Mission partner Update - The Mikhaluks, December 2025

Dear friends,

As we prepare to step into 2026, I want to share a deeply personal story — one that unexpectedly became the theme of this entire year. It is a story about my granddaughter Briana, a pink suitcase, and the kind of hope that survives even in the fourth year of full-scale war. A few days ago, Briana brought me to tears with one simple sentence. We were walking through a shopping mall when she suddenly noticed a suitcase — the suitcase from our many imaginary stories. Pink, with Minnie Mouse on the front and flowers on the back. She lit up instantly, asked to see it closer, and stood there like a tiny fashion model in her pink jacket, fully coordinated and ready to board her imagined flight.

She wanted to buy it right away. I told her gently, “Maybe I’ll get it for you for Christmas.” She paused, looked at me with a calmness far beyond her 3.8 years, and said softly: “It’s ok, Grandma. You can buy it for me when the war is over.” My heart just…broke. How do you hear a sentence like that from a child who has never lived a single day under peaceful skies? A child whose entire life has been shaped by sirens, blackouts, explosions, and whispered explanations about “bad noises” and “danger outside”? And yet she speaks about “after the war” with matter-of-fact innocence, as if planning around war were a normal part of childhood.

I fought hard not to cry right there beside that little pink suitcase.

Briana trains me in storytelling regularly. Every time we get into the car, she turns to me with her ritual request: “Grandma, tell me a story.” Sometimes she sends us to the forest or a playground — but most often she launches us on a grand adventure to Disney World. In her stories, the whole family flies across the ocean to visit Disney princesses in their castles. Uncle Danny meets us at the airport with pink balloons and flowers. And always — always — there is a moment when Briana and I go to buy her a suitcase. A pink one, with Aurora or Ariel or Minnie Mouse.

We have told this story so many times that if I miss even a small detail, Briana corrects me quietly. She is building her hopes inside these stories, brick by brick. So when she saw that real suitcase — the one from her imagination — she knew exactly what it was. And she placed it back into the realm of “after the war,” because even our children have learned to postpone joy, to defer dreams, to schedule life around something they had no choice in.

I hate this war for stealing our children’s innocence and spontaneity. But more than anything, I love her resilience. I love that she still dreams. I love that she still plans our adventures in full color. And I pray for the day when I can finally say: “Briana, the war is over. Let’s go buy that suitcase.”

What The Pink Suitcase Means For Our Ministry

This pink suitcase has become, for me, a symbol of everything we try to do through International Partnerships: guard hope, nurture hope, and carry hope into places where hope fights to survive. Amid constant missile attacks, blackouts, and exhausted communities, families like ours keep going. Children like Briana still dream. Parents and grandparents still fight for normality.

Churches continue to serve. Communities keep caring for one another in the dark and cold. And this year, our family received news that is both beautiful and frightening at once: our daughter is expecting her second baby. Another child who may be born into war. Another tiny suitcase of dreams we pray will be unpacked in peace. This news fills us with joy — and with renewed urgency for the work we do.

What IP has been doing — and why it matters:

• Because of your prayers and support, IP has continued to bring hope where despair tries to dominate:
• Humanitarian aid to families and front-line towns
• Support for churches serving communities through blackouts and bombings
• Care for young mothers and children, the elderly, and the vulnerable
• Church planting in wounded regions
• Leadership training and evangelism work that strengthens believers and brings Christ’s love into places of deep trauma

We have learned that in war, hope is not abstract. It is as concrete as:

• a warm room in winter
• a bag of food at the right moment
• a church that stays open when everything else is shut
• a child playing in a shelter
• a grandmother telling stories in the dark
• a pink suitcase waiting for peace

As we begin 2026, I want to invite you to walk with us again. Your partnership helps:

• sustain churches
• support exhausted families
• strengthen communities
• bring comfort to children like Briana
• and share Christ’s hope in places where hope is fragile

Your gift — large or small — helps carry someone’s “pink suitcase” of dreams through another winter, another blackout, another night of explosions. From our family to yours — thank you for praying, giving, remembering, and believing with us. Thank you for standing with Ukraine in a world that often grows tired of this war.

With love and deep gratitude,
Maia