A hundred kilos of Scripture: one man’s passion to share the Bible in Ukraine

In the past year your support has meant God’s word could reach thousands of Ukrainians.

We’ve been able to make Scripture in the Ukrainian and Russian languages available free of charge to churches in this country serving refugees. More than 10,000 have now been distributed, and a single effort – which saw God open doors ‘left, right and centre’ – accounts for about three and a half percent of this impressive total.

Jay Diaz, through his partnership with a Romanian charity, was able to get a hundred kilograms’ worth of Scripture resources into Ukraine itself. Through Bible Society, he ordered just over 200 Bibles and New Testaments, plus 150 copies of the Scripture-based Beyond Disaster: A Survivor’s Guide to Spiritual First Aid.

Jay’s dream

‘I had a desire to do something,’ Jay said. ‘I asked for God’s guidance. We already knew Finding Hope Ministries in Romania and we looked for an opportunity with them.’

Jay was born in Venezuela and grew up in Britain with his mother, who came as a student. With his wife Sadie and their children, he’s part of Dunmow Baptist Church and naturally it was at church that he started to explore his desire to reach out to Ukrainians. Through a friend at the Baptist Church in Braintree (the other side of Dunmow from Stansted, where Jay works as a pilot) Jay found out he could get Ukrainian Scriptures from Bible Society.

His wife’s old church, St Mary’s in Cholsey, provided financial support, and within ten days Jay had 355 Scripture resources from Bible Society, weighing 100 kg. He packed them all, swaddled in clothes for protection, into four suitcases. It’s only by a miracle he didn’t face monstrous luggage costs.

‘It was going to be £50 for each additional item of baggage,’ Jay said. The online order form Jay was using crashed, and when he logged in to pick up the process he found the charge had inexplicably plummeted to £20 per item. ‘It was a miracle – an actual miracle!’

Finding Hope

With help from Jack, a close friend and representative of Finding Hope Ministries, Jay flew to Romania in January with his immense Scripture haul. Finding Hope serves Romania’s orphaned children and, since the war, they’ve been supplying churches in Ukraine as well as providing access to the country for people like Jay who want to help. Jay and his wife Sadie are full of praise for Finding Hope.

‘They’re a really outward-focused charity,’ Sadie said. ‘They witness to everyone and they’ve got such a heart for the marginalised. They encourage the children they care for to get involved in outreach to Romani communities around them.’

Finding Hope also receives visits from Ukraine and happened to have a girl from Kyiv staying when Jay arrived with his four suitcases. The girl was on her way home to be reunited with her father, a pastor, so she took the first batch of Bibles into Ukraine.

In February three of the Scripture suitcases formed part of a huge shipment, including generators, that went by road to the Odesa region in the south of Ukraine. Jay heard that Bibles had been shared between two churches, one Baptist and one Pentecostal. It was a little later, in April, when Jay heard that a pastor who leads a church in Sokil, had received the final suitcase.

‘God is in the midst of us,’ Jay said – his simple explanation for this amazing example of outreach. ‘When our will aligns with God’s will, doors open. I was blown away. God opened doors left, right and centre.’ 

Jay’s inspiration is a verse from Romans: ‘In the same way, though we are many, we are one body in union with Christ, and we are all joined to each other as different parts of one body’ (Romans 12.5, GNB). ‘I’m not a great missionary,’ he says. ‘God just calls us to serve according to our blessings and abilities. He brings us together from different backgrounds for his great purposes.’

Order Scriptures in the Ukrainian and Russian languages

Pray for peace in Ukraine and for lives to change as people engage with God’s word.

Watch this video of Anatoliy, who leads the team in Ukraine, to find out latest on Bible outreach there.