November 2025 – As we celebrate Thanksgiving this month and Christmas soon thereafter, Paula and I are so grateful for our MP friends and sponsors. Your support and prayer make it possible to bless needy families with God’s love each month. We are also amazed at the love and dedication of families like the Karptsovs in this newsletter. They were briefly mentioned in the April 2025 newsletter and are now fully sponsored.
To everything there is a season. A time for every purpose under heaven. Eccl. 3:1
I recently visited them while delivering aid to the Donbas area in Eastern Ukraine. I met Oksana and the four children in a local restaurant. Our evening was quiet, but explosions occur regularly in the nearby town of Dnipro. The father, Oleksiy, was working, but Oksana and the kids were happy to talk and share about their lives.
Donate For ChristmasOksana Shared Their Story In A Recent Letter
“We are a family, displaced persons from the small town of Svitovo, Luhansk region. In 2014, our hometown was occupied, and we were forced to leave everything behind. But the most painful blow was the loss of our eldest son, Yegor – our defender and our pride. In the first days of the full-scale invasion in 2022, he voluntarily went to defend Ukraine. He was only 21. He died, leaving us his last will. He asked us to give a home to children who do not have one.
“We fulfilled this wish. First, we adopted little Nastya. During this process, we learned that she had three more brothers and sisters. We did not hesitate for a minute. Today we are raising five children: our son Matviy, 17, and four adopted children — Anastasia, Anna, Bogdan, and Kira. The youngest of them has a disability, but her smile is the light in our home.
“We live in a front-line city near Dnipro. We started from scratch and bought a small house. My husband found a job and has been working nonstop. I am constantly with the children. In their short lives, they have already experienced a lot of fear, orphanhood, and loss. We try to give them back their childhood. We go to after-school classes, walk with them, hug them, and listen to them. But financially it is tough.” (to have such a large family)
I asked Oksana what they needed as a family and how we could pray for them. “Two of the kids often wet the bed, and my washer is broken,” she quietly shared. “The sound of explosions scares them, and they have a lot of fears. We have considered moving to a safer region of Ukraine, but it would be expensive. We worry about how to raise the kids in safety, without war, and without fear of being abandoned again in their lives.”
We said our goodbyes, but I knew we must buy them a washing machine ASAP. Thank you to our sponsors for being a blessing to families like the Karptsovs in their time of need.