The images and stories that are coming from Ukraine have had many people in disbelief. For a Waynesfield couple, those stories have a personal connection, that have them sending a lot of prayers to the people that live there.
“It breaks our heart to see the death, the destruction, the unnecessary killing,” says Robert Waitman, former missionary in the Ukraine.
For six years starting in 1996, Robert and Jeanie Waitman and their six children began doing Christian missionary work in the Ukraine. They call it the best times of their lives, because of the people they got to know, helped, and care for.
“They are very tenacious people,” says Jeanie Waitman. “If they get something in their mind and they want to do it they don’t stop, they do it. I have seen people hurt that should be in a bed go out and work. They are very kind, once you become their friend you are their friend for life.
When Russian troops began their invasion of Ukraine, the Waitmans started worrying about those friends that are in harm’s way. Here are some of the stories that Jeanie heard from loved ones in the Ukraine.
“There was one young lady that was my interpreter in the villages and she is there, her brother is in California. She was to go get her paperwork to come to America. Just about a week before, or maybe two weeks before, they shut the embassy in Kyiv down. We were trying to get her money, if she could get out of there, but she said she could not leave because they are shooting at the cars now.”
“I have a friend that lives in Kyiv her and her husband are both doctors there. When the bomb first hit that small airport in Kyiv, it woke them up in their apartment building was pretty close and they took off for the hospital and they have been there since then and where we lived in Zhytomyr, which is west of Kyiv, they have had a lot of problems. They have two military bases there. They bombed them, but a lot of the solders went to Kyiv, so they had very limited (people there). They are holding their own even though they can’t leave because they get shot at.”
The Waitman’s want people to know that the Ukrainians are not going to back down.
“But they won’t give up,” says Jeanie. “The doctor that is in Kyiv said we didn’t go to the Russians; the Russians came to us and she said we are not leaving, we are staying put. We are going to fight to the death.”
“People are seeing the spirit of the Ukrainian people," adds Robert. "That we want our independent country. We want to form our democratic society. We don’t want to be underneath a Russian federation anymore.”
