St. Mark Lutheran School in Green Bay is hoping to use the ongoing war in Ukraine to teach its students lessons in humanity.
“We thought what would be an awesome thing to connect our students to the real world,” Principal Zachary Biebert told WeAreGreenBay.com. “We are doing an offering for those people in Ukraine who are really suffering from what’s going on over there.”
It’s all part of a growing mission that has seen the school officially adopt the country as one of its mission projects for the year.
“If we talk to the students, we want it to be real for them,” Biebert added. “We want them to know if they are donating money what it is going toward.”
Other elements of the plan include school officials joining other groups across the state to raise resources for the war-torn country. All the proceeds are slated to be used for humanitarian efforts, aiding those now stamped as refugees as well as those who remain behind to fight for the country.
“We have a sister church body in the Ukraine,” said Pastor Ben Workentine of St. Mark Ministries in De Pere. “They work with Ukrainian pastors, and really the whole system. We’ve been getting updates with what’s happening over from our churches to the people.”
Workentine said that this special relationship has opened the church to being able to have insights into the way things are going in Ukraine.
“The frantic, the fear of walking away from everything you’ve ever known, every place you’ve ever been, and you just leave it. You’re running for your life,” he said.
Biebert added the way locals have responded to the situation gives him hope for the future.
“This is just an overwhelming feeling knowing that we have families, we have kids, who care just not about themselves, but they care about fellow human beings,” he said. “They care about people they don’t know.”
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