Mission Eurasia Brings Humanitarian Aid and Evangelism to Refugees from Artsakh War

According to its 2019-20 report, it helped establish two churches in Armenia through its training of leaders in its School Without Walls program, which had 74 students and 26 graduates in three locations in Armenia in this period. Mission Eurasia also had 42 Bible day camps in Armenia which involved 560 children. It worked not only with Armenians, but also preaches the Gospel and provides humanitarian aid to Yazidis in the Republic of Armenia

Parsons revealed that among other things, Mission Eurasia partnered with an Armenian evangelical church in Abovyan, a city around half an hour outside of Yerevan, called Abovyan City Evangelical Church. Mission Eurasia had done training with some people from Vanadzor who were part of the same Armenian Evangelical association and President Rakhuba knew the local pastor, Vazgen Zohrabyan, from that.

When the bombings and attacks by Azerbaijan against Artsakh began on September 27, the church immediately announced on social media that it was open to help any refugee looking for a place to live and food. Zohrabyan did not expect what happened next, Parsons related. He got over 100 phone calls within the first 24 hours, which represented around 2,000 people, since the callers all had families.

This little church of only 200 or 300 people in Abovyan decided that it was not going to turn anyone away, though the pastor had no clue as to how he was going to take care of so many refugees. Parsons recalled during his first visit to Armenia that the pastor related the story of their attempting to prepare for so many people to be cared for and fed. It was the third week of October. Out of the blue, Rakhuba called the pastor and said his organization would like to come and help. The Abovyan pastor began to cry out of happiness.

In the end, the church did help 2,000 people in Abovyan and the surrounding communities. People stayed within the church building plus they found hotels and other places to host the refugees.

Humanitarian Aid

Other organizations also helped the Abovyan church. Samaritan’s Purse, a partner with Mission Eurasia, airlifted 50 tons of winter clothing, blankets and other winter supplies to Armenia in early November, some of which came to the church. Another shipment of blankets should be arriving soon to Armenia. Parsons explained that Mission Eurasia believes the crisis will extend for a long time, so though late in the season, the additional blankets will help not only for this year but the next.

Mission Eurasia raised funds through partners and purchased food in Armenia, Parsons said, which was boxed by volunteers in various cities. Many of the volunteers were themselves refugees from Artsakh while others were church members. Over 10,000 boxes of food assistance was prepared (over 160,000 tons of food). Each box will sustain a family of four for up to a month and also contain scriptural writings. Parsons said that some of the most needy areas where refugees are living were targeted for this assistance.

A new shipment arrived from Canada in early March in a 40-foot container with dried vegetables and soup packets. Parsons said that the last week he was in Armenia he and his team visited a shelter for some 50 refugees, which was a converted five-star hotel. The Armenian government subsidized the refugees’ housing but they were only given rice and noodles to eat. The new shipment of vegetables and other nutritious foods will be sent to them just in time.

Another type of aid Mission Eurasia is facilitating is bread through the establishment of five bakeries in different areas that will be established in conjunction with Armenian evangelical churches. Flat lavash bread will be provided to refugees either for cost or even for free, Parsons said. The bakeries are given the name “bread of life,” based on Jesus’ identification of himself with this term in the scriptures. While funds have been raised to establish five bakeries, it is taking time to set them up, Parsons said, but the first one should be running soon.

Some medical aid is being provided also. During Parsons’ trips, he and his team visited some hospitals, which, especially in the villages, have great needs. A hospital in Germany that is renovating its facilities donated all its beds, bedding and equipment like wheelchairs. Mission Eurasia is trying to raise money for the shipping in order to bring these items to Armenia.

Samaritan’s Purse, working with the Armenian Ministry of Health, used the Abovyan church building to provide Artsakh refugees with initial health examinations, consultations and first aid from a team of doctors who had come from the US for this purpose on November 22.

During all this work, Mission Eurasia helped the local evangelical churches establish a nongovernmental organization in Armenia to facilitate the aid it was bringing, Parsons said.

There was no formal coordination with the Armenian government on aid, but Parsons said that all aid was provided through official channels so that the government knew what was going on. Whoever receives a food box has to sign a receipt for it. If a local church receives aid boxes to distribute, the boxes come with the seal of state authorization, and the church has to sign for them. The church also keeps tabs to see that refugee families only get as much as they need and not more.

Furthermore, on a local level, the local pastors have good informal relations with the mayors of their respective cities, especially in Vanadzor and Abovyan. In Abovyan, Parsons said, Mayor Vahagn Gevorgyan asked the church for help for refugees on various occasions, and later formally thanked him and his church for this.

Spiritual Work and Evangelism

Parsons made it clear that for Mission Eurasia, humanitarian aid against crises was combined wherever possible with spiritual, declaring: “We are trying to provide the physical aid and in every context that we work, we are trying to shine the light of Christ and share the hope of Christ in a hopeless situation.”

He did not want to speak ill of the Armenian Church and declared: “We always try to have good relationship with everyone we possibly can. … I know some of our partners on the ground have a very positive relationship with the Apostolic Church [of Armenia]. If God wants to work through the Apostolic Church I am very thankful for that. If God wants to work through the different brothers and sisters we are partnering with, praise the Lord for that too.”

On the other hand, Mission Eurasia’s website is more critical, stating: “Although Armenia is the world’s first officially Christian nation, the Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Church has become more of a cultural, rather than spiritual, institution. Most Armenians consider ‘Armenian’ and ‘Christian’ to be synonymous, but many of them have never even heard the gospel. In order to share the hope of Christ with the unreached, we are preparing our School Without Walls (SWW) students in Armenia for ministry in their own communities, transforming their schools, workplaces, and families with the gospel!”

It goes on to ask: “Please pray that God would grow the evangelical church in Armenia so that even more Armenians would realize that their nationality doesn’t make them real Christians, but rather, they must put their faith in Christ.”

Parsons said that as short-term visitors, he and his team were trying to make connections for the local Armenian national evangelical churches so that they in turn could follow up with more physical aid and spiritual assistance.

During his visits with Artsakh refugees, Parson said, he sometimes could speak Russian, as many people from Artsakh know that language, but his group generally also had an Armenian translator with them, who often was a local Armenian evangelical pastor. The group would bring food to a home and had religious literature available.

For the Armenian speakers, Parsons said, “If they wanted to talk with us – we didn’t force anything upon them – we would share from the word of God. Either the pastor would speak directly in Armenian, or he would say, would you share the word, to me, or to someone else on our team, and we would share and he would translate.”

Mission Eurasia is also printing Bibles now both for young children and for teenagers in Armenia.

Parsons did some training work at the SWW center in Vanadzor, that had been set up before the war, and in Abovyan. He said that Mission Eurasia was planning to set up new centers, including one in Yerevan in a few months. On his third trip to Armenia, he brought with him Alexandr Belev, the coordinator of the SWW program to help in this work.

Parsons said, “We are trying to increase the abilities and the skills that our team as well as our partners – and in this case it would be the [evangelical] church in Armenia, has to be able to deal with people who are struggling with post-traumatic stress and other kinds of traumatic issues. Primarily it will be a spiritual approach to those kinds of things. The training will include aspects of biblical counseling which is not just spiritual assistance and encouragement but a deeper approach to traumatic issues.”

He concluded: “Our purpose is always to provide physical assistance, provide hope and encourage people to look up to Christ in the midst of a crisis, in the midst of difficulties, in the midst of struggle. We have seen time and again, even in the short term, how that is effective.”

For more information, see https://missioneurasia.org/.