Ministries in Eastern Europe

A letter from Burkhard Paetzold serving in Germany

April 2015

Dear friends,

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Let us celebrate Easter. Let us celebrate Christ’s victory, the victory of life over death and our hope that injustice, violence and the destruction of God’s creation will not have the final say.

As a regional liaison for Central and Eastern Europe I hear questions like the following from time to time: “Why would we, PC(USA) World Mission, need to be present in this part of the world?  Europe is very advanced in many aspects; they don’t need our help.”  I believe our missiology is different—it is mutual. So I see myself as a bridge-builder. To facilitate sharing our mutual insights as Christians in different parts of the world helps to support the least of these to combat racism, injustice and violence and to share the good news that “Christ has risen for all of us.”

Burkhard with friends from Eritrea after worship in his church in Petershagen

The situation is diverse, so let me try to illustrate, where and why I see our mission worker’s and my own accompaniment and solidarity with our partners in Europe.

I cannot do this without your support, so first and foremost let me thank you very much for all your support for my ministry as a regional liaison for Central and Eastern Europe and the Roma people. Your continuing encouragement and financial support means a lot to me.

Europe has seen more and more refugees and asylum seekers in recent months because of the violence in many regions in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Most of them are crossing the Mediterranean in overcrowded boats—many of them losing their life on this risky trip even before they arrive. Since for most of them there is not yet a legal way to come they depend on people smugglers and pay a fortune to end up in wrecked coffin ships. As I’m writing this I read a small note in my newspaper (next to a large article describing a resignation of a famous soccer coach), that another ship disaster left 400 (!) refugees dead in the Mediterranean.

Like in other regions in my area east of Berlin the number of refugees and asylum seekers has doubled within a year and will triple in the year to come. The communities reopen former school buildings or abandoned barracks or even a hotel for them. My own church is seeking to rent out our old manse to Syrian families, but we face German zoning laws that are extremely inflexible. However, we are blessed by some asylum seeker families from Eritrea who have to live in a nearby shielded asylum seeker home but can come every Sunday to worship with us in our church. Some have shared about their situation and their church at home. Some are silent because they had to leave family members behind or had to separate from them on their long journey. Our church members have learned a lot from them about now having to live in a makeshift home with this trauma and an uncertain future.  But we can celebrate our Christian community and sing and eat together.

Therapists in the day care center for children with disabilities in Mezövary/Carpath Ukraine

As many of you know from my earlier letters, PC(USA) mission co-workers in Berlin help with Farsi-speaking asylum seekers from Iran or Afghanistan. They have a variety of needs: some have an uncertain social status—they left all their possessions and relationships at home, paid a great deal of their assets to people smugglers, and have to face the fact that suddenly their education degrees are not accepted anymore. Many have spiritual, psychological or family problems, trauma, separation, different cultural expectations. All of them have to deal with the German bureaucracy jungle of new laws and legal expectations. So they all need spiritual, social and legal counsel.

In this ministry we are facing a generational change right now. Aziz and Sadegh have served as a social worker and a pastor in the Iranian Presbyterian Church in Berlin for a long time and will retire at the end of 2015. They will appreciate your prayers, and as well for Ryan and Alethia, who are discerning how to best continue this important ministry.

For many Europeans also the war in Eastern Ukraine is a big concern. Even after the “Minsk 2 Agreement” militia on either side can be easily manipulated, and so the risk of ongoing violence is far from being banned. The growing enemy images on both sides have brought us “back in time” 25 years after the Cold War has ended.  Ukraine (literally borderland) with its common roots with Russia (the Kiev Rus is homeland for both nations) as well as cultural ties with Western Europe (the Habsburgs included Western Ukraine in its multicultural empire) would have been a perfect model to bridge the two different cultural spheres in a federal state. The EU and the U.S. for their own geo-strategic benefits missed the chance for this to be promoted; they underestimated the interest of some Ukrainian and Russian leaders to make it a frozen “show down” that serves their own narrow interest of interior dominance and creating strategic bastions against each other.  For this to be justified some dig deep for any narrative that shows national, cultural or religious differences and aggressive historic events to manipulate their nations. History has deep roots and conflicts tend to perpetuate where we don’t talk to each other about historic hardships, don’t ask for forgiveness, and don’t work for healing. The Soviet system has a long shadow. Openness was not its program. People in the area suffered tremendously in WW2, and for them 45 years later to lose the Cold War economically should make us extremely sensitive.

Roma Boys from Peterfalva/Carpath Ukraine

I truly believe that wherever tension or dominance and inferiority builds up in a step-by-step escalation process, Christians must work against this mechanism in a step-by-step de-escalation and healing process. And we need to begin with us—Germans, Americans, others in the West. In our ecumenical community we can be assured that also many Christians in Russia and Ukraine work for this. To learn more how to support them and cooperate, my colleagues Ellen Smith, Amgad Beblawi and I are planning a trip this summer to both Russia and Ukraine to visit Christian peace initiatives and will report to you.

Nadia Ayoub is our Presbyterian World Mission mission co-worker serving in Carpath-Ukraine, which is far from the war zone. She is relatively safe but in a destabilized country with economy and local currency in free fall, where the social situation is getting worse and young people fear to be drafted and sent to war.

In Ukraine government-supported social services for elderly, for orphans, for single mothers, for handicapped or other socially weak groups are rare and constantly underfunded. So churches step in with social programs.

Until recently there have been no day care centers for children and teenagers with disabilities in Carpath-Ukraine. Those children who did not live in institutions stayed at home with their parents. These children are very lonely and isolated. There was no program fostering their capacities.

Our partner church the Reformed Church in Carpath-Ukraine (KRE) came up with the idea to established three day care centers in different Ukrainian sub-regions offering different therapies for this group of children and youth. One of the day care centers is located in Mezövary, where three therapists foster 12 children and 6 teenagers with disabilities. The children and teenagers visit the center between one and five days a week. To improve the quality of the work and the access to state subsidies the day care center is part of the “Don’t Forget Me” foundation, which is covering all the KRE-supported day care centers for children and teenagers with disabilities. PC(USA) World Mission is collaborating with Swiss Church Aid (HEKS) to support the renovation of a fourth therapy section and the operation of the Mezövary rehabilitation center for the initial phase of one and a half years.

PC(USA) mission workers’ meeting in an Iranian restaurant in Berlin

Wherever social injustice is growing, Roma families are among those who suffer the most. Nadia has been working with Roma children and families in the Peterfalva area of Carpath-Ukraine for four years now and there are many reasons to celebrate her faithful service as a single woman in a harsh environment. Please read in her latest newsletter how she was able to attract many local Christian helpers to join her ministry.

In a different region our PC(USA) mission worker Jay Adams has worked hard to keep the momentum of collaboration between “missionary kids” of Black Forest Academy (BFA) and the Roma. Already for the third year BFA and the local German Freie Evangelische Schule together with Habitat for Humanity teamed up to build houses for needy Roma families in Romania!

In the coming months we are preparing a retreat for Presbyterian World Mission mission workers from Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East. This meeting between August 29 and September 5 near Lake Balaton/Hungary will help us to share experiences and celebrate the work of PC(USA) World Mission in ecumenical partnership.

PC(USA) folks in Berlin had a chance for a little pre-meeting when Presbyterian mission co-workers Eric and Becky Hinderliter from Klaipeda/Lithuania came to spend a few vacation days, as well as Karen Moritz from Prague.

We all are aware that we are able to fulfill our different ministries because of your prayers and support. Thank you again—and please continue.

Grace and peace to you and your loved ones.
Burkhard

The 2015 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 328