Lakeside missionary group coordinating relief efforts in Ukraine

As the war in Ukraine continues, Lakeside’s LaDawn Dyck can’t help but worry about her friends who are being forced to deal with the crisis on a daily basis.

As the International Strategic Missions Coordinator for Youth With A Mission (YWAM) Montana in Lakeside and a member of the YWAM's International Crisis Response Team, Dyck has been helping coordinate the group’s efforts in the embattled nation since before the Russian invasion began.

For Dyck, her efforts are so much more than just a job.

“My husband and I took our first YWAM team to Ukraine in 1998 and we have been back 20 or more times since then,” Dyck explained. “Ukrainians are a beautiful people and my heart just breaks for the unnecessary suffering they are being forced to endure and the horrific things that are happening to them. They are like family to me and they are risking their lives to do whatever God calls them to do.”

Founded in 1960, YWAM began as an effort to get young people involved in missionary work, but has evolved to include “YWAMers” of all ages working in more than 180 countries around the globe.

The YWAM Montana campus opened in Lakeside in 1985 and today focuses its efforts on Cambodia, Taiwan and Thailand as well as Ukraine, meaning the base has extensive ties with those in the war-torn country.

Dyck’s ties to the country go even deeper, though. With a Dutch-Mennonite ancestry, her family spent more than 150 years living in Ukraine before the first rumblings of the impending Bolshevik Revolution, which led Mennonites living in Ukraine and led them to emigrate to Canada in the 1870s.

Dyck said she spent her youth eating Ukrainian dishes and practicing Ukrainian customs, but did not realize that’s what they were until she spent her first time in the country, which she said immediately felt like home.

WHEN THE Russian invasion began in late February, all American YWAM members, including Dyck’s son and family, were able to make their way home from Ukraine as the YWAM leaders in the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv urged the YWAMers there with families to evacuate.

While most heeded the warning, Dyck says seven members (both singles and one married couple) decided to stay and do what they could to help those stuck in the city.

With two semi loads of food and supplies arriving at the Kyiv campus weekly, those who stayed have been working around the clock to organize ways to get them where they are needed most. Every day, brave volunteers take the supplies to those who need them, most huddling in the homes, bomb shelters or subway tunnels.

“They started with just helping those in Kyiv, but now they have moved into some of the outlying areas. Every time they take a trip, they are putting their lives in danger,” Dyck said. “These are young men, mostly 19 years old, who are driving into the hot spots with food and supplies and then loading up their vans with mostly women and children and doing what they can to get them out.”

According to Dyck, the group has been asking for only young, single men to make the dangerous trips to various hotspots in Eastern Ukraine to bring out evacuees. With their oldest driver 21 years old, the group had been making continuous round trips, but drivers are now being asked to take one day off a week to avoid burnout.

In addition to their efforts in Kyiv, the YWAM location in Ternopil (west of Kyiv) has also become one of the major refugee processing centers in the region. Since the invasion, the small facility has seen more than 45,000 refugees come through as people continue to flee, and now return to the area.

“It is wild and crazy what is happening on the ground over there, but the way they are dealing with it is very encouraging. They know the risks, but they are still doing what they can,” Dyck said. “There are amazing people on the ground doing amazing work. We don’t have to look to the history books to find heroes. We have modern day heroes that are out there doing it right now.”

WHILE THE efforts on the ground in Ukraine continue, Dyck and her colleagues at YWAM’s Lakeside campus help organize relief efforts, funds and supplies while also using reports from assessors working in Ukraine and in nations bordering Ukraine to help determine the best course of action moving forward.

“Nobody here had ever worked with a nation during wartime before,” Dyck said about the Lakeside campus. “There was no playbook for this, so we are having to learn as we go.”

YWAM Montana Lakeside continues to process donations for Ukraine, as they have done for years, but are now having to process them weekly instead of every two weeks as they had in the past.

In addition, the group is also coordinating donations of all kinds, making sure they get where they need to go.

“We are trying to get the people out and the supplies in. That is our main goal right now. That’s the big picture. We are getting them everything from food to medical supplies and so much more,” Dyck said. “YWAM all over the world has responded to this crisis in amazing ways. We all do our little bit, but by working together we can make a real difference.”

While Dyck says she has a strong desire to return to Ukraine and help the nation she has become so fond of, she knows she will have to wait until the timing is right.

“When you have disasters like this happen, we connect with our leaders on the ground and ask what we can do to help. Sometimes that is helping from a distance. You can become a burden in a crisis if you show up and don’t know how to help,” she said. “We have not been sending a large number of people over there yet because we want to make sure we go well. We want to be prepared to deal with everything that is happening over there so we can be a help and not a hindrance. I want to go over and help so badly, I just can’t yet. My heart is there and I want to be there, but right now this is the better place for me to be of help.”

Reporter Jeremy Weber may be reached at 406-758-4446 or jweber@dailyinterlake.com.