Why go back to Ukraine?
KYIV, UKRAINE — “Church and family.”
Marina Noyes said it over and over when asked why she and her husband, Jim, came back to Ukraine.
Marina and Jim Noyes during a visit to Oklahoma Christian University in the 2000s.
Three years ago, as the first Russian missiles struck the capital, the Ukrainian and her American husband, Jim, then 87, stayed put. They didn’t want to leave the Vinograder Church of Christ, the congregation they helped plant two decades prior.
As the attacks intensified, the couple made the heart-wrenching decision to head for the Polish border with their son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, one with special needs. Marina listened to her granddaughter, who uses a walker, say to her baby doll, “Don’t panic, sweetie. All will be well. Mommy is with you.”
A long line of Ukrainians walks toward the Polish border checkpoint, fleeing the war in their homeland.
The family found refuge in Western Europe. Jim and Marina made trips to the States to raise awareness and support for relief efforts. Their son, Dr. Andrey Noyes, and his wife, also named Marina, lived in Belgium. As the war dragged on, they felt called to return and do what they could to help their people.
Andrey and Marina returned to Kyiv, where the physician serves in a Kyiv hospital that treats the firefighters and rescue workers who respond to missile strikes. Jim and Marina followed them last April. Two months later, they spoke with The Christian Chronicle in their first-floor apartment on a warm summer evening — windows open to provide ventilation during the city’s regular power cuts.
Marina Noyes carries a casserole dish as she and her husband, Jim, make their way to the Vinograder Church of Christ for Sunday worship in 2015.
While away from their homeland, they spent countless hours glued to computer screens and social media, following the news from Ukraine, Marina said.
“We don’t watch the news here,” she said. “We live the news.”
In danger … and ‘in harmony with God’
At the start of the war, nearly 17 million Ukrainians fled the country, but fewer than 7 million remain abroad, Bloomberg reported.
Among those who returned is Tatyana Pavlenko. She and her husband, Oleg, once worshiped with a Church of Christ in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, just a few miles from the Russian border. In 2022, as Russian troops amassed along the border, the Pavlenkos got a message from their friend Jeff Abrams, an Alabama preacher and founder of Rescue Ukraine. Take the warnings seriously, Abrams said. Be ready to leave. Their bags were packed when the first missiles hit, Tatyana said.
Tatyana Pavlenko, center, stands with translator Inna Kuzmenko at the end of a 2024 ministry retreat in Irpin, Ukraine.
But at the Polish border, guards refused to allow Oleg to leave. Though exempt from military service, he had to stay in Ukraine. After a tearful farewell, Tatyana traveled to the seaside city of Sopot, Poland. Oleg went south to Chernivtsi. There, a Church of Christ housed refugees and served as a way station for relief convoys from neighboring Romania.
In Poland, Tatyana joined an enclave of Ukrainian refugees housed by the Sopot Church of Christ.
“The people were so kind and loving,” Tatyana said through a translator. She spent a year in Sopot, working alongside missionaries Molly and Annabelle Dawidow as they served wave after wave of refugees. Tatyana missed her husband, but there were few places to stay in Chernivtsi, which quickly swelled to more than twice its population after the war started.
“I felt like God didn’t want me to come back,” she said.
Oleg and Tatyana Pavlenko in Chernihiv, Ukraine.
Oleg, meanwhile, joined Volunteer Brothers, a group of Christians that drove emergency supplies to eastern Ukraine and ferried back women and children from the frontlines. Through the ministry, he learned of an opportunity to serve a church of about 35 members in Chernihiv, about two hours northeast of Kyiv. He invited his wife to join him there.
“Yes, yes, yes,” she said when asked if anyone tried to talk her out of going back to Ukraine. Lots of people did. “But I fully realized that, if it was God’s plan, God will protect me.”
So far, God has. Tatyana and Oleg have worked with the church for about a year and help provide aid to those fleeing from the intense fighting in the east.
She may not be safe, she said, but “I’m in harmony with God.”
Children in Chernihiv, Ukraine, show of the MAGI (Making A Godly Impact) boxes of toys and treats they received for Christmas through Healing Hands International, a ministry associated with Churches of Christ.
Fighting the information war
Passion for the truth — real news and the Good News — brought Svetlana Shevchenko back to Ukraine.
The young journalist fled with her daughter to Warsaw, Poland, in the early days of the war. She has since moved to the city of Zaporizhzhia, not far from the frontlines, where she worships with a Church of Christ and works for a Brussels-based Ukrainian news outlet.
Svetlana Shevchenko, right, stands with translator Inna Kuzmenko at during a 2024 ministry retreat in Irpin, Ukraine.
Before the war, she covered news about medicine and psychology. Now she devotes most of her time to what she called “fighting the Moscow propaganda.”
In addition to constant gunfire and missile attacks, Ukrainians endure a barrage of reports from pro-Russian media that portray her countrymen as nationalists and chauvinists, Shevchenko said.
Even religion has become a weapon of war, she added. Russian outlets “pervert what the Bible says” and laud the Russian Orthodox Church as a pure faith fighting against the decadence of Ukraine and the West. These outlets claim that “all the Western world, not just us … they are from Satan, they are from the devil and they are corrupted.”
Svetlana Shevchenko, in blue dress, prays alongside fellow Ukrainian Christians during a graduation ceremony of the Ukrainian Bible Institute in 2024.
As a journalist, and as a student of Scripture, Shevchenko believes that truth is her country’s best defense.
“It’s easier to manipulate people when they don’t have enough knowledge,” she said.
Living day by day
Back in Kyiv, Jim sat in his easy chair as he played with his granddaughter, who’s fluent in Ukrainian and English.
He still finds reason to give thanks — even amid air-raid sirens and missile attacks.
He’s thankful for their gas stove, which allows them to heat water when the power goes out.
Members of the Vinograder Church of Christ enjoy a fellowship meal after Sunday worship in 2015.
He’s also thankful that the church outvoted him when he wanted to move the church’s meeting place to a different location in Kyiv — one that later was bombed by Russia.
“I see God’s hand in it,” he said.
The move back to Kyiv has kept them busy serving the church — and living day by day, he added.
Regardless of what the future holds, “we’re back,” he said, “and this is home.”
Between the Kyiv suburbs of Bucha and Irpin, badly damaged in the early days of the conflict, a Ukrainian man makes his way home.
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