobyl 15km. We were less than 10 miles from the center of the infamous nuclear disaster. A village came into view. The silence was eerie. Nothing stirred. Decaying buildings gave mute testimony to a past gone forever. There was silence in the car, too. We were each too preoccupied to come to grips with the reality of that horrifying day etched in our memories.

On April 26, 1986 at 1:23 a.m. technicians at the Chernobyl Power Plant allowed the power in the fourth reactor to fall to low levels as part of a controlled experiment which went amiss. The reactor overheated, causing a meltdown of the core. Two explosions blew the top off the reactor building, releasing clouds of deadly radioactive material into the atmosphere for over 10 days. The people of Chernobyl were exposed to radioactivity 100 times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. Over 15 million people were victimized by the disaster, and it will cost over $60 billion to make these people healthy. Ten years after the disaster, babies are still being born without arms and eyes, or only stumps for limbs.

My husband, Scott, and I were on our way to a village not far from Chernobyl to hold evangelistic services. People who had never before set foot in the church came because they heard Americans would be there. After the service, Scott struck up a conversation with several elderly women.

"Please give us a commentary on the Bible. We have no male spiritual leaders here, so we have to do everything. We need a commentary to tell us what the Bible means."

Scott asked, "You mean you have no men leaders? Surely there must be somebody, or couldn't a nearby church send someone here?"

The women smiled knowingly, saying, "The other churches have their own ministries. The truth of the matter is, our village is dying--literally. No one wants to come here. To come here is to come to die. If anything is to be done here, we must do it

What sobering words! Here are people seeking not fame or a reward. They seek only tools to shine a light in one of the darkest places of our day. This is why God called us here--to give people hope, and to help equip a new generation of church planters and others to lead the church in UKRAINE.