One of our partners in Albania work with widows, seeking to bless these dear women with food packages as well as spiritual and medical care. Many of the widows are quite elderly, have serious health concerns and live by themselves in poor conditions.
I want to tell you about Tanya Biloshapka, our volunteer who lives in Borodyanka, 40 kilometers from Kyiv. For three and half years now, Tanya has been serving the elderly widows in need.
Ludmyla was born in 1949, in the city of Kozyatyn in the Vinnitsa region of Ukraine. She was educated for working at the railway station, which she did for her entire life until her retirement. She adopted and raised one daughter. For thirteen years she has been a widow and took care of her father, a WWII veteran who is in a wheelchair.
Esther was abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army in 1994. Three years before, Joseph Kony had launched his brutal campaign supposedly to defend Acholi tribal rights in Northern Uganda, leaving a wake of thousands murdered or mutilated.
With Lebanon’s economy and government in an uproar, many refugees are confronted with the possibility of having to flee again. Others are finding that, although ISIS no longer directly threatens them, quieter dangers are stalking their families.
The Bosnian War is still not forgotten.
When you stroll through the city of Tuzla, you can still see buildings riddled with bullet holes. Political corruption, economic issues and unemployment have dogged Bosnia since the bloody conflict that erupted between Bosnian Serbs and Muslims.
