"We Pray - We Work - We Pray Again - And the Lord Gives Us Strength."

​By Steve Richards
With assistance from ChatGPT

On January 7, I wrote to a friend of mine in Kyiv, a Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest, simply to check in. I knew he was facing brain surgery, and I wanted to be sure I was praying on the right day.

I’ve been thinking about you and wondering when your surgical procedure is going to happen. Want to be sure I add into the chorus of prayers on that day and after… and before.

A few days later, he replied calmly, almost matter-of-factly. He would see his doctor the following week; a decision would be made then. He promised to keep me informed.

Archpriest Roman Nebozhuk at the Ukrainian Creek Catholic Cathedral in Kyiv.

On January 15, the update arrived.

The doctors had made their decision. His surgery was scheduled for January 27. His Church would cover most of the expenses. So far, so good.

Then came the reality behind the reassurance.

The situation in Kyiv, he wrote, was becoming increasingly dangerous. Electricity, water, and heat were being disrupted more severely than at almost any point since the beginning of the war. Even hospitals were losing power. Lights were being turned off in places where surgeries are performed.

I replied with encouragement—and perhaps a touch of gallows humor—hoping that someone might have flashlights on hand if the power failed.

Later that night, another message arrived.

​It was already past midnight in Kyiv. He wasn’t sleeping—not because of anxiety about surgery, but because of an air alert. A missile attack was possible.

And then, almost in passing, he wrote words that stopped me cold:

“We pray – we work – we pray again – and the Lord gives us strength.”

No dramatics. No complaint. Just a sentence that captured daily life under constant threat—faith woven into endurance.

I asked if I might quote it.

His reply came not with words, but with an image: a thermometer reading –20°C. The temperature outside—and not much warmer inside Kyiv homes.

A thermometer reading of 20°C last Friday, January 16, 2026 in Kyiv.

Of course, he wrote.

This is what resilience looks like.

Not speeches. Not slogans. Just prayer, work, prayer again—under air-raid sirens, amid blackouts, in freezing apartments, with brain surgery scheduled in a city at war.

It is a reminder that faith, at its most authentic, is not loud. It is steady. It shows up. And somehow, impossibly, it keeps going.
Moments like this are why I continue to return to Ukraine with a camera and a notebook—why Beyond Bucha exists at all. Not to capture destruction alone, but to bear witness to lives lived faithfully in its shadow, where prayer and perseverance are not abstractions, but daily necessities.

Please keep Fr. Roman—and Kyiv—in your prayers on January 27, and in the days before and after.

Ice forming inside Fr. Roman’s home — January 16, 2026