Kids camp in war time

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, August 24th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Kids camp in war-time.

It’s now been nearly 18 months since Russian soldiers invaded Ukraine. In those months, over 6 million refugees left Ukraine, almost a third of them children.

BROWN: So far, Poland has welcomed the most Ukrainian refugees to Europe. Churches in Poland continue opening their doors to help their neighbors. And some Ukrainian Christians who are refugees themselves are using their time and efforts to bring hope to children whose lives have been turned upside down.

BUTLER: WORLD Associate correspondent Caleb Welde recently visited Warsaw, Poland, and brought back this story.

CALEB WELDE, ASSOCIATE CORRESPONDENT: About 80 kids are gathered in the basement of a small seminary. It’s nestled in the forests outside Warsaw.

AUDIO: [Natalia talking to children]

Natalia Karamalak and her husband Sergey are leading a summer camp for kids ages 7 to 11. The vast majority of them, refugees from Ukraine.

AUDIO: [Children singing]

Tonight is the last night of camp. It’s been a full week. The days were filled with morning dance parties, sports, games, arts and crafts, compass lessons, and English lessons. In the evenings, the kids acted out Bible stories.

SERGEY: [Sharing Gospel]

Tonight, things finally settle down as Sergey tells the story of Jesus' death and resurrection, and the promise of forgiveness and new life.

SERGEY: [Gospel presentation]

In addition to teaching English, the camp is an opportunity to build relationships and share the gospel. Volunteer Tania Melnickova says most of the children are still processing the trauma of fleeing their homes and living in a new country.

MELNICKOVA: Some of them are staying here only with one of their parents because their dads are at war. And they need a lot of support, love, and compassion.

Tania, Natalia, and Sergey are refugees from Ukraine themselves. Their own lives have been drastically changed by war. Tania’s fiance was the one who told her when the bombs started falling. At first, they postponed their wedding until better times. But after months of the war dragging on, they changed their minds.

MELNICKOVA: And we decided not to lose time and to get married. And in three months, we had like a small ceremony, like not the ceremony we expected to have, actually. But that was a close circle of friends, relatives, we gathered together, we celebrated.

In two days, Tania will return to her home in Lutsk in northwestern Ukraine. With Russian attacks on the rise again, the nights are filled with air raid sirens.

MELNICKOVA: Every night, we have alarms because of shelling because of missiles being launched because of drones being launched, and we never know where they would go. And what saves me, like in this situation, and my husband, it's really the peace that God gives, because before going to sleep, we just pray together, we ask God to protect us, and we fall asleep. And sometimes we even don't wake up through alarms, like we just don't hear them, and then wake up in the morning and continue doing what we are supposed to do.

She says she can’t imagine going through this ordeal without the peace that only comes from God. And that’s the reason she is here, sharing the good news of Christ with refugee children.

It hasn’t been easy: Camp leaders had to send home seven children because of behavioral issues related to traumas they’ve experienced. One child’s older brother committed suicide during the week she was here. And while these kids slept safely at camp this week, a Russian missile attack on an apartment building in Lviv killed 10 people and injured 48 more.

AUDIO: [Children at camp]

Camp wraps up Friday evening. Afterward, Sergey Karamalak and his family drive two hours to another city to lead a weekend retreat for Ukrainian Sunday school teachers. On Monday, they’ll begin another week-long kids’ camp, hoping to share God’s peace with more of their fellow countrymen.

All the volunteers understand why it’s important to preach the gospel now. One girl prayed to receive Jesus at camp. When she went home, she found out that her father had been killed at the front.

MELNICKOVA: We realize that we can't lose any moment– no postponing, no putting off life. No putting off serving, no putting off saying kind things to each other. And that's it, we continue living.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Caleb Welde, in Warsaw, Poland.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.