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The war in Ukraine continues to rage. 

“I know that the war has gone down the list of headlines in North America,” Don Parsons told me right before leaving the US to head back to Poland. “But the war is just as intense as it was. There is heavy fighting. There are people who are losing their lives at great numbers on a daily basis.” 

Don Parsons is a former church planter in Ukraine who now directs Mission Eurasia’s Unreached People Groups Initiative.  He notes that as the war continues, so do the needs of Ukrainian refugees. 

“In Poland, in the city of Warsaw, where I’m based right now, the population’s increased by 15 percent in the last three months,” he says. “Fifteen percent. Four hundred thousand plus Ukrainian refugees.” 

Parsons suggests three specific ways we can keep praying for God’s intervention in the war in Ukraine. 

“I think the first prayer would be just to pray that this war–these atrocities–this evil–would end. And to not cease to pray,” he says. “One of the pastors in Kiev in the early going said that ‘the prayers of the global church is the iron dome of Ukraine.’ So we need to keep standing with Ukraine and praying for Ukraine.” 

Parsons notes that the evangelical Ukrainian church is the largest evangelical church in all of Europe. With so many Ukrainian believers now scattered across Europe, Parsons asks us to pray that God will use the dispersion of Ukrainian Christians to spread God’s Good News. 

“Pray for a spiritual harvest in the midst of these horrors,” he asks. “The church that we helped plant in Kiev–the pastor was evacuated to Switzerland. He’s helped establish a little church with the Ukrainian community there, and 22 people have come to Christ in the last two and a half months since he’s been evacuated there.” 

In addition, Parsons asks us to pray for healing from the personal effects of the war. 

“Pray for those that have experienced or are experiencing trauma. Which almost every Ukrainian has at some level.”

My conversation with Don in the podcast lasts just over 16 minutes. 

Learn about Mission Eurasia’s work in Ukraine here.