BELLE — In a Ukrainian community auditorium, Chris Cook saw a congregation worshiping in a room that, according to the history that was shared with him, had once been used to punish an ancestor of the current clergy for practicing his faith. The church’s pastor and worship leader were cousins. Their grandfather, Cook was told, had stood trial there during the Soviet period and received a three-year prison sentence for reading the Bible to his children.

Now his grandsons were helping lead worship in that same space. For Cook, a Belle native and pastor of Parkade Baptist Church in Columbia, the connection between those generations gave the gathering a meaning that extended beyond finding somewhere to hold a service.

“The irony was not lost on me,” Cook said. He recalled Christ’s promise in Matthew 16:18 to build his church, then described the congregation before him as an expression of that promise: “And this is living proof. I’m seeing this happen.”

The story became one of the most powerful experiences he brought home from a recent visit to Ukraine. Alongside accounts of air alerts and damaged buildings, Cook described congregations adapting, seminaries rebuilding and Christians continuing their work despite the war. Through his faith, he understood that persistence as evidence of God’s presence.

A congregation finds another place to worship

Cook said the congregation had moved because the ceiling of its church building collapsed. He was told a large youth gathering had taken place there the previous evening; when the ceiling fell, the people present were downstairs. He described the building as old and said people there suspected shaking from explosions might have contributed to the collapse, although that explanation was uncertain.

The congregation needed another meeting place, and the community auditorium was available. Some older members initially opposed the move because they remembered its association with Soviet persecution. In Cook’s account, the room carried painful history for the church, including the trial of the pastor and worship leader’s grandfather.

Cook did not witness that persecution. He heard the family history during his visit and saw the congregation worshiping in the place associated with it. To him, the contrast between the building’s former use and its present congregation illustrated the endurance of a faith that authorities had once tried to suppress.

He described the experience in terms of a spiritual battle. The church had survived that earlier persecution, and its members were still gathering while another war disrupted their lives. “They just keep on keeping on,” he said.

Connections that reached into his home

Cook’s involvement in Ukraine began well before the 2022 invasion. Through the Future Leadership Foundation, he and Parkade developed connections with Ukraine Baptist Theological Seminary in Lviv and became involved in supporting ministry there. The foundation’s published biography dates their partnership to 2014. Cook separately recalled church planter support beginning in 2015.

He described a model in which churches helped support a student pursuing theological education while establishing a new congregation. Cook said $5,000 a year could help support that combination of study and ministry, allowing a Missouri congregation to participate in work led by someone in Ukraine.

Churches near his hometown also became involved. Cook said the Gasconade Valley Baptist Association, serving churches across Gasconade, Maries and Osage counties, had supported the work. He recalled taking participants from the association to Ukraine and helping them develop their own connections.

For his family, the relationship went beyond visits or financial support. Cook became acquainted with a seminary president whose oldest son came to live with the Cooks while finishing school in Columbia. “I had three American boys and one Ukrainian boy living with me,” he said of his household in 2015.

Sharing a home brought differences into ordinary family life. Cook said the experience showed him how people could hold similar beliefs and convictions while approaching daily living differently. “We come from two different cultures, and we can be a lot alike,” he said.

He said the young man later attended Baylor University, earned a computer science degree and remained in the United States. Cook had not heard from him recently, but described occasional visits over the years. The connection was one example of how an overseas ministry partnership became a relationship between families.

When the mission changed

Before pandemic disruptions, Cook said his ministry travels regularly took him to Ukraine. He also developed relationships in Poland, sometimes stopping to visit contacts while traveling to or from Ukraine. Those years of familiarity shaped his response when the invasion began.

In March 2022, he traveled to Poland, where Baptist churches were responding to Ukrainians crossing the border. The Advocate’s original report described how a planned ministry visit became work with churches and other facilities sheltering people fleeing the invasion.

Sanctuaries held mattresses, and church camps were being adapted for families who needed somewhere to stay. In the new interview, Cook recalled Ukrainians helping make those changes themselves, contributing electrical work and improvements to heating and cooling so facilities designed for summer could accommodate longer stays.

He also described carrying two satellite phones and two solar panels to Warsaw at the request of a group supporting the Ukrainian seminary. Cook said he could get the equipment to Poland, while people with local connections would work out how to move it onward. His part in the effort depended on relationships already in place.

The emotional strain followed him home. After earlier trips, Cook usually returned tired but ready to tell stories. This time, his wife picked him up at the Columbia Regional Airport and noticed his silence. He remembered trying to explain the weight of being surrounded by uncertainty.

“I can’t describe it, but it wears you out mentally,” he said. During that trip, his son Andrew sent a message asking whether the invasion could be the beginning of World War 3. Cook remembered being unable to offer a confident answer.

Returning to a ministry still growing

His recent visit took him across the Polish border into Ukraine, first to Lviv and then toward the Kyiv area. Traveling with a Missouri worship leader who was discussing worship leadership training with Ukrainian ministry leaders, Cook described his role as representing the foundation and helping maintain its relationships.

The journey began with a bus ride from Krakow toward the border, followed by a crossing on foot. A Ukrainian Baptist representative met the visitors, and they continued to Lviv, where Cook visited the seminary and delivered financial support on behalf of FLF.

At the school, he toured facilities and saw classes underway. “I remember when there was two classrooms in an old building back in 2015,” he said. On this visit, he saw newer facilities and continued construction.

Cook recalled about 125 students during the earlier period and said enrollment had grown to more than 1,200. Those numbers remain his account of the school’s growth, but the development he described was central to what he took from the visit: education and ministry were continuing despite the war.

To Cook, that growth had a theological meaning. He saw people investing in what would come next, even while they faced immediate uncertainty. He said Ukrainians he spoke with wanted to rebuild with the future in mind.

A library, a fire and a graduation photograph

During the recent trip, Cook also visited a seminary in the Kyiv area where leaders showed him photographs of destruction from 2022. He said they described a missile attack that gutted much of the building and left it burning and smoldering for days.

According to the account the seminary president gave him, students evacuated into a field as the attack unfolded. They prayed that the library would survive. Cook said the president explained how valuable its books were, particularly theological materials in the Ukrainian language.

The president told him the library had been spared, with only one book showing moisture damage, Cook said. Even after firefighters worked on the building, the principal problem in the library was the smell of smoke. Cook recounted the story as it was told to him; he did not witness the attack.

What he saw firsthand was the work afterward. He described walking through rooms that had been rebuilt and modernized, with new ceilings and lighting. The school had restored its facilities a room at a time.

Another image stayed with him: a photograph of the 2022 graduating class in gowns outside the burned building. For Cook, the students’ graduation and the rebuilding belonged to the same story of continuing a mission under circumstances that could have brought it to a halt.

Threats behind an ordinary day

The possibility of attack remained part of the visit. Cook recalled waking around 2 a.m. during an alert and preparing to make his way toward a hotel shelter. He kept an alert application on his phone and remained aware that his plans could change.

“Never once did I have to go,” he said of taking shelter. “But it was in the back of my mind.” His account reflected the difference between visiting a country at war and living there through repeated alerts.

Shelter capacity also affected the pastors’ conference he attended. According to Cook, organizers changed locations and reduced attendance because the gathering needed adequate shelter space. During that portion of the trip, his group stayed outside Kyiv and traveled about two hours each way.

A host later took the visitors to see damaged areas of the city. Cook described a high-rise apartment building with sections exposed by a strike. He recalled visible doors on upper floors and a refrigerator standing where surrounding parts of the building were gone. He said people were still living in the building.

He also saw commercial buildings that had burned and a restaurant operating amid damage. Nearby, he was told, market vendors had returned the day after an attack to sell vegetables, flowers and other goods. He saw the damaged area, while the account of the vendors’ return came from people there.

Together, the scenes showed how war existed alongside the demands of everyday life. People still needed homes, work, food and places to gather. “They’re tired people,” Cook said, “but they’re very resilient.”

What he brought home

Cook’s return from the recent trip felt different from the one in 2022. The uncertainty had not disappeared, but this time he described renewed energy from being with people who continued their ministry.

“I was very rejuvenated, I guess I could say, being around a group of people that continue their work and try to carry out the mission despite the war,” he said. The experience reinforced his belief that service in another culture can change the person who goes as well as support the people receiving help.

Cook grew up in Belle and described his early world as being small. He also described himself as an introvert, despite a calling that requires public leadership. Travel, he said, helped him grow personally, professionally and spiritually, and gave him greater confidence in his faith.

“I wish everybody could go on a mission trip, just be out of the country at least one week, and serve in another culture,” he said. He believes those experiences help people recognize God’s work beyond familiar surroundings and appreciate lives different from their own.

His ministry connections now also include the Philippines, but the lesson he described reaches across those places. He connected it to his belief in God’s love for the world and to the challenge of allowing his own concern for other people to grow.

For Cook, that is part of what the journeys have changed. He cannot love the world with the fullness he attributes to God, he said, but serving beyond his own community has increased his ability to care.

“My capacity to love has grown,” he said.