” When we were running with the children in the field, they were shooting right at us.”
During the second wave of the war, the village of Vyshegrad near Makariv was occupied, like dozens of others in the Kyiv region. The family of Bohdan and Tatyana Orlyk with their four children found themselves trapped in their own house. Their new house was built right in the middle of a field, so the Russians placed their artillery almost right next to the house and fired from there every day and every night. Staying in such conditions with their children was extremely dangerous. “We didn’t know what to expect the next morning. You immediately remember God, because there’s no one else to hope for,” Tatyana still shudders, recalling those terrible days of occupation.
One day, a woman heard the roar of enemy tanks, which moved 2-3 houses away from theirs and were shooting. A man came running and told her to run away from home. Their small village was about to turn into a battlefield. They hurriedly dressed the children, picked up the younger ones in their arms and ran. Across the same field where they were as if in the palm of their hand. Defenseless targets in a shooting range, where a cruel and insidious enemy does not shy away from hitting civilians with children. “When we ran across the field with the children, they shot straight at us. When there was an explosion, we fell to the ground, I covered the child’s head with my hands, ” Tatyana’s voice begins to tremble. “ They are openly hunting you. You are simply running away from death. She is running next to you, and you are trying to run away from her and cannot. You just stop in the field, because running with a child in your arms is physically and emotionally difficult, you are suffocating . ”
In this race across the field, Bohdan led his family, telling them when to run, when to stop, and when to hide. From bushes to bushes, from one house to another. When everyone had already run past the last house in the field, they sat down in a group and began to pray. There was nowhere else to run. The feeling of hopelessness and fear for the children’s lives intensified their prayer. And God answered. “We see a car driving straight across the field, stopping ,” recalls Tetyana, “ and a man gets out, I see him for the first time. He says: women and children, get in the car, I quickly grab the children and mother, we get in and drive, and I understand that we are being taken by no one to no one. Bohdan stayed behind, and we were taken to a neighboring village. And when this man was returning to pick up people, his car was shot by Russian soldiers, and he died . ”
With pain and gratitude, Tetyana recalls the brave man who saved theirs at the cost of his own life. The woman and children escaped from the shelling, but another test awaited them. They had to cross a checkpoint with Russians to get to safe territory. A car full of people, with a white sheet and the inscription “children”, drove onto the infamous Zhytomyr highway, along which Tetyana and her children saw the remains of burned-out cars and human bodies. “It felt like the end of the world, the apocalypse had come. We drove up to a checkpoint of Russians who pointed their weapons at us. And you don’t understand when they will start shooting, who they will start shooting at ,” Tetyana says slowly, as if reliving the horror when one of the Russians looked into the car. “ It was a terrible feeling. “I think what I was most afraid of wasn’t even the tanks or the explosions, but the person standing there deciding whether you and your children should live or not. And it was very scary, and when we passed this checkpoint, everyone started crying because they expected us to be shot in the back.”
Only at the Ukrainian checkpoint was Tetyana able to breathe a little and feel safe: “It’s like two different realities, you know, like good and evil, here are people standing there smiling, greeting, giving your children candy and saying that everything will be fine .” The woman took the children to Germany and for a long time did not know what had happened to her husband, who remained effectively a prisoner of the Russians. They heard rumors that the Russians had killed their neighbor, wounded another, but they did not know whether Bohdan was alive. Tetyana was tormented by the unknown. And the woman prayed a lot with her children for the salvation of her husband and father. “Prayer helped a lot ,” Tetyana assures, “ because you understand that only a power higher than man can help you. And you turn to God . ”
God’s support was needed by Bohdan more than ever. The Russian invaders turned his house into a base for all civilian prisoners who were not lucky enough to escape from the occupied territory. The first thing the Russians did was kill Bohdan’s dogs, two shepherds who had grown up with the Orlyk family’s children since childhood and were members of their large family. Talking about this act of the Russian villains, Bohdan cannot hold back tears. Although the most terrible thing happened later. The man buried the dead neighbors right in the yard of their homes, tried to care for the wounded Ukrainian civilians whom the Russians brought from the highway, where they were shooting at peaceful cars. “They were shooting, and we were burying ,” recalls Bohdan, “ I saw people with signs of a control shot, bodies that had been lying there for three days, I persuaded the Russians to bury the dead. “Once they brought my grandfather, he ran all the way from Kryvyi Rih and got lost, he said that he was twice forced to dig a hole for himself, threatening to be shot. Once they brought several civilians at once, children were carried on their shoulders like sacks, one boy was already dead, about 19 years old, they brought a woman with gunshot wounds in her arms and legs . “
For the enemies, it didn’t matter who they killed – animals or people. Amidst fear and pain, Bohdan, like his wife, could only hope in God. And what happened is more like a miracle. “A guy comes and says: we are being released. All of us? All of us. And the wounded? They are already being taken out. They gave us the keys to the car and we left ,” says Bohdan about the day of liberation from occupation and captivity. This traumatic experience still does not let Bohdan go, a person who is absolutely peaceful, calm and friendly. Encountering outright evil changes him forever. However, today the whole family is together again in their home in Ukraine, raising a new dog, which our team from the TBN UA channel gave them. This story struck us both with the power of prayer and the strength of spirit of these people. And also with the way the Orlyk family holds on to each other. Love is what we felt in this family. Love that conquers all.
“ In our story, there are happy endings, there are scarier ones,” says Bohdan Orlyk, and his wife adds: “I believe that only faith saves from such situations, the ability to see something bright, something good in the darkest events appears, and when we were running away, I realized very clearly that now God is helping through people . ”
“The Power of Prayer. War” is an original program of the TBN UA channel, which is a media project of the NGO “We Can!”. Its goal is to convey the truth about the war unleashed by the Russians against Ukraine, as well as to record testimonies of God’s glory and the power of sincere prayer, which can save in the hell of war.