My name is Dima. When I was a student, the Lord brought me to Him through our mission organization in Ukraine (Cru). It completely changed my personality and lifestyle. Since then I have seen a great need for Christ in my friends and disciples. 

   The Lord God brought me a beautiful wife, Inessa, and I have been serving full-time in CRU for more than 7 years. We have been married with Inessa for 3 years now and we are expecting a little baby. God has called me and my wife to be leaders of Athletes in Action ministry in Ukraine. We started five years ago and God has given us a very strong ministry growth over the years. The sports movement "Athletes in Action" has grown from a small team into a spiritual movement throughout Ukraine. We reached the peak of development right before the war. Our ministry was in 5 cities of Ukraine in 7 churches and 35 people were involved in it. There were missionaries, volunteers and trainers. But the greatest blessing of God was the number of children involved in this ministry. When we started, it was a small group of seven children. These kids and I played football three times a week, and we had Bible time after each practice. We also had parties with these children once a week and built relationships with their parents. And in 5 years the number of children increased from 7 children to 400. These were the children whom we led from year to year to repentance, spiritual growth, baptism in the church, and then leaders for Christ. We had a vision from God to continue the growth of the Kingdom of God through sports. In fact, we had strong leaders and a great ministry development program. The only thing we lacked then was the financial resources to expand our ministry to 1,000 children. scale. This was before the war, 130 days ago the war started and all our children left and the ministry stopped. But we decided to continue this project no matter what. By the way, 1000 children in our project are not only children who play football and study the Bible. These are 1000 children whom we saved from real death and shared the gospel with them. These are the children whom we saved in the eastern regions of Ukraine and evacuated to the west from the shelling of the Russian invaders. You can see what happens to children whose parents or volunteers like us did not have time to evacuate by entering the hashtag #buchamassacre. We have assembled a strong team of 10 missionaries and volunteers and shared the responsibility. Our team found partners who gave us a minibus or provided us with money to buy seven minibuses. We were able to buy these cars thanks to personal savings and the finances of the 1000 Happy Children Project. Therefore, we decided to continue this project without changing the name. And now we are doing tours from Western Ukraine to Eastern Ukraine, we call them a humanitarian convoy. A team of drivers transports humanitarian aid there and evacuates people back. To date, we have already helped more than 800 children become a little happier, and some even avoid physical death. (364 children were taken out and more than 500 children were provided with food). Our vision of this project is this: Show in practice how beautiful our Lord and His Church are by good deeds in dark times. The darker the darkness, the brighter the light. The Bible verse that inspires us in this project in the midst of darkness is: “Let your light shine before men, so that when they see your good works, they may glorify your Father in Heaven” Mt 5.16 (website 1000happykids.com)

Thank you for your interest in our ministry and God's abundant blessings to you!

You can reach me at  dmytro.melnyk@gmail.com.  I will gladly inform you about my  personal life and ministry.