A Morning in Rivne
My next day in Rivne began at the Mission Without Borders Ukraine office, where Aliona, the communications manager, was already waiting for me at the entrance. She walked me through the space, stopping to introduce me to each member of the team as we went.
Afterward, the three of us, Volodymyr the country director, Aliona, and I, sat down for a short meeting about Mission Without Borders Ukraine's day to day work. Volodymyr has led the office for nearly two years, but he's been part of Mission Without Borders for almost twenty six, long enough to know the organization from the inside out. We talked about how the war, and everything unfolding in the east, has pushed MWB Ukraine to expand its reach there. New families have already been enrolled, and a new coordinator now leads that eastern region.
Then the conversation turned to the war itself, and to how it's touched each of our own families in its own way. I felt something I hadn't expected: a kind of ease, like I was home, like I'd known these people for years rather than hours. We prayed together, right there in the office, and it was unlike anything I'd experienced before. I walked out of that building full of energy, full of love, ready for whatever the day still had in store.
We didn't have far to drive to meet the next family.
A Widowed Mother Carrying Seven
Nina is raising seven children on her own: Liliya, sixteen; Mar'yana, fifteen; Iryna, twelve; Nika, eleven; Valentyna, eight; Yuriy, six; and Mykola, three. Her husband died in August 2024, only weeks after surgery for a stomach cyst had left him unable to work. It was a devastating loss for the whole family, one Nina is still learning, in every practical sense, how to carry alone.
The family lives in a very old two room house, so small it's hard to imagine all eight of them inside it. One room is a single small bedroom where everyone sleeps, beds pushed edge to edge because there's simply no room for anything else. The other room serves as kitchen, living room, and laundry all at once. There's no indoor bathroom. The toilet is outside, and both heating and cooking are done with wood. The family also works a small plot of land to help feed themselves.
In a Ukrainian village, this kind of life is emotionally heavy and physically relentless at the same time. Carrying water by hand, heating a house with wood, doing without an indoor bathroom: all of it adds hours of hard, unglamorous labor to a day that's already full of grief. For a woman raising seven children entirely on her own, without what Nina herself called a man's shelter over the household, that labor never really stops.
We sat together in that small kitchen, the same room that doubles as living room and laundry, and Nina told me her story there, plainly, without dramatizing any of it. I could see how tired she was. And yet, even in that tiredness, she still held on to hope, for herself and, above all, for her children.
Seven Children, Seven Gifts
Liliya, the eldest at sixteen, helps her mother constantly with the household chores. She sings in the church choir and dreams of becoming a pastry chef. Mar'yana, fifteen, has recently gotten involved in the church's youth ministry. Iryna, twelve, loves music and hopes to learn to play the bandura. Nika, eleven, misses her father more than she says out loud, I could tell, and still she works hard to comfort her mother anyway. She likes to draw, though when I asked to see her paintings, she was too shy to show us. Valentyna, eight, just started school this past September. Yuriy and Mykola, six and three, are still young enough that the loss touches them differently, in ways they don't yet have words for.
All the girls attend church together, and the different roles each has found there, Liliya's singing, Mar'yana's youth ministry, speak to a faith that's become genuinely their own, not simply something they were brought to.
What Mission Without Borders Brings
Mission Without Borders consistently supports this family with food, clothing, footwear, hygiene supplies, and school items, along with larger essentials like a refrigerator and a washing machine. The machine is a real gift, though it comes with its own workaround: behind it sits a barrel that has to be filled by hand with water, since that's the only way to do laundry in the conditions Nina and her children live in. It's not a perfect system, but it's progress, and one less thing Nina has to do entirely by hand.
But when Nina spoke about what Mission Without Borders' support has meant to her, she didn't stop at the physical items. Beyond the food, the clothing, the appliances, she said it's the emotional and spiritual support she's most thankful for: the sense that someone is walking this road alongside her, not just supplying it from a distance. Mission Without Borders' help, for Nina, has never been only material. It's been a reminder that she and her children are held, spiritually as well as practically, by people who chose to care.
She's already thinking ahead for her children. She wants them to be happy, to succeed, to have a future that looks different from the hardship of these last two years. And she was clear and warm in her gratitude toward the Canadian sponsors and Mission Without Borders Ukraine for everything they continue to do for her family.
What I Carried Away
I came into that small kitchen expecting to hear about hardship, and I did: a widow, seven children, a house with one bedroom and no indoor toilet, exhaustion that showed plainly on Nina's face. But I also left having seen seven distinct young people already building identities of their own in the middle of all of it: a future pastry chef, a young woman drawn to youth ministry, a girl who wants to make music, a shy artist, a boy just starting school, and two little ones not yet old enough to carry any of this consciously.
What struck me most was Nina herself: tired, honest about how hard this is, and still, somehow, hopeful. Not hope built on denial but hope she's had to fight to hold on to.
That morning in the Mission Without Borders office, before we ever arrived at Nina's door, I'd prayed with people who carry this work every single day. Sitting in Nina's kitchen that afternoon, I understood more clearly what that prayer was actually for.
Your support is never just a washing machine or a bag of groceries. It's a quiet reminder, carried in practical form, that a mother who's exhausted and still hoping hasn't been left to carry this alone, and that even in her hardest moments, grace has found its way to her door.
To every Canadian sponsor who makes this possible: Nina's gratitude wasn't a polite formality. It was real and specific, named again and again as we sat in her kitchen. Your giving is the reason a widow raising seven children on her own can still say she sees light ahead. Thank you for making that possible.
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