Imagine for a moment that you are a young child, without parents, in the middle of the Ukrainian conflict. Think of what you are experiencing. Hearing the sounds—and seeing the sights—of shells exploding. Sensing the fear in your caregivers’ eyes and voices. Being hurriedly pulled from the warmth of your bed, your room, the place you call home. Being separated from your friends. Your routines. Life as you know it. Perceiving—but not totally understanding—that something is radically wrong.

Being brought into noisy, cramped underground spaces for days at a time with no windows, little food and nothing recognizable. Or placed onto trains or into cars and told you are headed for a safer place … with unfamiliar adults traveling with and caring for you.

We are encouraged to hear of the many creative efforts to evacuate Ukrainian orphans to safer places. Physically they are now safe. But after being quickly uprooted from life as they knew it, what about their emotional and spiritual needs?

About a week ago we shared how orphans from Svyatohirsk were in the process of being evacuated west. Praise God they are safe, but now they are in a totally new environment—in foreign shelters with new caregivers. Everything is unfamiliar. The innermost needs they are now experiencing are also the ones faced by countless vulnerable children who have been evacuated or are waiting to be.

Please join us in prayer for the mental, emotional and spiritual needs of Ukraine’s vulnerable children:

• Pray for God to guard their hearts and help them to know who to trust, as many are without former caregivers

• Ask God to quiet their fears and anxious thoughts

• Pray that God would provide healthy ways for them to process their feelings of war and trauma —spiritually, emotionally and physically

• Ask that God’s peace and joy would fill their hearts

• Ask the Lord to hold them close, that they would know His presence

• Pray that the Lord would bring many of these young ones to faith

• Pray for God’s protection from evil thoughts as well as evil people

• Ask that God would dispel any thoughts of suicide

• Ask the Lord to give inner hope, courage and strength

• Pray that they would have someone to hug and comfort them

Thank you for continuing to stand alongside these vulnerable ones!

“…nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8: 38-39, New Living Translation)