BEING HUMAN

#BeingHuman. #PeopleOfTheBridge. One thousand six hundred days… This report – January-June 2026 – reaches the present: the last in our long accounting to catch up with the Russian war as it stands right now. And it is, by almost every measure, the fullest one we have ever sent…

More volunteers gave themselves to this work in these six months than in any period of the entire war: 638. More students were enrolled than ever before: 7,411 (just from the circles of the “People of the Bridge” partners). And the report carries the largest graduating class of the whole war: 1,543 men and women who finished their theological formation (formal, non-formal and informal) and walked out to serve the church and people. Set that beside where we began…

Our very first report, at fifty days, came from twelve communities improvising under Russian war of terror, with no name and no plan for what we were doing. Sixteen hundred days later, that “scramble” has become this: the largest sending of trained ministers and leaders we have ever recorded since 2022, going out into a country that still has no peace…

There is only one place to end an accounting like this, and it is the sentence with which Jesus ended his own time among his disciples. On a mountain in Galilee, before He left them, he told them what to do with everything that had happened: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19–20, NKJV).

That is, in plain words, the “job description” of the 1,543 who graduated this Spring: to go out into a wounded Ukrainian society and make disciples there, teaching and baptizing as they go… Everything in this ledger, almost four years and a half of it, has been quietly bending toward that Commission: the students and church leaders, faculty developed, the Scriptures carried out by the hundreds of thousands, the tending of broken souls, and the doors that have never closed… yet…

But it is the last clause of that sentence we hold onto now, at 1,600 days, with no end to the Russian war of terror in sight: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20, NKJV). Notice what He did not promise… He did not promise us an easy road, or a short one, or a peaceful one, or the safe one… He said nothing about victory in the war by a particular date, too… What He promised was presence: His own, unbroken, all the way to the end of the age…

And we are not at that end yet… We are somewhere in the long middle of it, more than four years into the Russian unprovoked full-scale war of terror whose far shore we still cannot see. What we have been given is not a “timeline” but a companion and presence: the same One Who was “born” with us in the locked rooms at fifty days, and Who was in the boat when the storm came roaring back. He does not leave when the fighting drags on past every prediction we made about it. Sixteen hundred days in, that is enough for us to keep training and sending people out on… It may be the only promise there ever was…

Here is what these six months held, with the running totals since the war began:

• 638 volunteers carried the work, the most of any period yet
• 1,874 people were evacuated from areas the fighting still threatened (total: 17,395)
• 137 displaced people received extended accommodation on seminary campuses (total: 11,932)
• 4,334 people passed through our hubs in transit toward safer ground (total: 76,499)
• 38,050 food boxes and packages reached families driven from their homes (total: 804,803)
• 619 tons of food and humanitarian supplies were delivered where the need was sharpest (total: 8,827)
• 368,450 Bibles and New Testaments were placed into the hands of the displaced, refugees, the military, families of the fallen and missing, and those living in war zones (total: 2,053,086)
• 14,590 people received counsel and spiritual and emotional care for what the war had done to them (total: 119,848)
• 576 people came to living faith in Christ and were baptized (total: 4,694)
• 2,760 people with disabilities, including wounded soldiers and civilians, received specialized care (total: 17,179)
• 7,411 students continued their theological study across our campuses and programs in the 2025–2026 academic year
• 1,543 graduates completed their formation and were sent out into ministry (total: 2,664)

Sixteen hundred days ago, twelve communities opened their doors in a hurry, with no idea what we were beginning. It is what it became: over 2,000,000 Scriptures handed out since the war began, nearly 120,000 souls tended, more than 17,000 people carried out of danger, and 2,664 ministers formed and sent into the churches and a wounded nation… We did not build this. We simply have kept answering the door, one commission and one companion at a time… And the door is still open, because the One Who told us to go also told us He would not leave, not until the very end.

If you would keep sending them out with us, you can stand alongside these seminary-based hubs here:

• Ukraine: Refugees Assistance (through our seminary hubs): https://www.mesaglobal.co/projects/48505
• Ukraine: Bibles for refugees and military: https://www.mesaglobal.co/projects/65548
• Ukraine: Mental Health and Well-Being Care: https://www.mesaglobal.co/projects/45809

Peace be with you, and keep your children away from war, Taras D (project manager in Ukraine for the “People of the Bridge”), on behalf of the Coordination Group: Roman Soloviy (Langham, EEIT), Olga Marchak (Mesa Global), Ernest Clark (Mesa Global), Kseniya Trofymchuk (EEIT), Kateryna Shutko (EEIT), Evan Hunter (Scholar Leaders)

PS. Fourteen communities carried this time:

1. Chernivtsi Bible Seminary
2. Dialogue in Action (Peacebuilding group)
3. Eastern European Institute of Theology
4. Evangel Theological University (Zaporizhzhia)
5. Institute of Trauma Healing
6. Kremenchuk Evangelical Seminary
7. Lviv Central Baptist Church (“Sharing the Bibles with a Stranger”)
8. Lviv Theological Seminary
9. Odesa Theological Seminary
10. Tavriskii Christian Institute (Kherson, Kyiv)
11. Transcarpathian Christian Institute (Khust)
12. Ukrainian Bible Society
13. Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary
14. University Divitia Gratia (in Chișinău)

Over 20 additional seminaries across Ukraine (which are not a part of our network “People of the Bridge” but many members of the International Evangelical Theological Alliance) continue providing essential relief services and deserve equal recognition for their tireless work.