North Port pastor returns from Warsaw with refugees’ stories, pictures

More than 14 million people have been forced from their homes since Russia invaded Ukraine. A North Port pastor who did his best to make a difference by traveling to Europe to help refugees has returned with stories of resilience in the face of crisis.

Poland has been a popular landing spot for Ukrainians on the run, Warsaw especially. That’s where Pastor Viktor Antipov from the House of Mercy church in North Port went to help.

In one of several pictures Antipov sent WINK news from his trip, you can see him there in a Warsaw shelter praying with a teenage girl laying in bed. The 13-year-old was so sick that she couldn’t or eat or drink and was too scared to even speak to Antipov. After he prayed over her in that bed, Antipov claims “God touched her heart.” He says she ate, drank, spoke and even prayed.

“When we talked and I prayed, her eyes was just open, she started to speak, she just… you can see the difference,” Antipov said. “I’m a believer, I’m a pastor, I believe God, specifically in that kind of situation, when it’s difficult, God shows his mercy in miracles like never before.”

The Senate is sending another $40 billion to Ukraine, money which will help with both military and humanitarian efforts.

Antipov says Ukrainians told him they’re grateful, not what many of us would expect to hear from people who’ve been shot at, whose homes have been bombed. But he says those people are grateful just to be alive and to have each other

In another picture Antipov showed WINK, you can see a disabled Ukrainian man who fled to Warsaw with his wife, seen holding his hand. The couple was in a cramped shelter with thousands of beds piled on top of each other, without their belongings or their home. They didn’t know where they would go next, but they had one another.

“I can see his wife so dedicated to her husband, to take care of him,” Antipov said. “And again, you can see in the amazing way… real love in action, everywhere.”

Antipov says he befriended that man, put him in a wheelchair and took him to a local church. Unfortunately, not everyone who fled Ukraine has a family anymore—lots of people have been killed. Antipov says it should be a lesson to all of us in America: We fight so much about politics, about anything, yet we should feel bonded to one another and blessed to be alive here together.