As the conflict in Ukraine enters its second month, pastors from at least five parishes in the city of Portage, Indiana joined together to pray for the nation’s citizens amid the ongoing war.
Pastor Mike Hendon led the prayers at City Point Church, saying that residents may feel helpless, but that there are still ways that they can help.
“You feel so helpless…but you can always pray,” he said.
John Lowe II of New Life Christian Church in nearby Warsaw just returned from two weeks in Poland, where he received donations from all over Europe and shared them with those in need in Ukraine.
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He says that he also received donations from parishioners in Indiana, but that getting across the border into Ukraine was extremely tough.
“We had some close calls,” he said. “It was basically the Wild West. Everyone has guns. We didn’t stop at stop signs, and we just kept going.”
Ukrainian officials say they’ve been making military gains amid a stalemate with Russian forces. Russia is now focusing heavily on trying to control eastern Ukraine, bombing countless cities and drawing the ire of President Joe Biden, who said over the weekend that President Vladimir Putting “cannot remain in power.”
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While the White House said that policy on the matter hasn’t changed, Biden said that he was expressing his moral outrage.
“I’m not walking anything back,” he said. “The fact of the matter is that I was expressing the moral outrage I felt toward the way Putin is dealing, and the actions of this man.”
That outrage is being translated into positive action by the group of believers in Indiana, with Lowe saying that he’s been going to Ukraine for more than 30 years, and it has never gotten easier.
“You cry a lot. It broke your heart, (seeing) cities brought to rubble,” he said.
