Unpredictable facts show us the need to adapt to circumstances.

The call to work in the Ukrainian Institute of Arts and Sciences (UIAS) reached us against all the normal logics of an international employee invitation: I am not a pastor; we are not from the health field; I was not fluent in English, neither the Ukrainian or the Russian languages; we were close to 60 years of age; to complete the picture, I have a Ph.D in Communication and Semiotics, and my wife is a Librarian and Master of Arts/Leadership. For many Brazilians, inviting a journalist and a woman with a leadership profile is breaking the rule.

We arrived in Bucha, a dormitory town 17 kilometers northwest of Kyiv, Ukrainian capital, on June 3rd, 2021. Before the trip, I knew that my duties would be limited to structuring the professional practice laboratory for Journalism students, and to learn the Ukrainian idiom. However, less than a month after we settled on campus, the director of the Department of Journalism resigned. This fact changed the assignments, unexpectedly moving to the classroom, even without mastering the local languages. The classes flowed in Spanish, interpreted into Russian, with teaching material in English, and the official documents in Ukrainian.

Adapting to another culture requires much more than just fitting into administrative processes. It involves lifestyle, relationships, technology, food, communication, ways of approaches, clothing, and other more or less highlighted areas. In the Kyiv region, the water is unfit for consumption, because it accuses the excessive presence of iron and magnesium. As we had no filter in the kitchen, we supplied ourselves with drinking water from the fountain of the institute’s restaurant building, two or three times a week.

We chose not to buy a car. So we walked the six kilometers round trip to the nearest supermarket. Still in summer, we bought two electric scooters and the spare safety equipment. Our children were perplexed when they learned of this transformation.

The first conclusion of the mission benefits revealed that it was not necessary to live in houses with a hundred square meters or more. We live happily and with a purpose outlined in the apartment provided by the institute. The Mexican Emilio Sobrino advised us to buy a freezer, as fruit would disappear or prices would quadruple from the beginning of the winter. Then we install the appliance in the kitchen and fill it up, freezing fruits, vegetables, eggs, milk, yogurt, breads and cakes. This proved prudent for February 2022 events.

Hard times

Because of tensions between Ukraine and Russia, the General Conference of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church advised us to leave the country. We boarded for Istanbul on February 17th, but we kept in touch. Just over thirty years after Ukrainian Independence, UIAS students, faculty and staff woke up startled at 5:20 a.m. on Thursday, February 24th. They could hear the crackle of bullets and the boom of bombs in the invasion of Antonov Airport, five kilometers from the institute.

The president of campus, pastor Andriy Shevchuk, with the help of other staff members, organized the evacuation of students, faculty and other employees. They quickly directed the students to their homes and prepared two buses taking some teachers and staff with family members to another region. On campus remained the pastor of the Student Church, the Romanian Mykhailo Skrypkar, and two officials. Because of the increase and violence of the battles in Bucha, surrounding residents sought safety together with the campus. Other officials returned, and the number of refugees rose to two hundred people. The next day, the food stock forecast dropped to just three days. Then I contacted pastor Shevchuk and told him to inform and authorize pastor Skrypkar to enter our apartment and get all the food available, action followed by the other missionaries who had evacuated two days before us. On March 2nd, a miracle happened in the midst of battles and lack of fuel. Two people transported enough food in their vans for a few more days. However, the next morning, March 3rd, tchetchen troops fired mortars over the campus without hurting anyone.

The Theology final year student, Oleksandr Daryenko, left with the buses to the West. He reported that the caravan arrived “at a safe place, but” suffered “great stress”. Doctor Halyna Kushnir lived in Kharkiv, which the Russians surrounded and poured a hail of missiles, including a hospital and a maternity. The professor had two children and was eight months pregnant. I sent her a message, advising her to flee the city. She replied saying it was fear, because “nobody knows what to do now”. On March 3rd, I learned that she managed to escape from Kharkiv and reach the Polish border.

The vice-rector Valentyna Kurylyak crossed the Slovak border and was welcomed by a younger sister. The husband couldn’t leave, just as no man between the ages of 18 and 60 should leave Ukraine, who imposed martial law, calling on everyone to join the troops according to the need. The military has already called up many UIAS students.

These difficult times spurred many to look at each other. The pastor Oleg Vasylenko, higher education chaplain, is in the West also, and guarantees “to be safe”, striving to “help as much as possible here”. The pastor Vyachyslav Korchuk, doctor in Theology, left the apparent safety of his home and risked returning to campus to help his colleague in supporting Adventist families and people in the community, installed in the UIAS. On March 10th, everyone got it to leave the institute.

Next step

As we left Bucha, there was a knot in our stomach, a broken heart, and the sleep that didn’t come. Body in a country, mind in Ukraine, praying for the fearless Ukrainian brothers and sisters. Daily we pray that the will of the Lord may materialize in the life of each one of them, just as we cry out for protection for president Volodymyr Zelenskyi and his family.

We don’t know what our next destination will be. We will listen to the “crowd of counselors”, in order to prudently continue to be useful to the Church according to the skills built up over decades. When we come across walls, crises, we believe that the Lord enables us to assume responsibility.

Ruben Dargã Holdorf, Comm.Se.D