Paula O’Keefe’s formative years was perhaps a foreshadow of what it was to turn into as an adult: demonstrations of God’s love and power amidst great difficulties and trauma. While pregnant, a callous doctor told her mum that Paula wasn’t more likely to survive, but a cleansing lady really helpful a Catholic priest, who reassured her after his prayer: “Don’t worry dear, no-one who I’ve prayed with has ever lost their baby.”
Her mum had turn into a believer however the small family was beset by challenges, and Paula was subjected to abuse and mistreatment by others that took years to heal. Nonetheless her childhood faith grew and strengthened her during her difficulties, including frequent moves, living in each the UK and the US at times.
Paula’s faith was strong enough that when at university, she wanted to check medicine, or psychology and a language, to arrange her for missionary work in Africa or Brazil. However she kept hearing about Russia and its need for Bibles, it being the early Nineties. Finally in a church meeting, she heard a speaker say someone present was called to go to Russia. “No, not me, Lord,” Paula thought, “I don’t desire to go to Russia. It is cold there and full of communists.”
You can guess how the story ends. Paula studied Russian and fell in love with the country and its people on her student 12 months there. Once graduated, she felt a call to go to a component of the region that was a fair tougher mission field than the motherland: Chechnya.
Her first views of the region weren’t promising: “A bullet-riddled house got here into my view, followed by a burnt out constructing, then one other. We were passing through some kind of deserted ghost town, devoid of individuals and livestock.”
The damage was from an earlier war: but what we commonly call the Chechen war, which took place between 1999 and 2009, was yet to come back. Paula would see its shocking consequences first hand. Even greater than the bombs and the fear of attack that could be expected when battles rage around, there was widespread banditry – hostage taking for ransom, rape, battering – a lot in order that Paula said it was week if only just a few in her church had suffered such violations. Her book recounts:
“Many got here to the meetings depressed. In week, perhaps just one person from the church had been robbed at gunpoint, beaten, or raped; or lost their home, possessions, or a loved one: or seen these items occur to family, neighbours, or friends. In a nasty week, many of the church could have had something similar occur to them in the course of the week.
“If you didn’t intentionally lift the conversation to something more positive, people would continuously be talking about awful situations. Sometimes there gave the impression to be absolutely no excellent news by any means: life just gave the impression to be one nightmare after one other. And the doom and gloom could turn into worse with each recent topic of conversation.
“Hurt and traumatised people clashing with other hurt and traumatised people caused numerous distress and friction even inside the church.”
Which all sounds incredibly bleak, but Paula’s book is filled with positive and faith-fuelled anecdotes of how her belief in Jesus brought joy and healing because it spread to those round her – together with multiple cases of being protected against the encircling difficulties, and the supply of life’s essentials. As Chechens found faith in Jesus, they found a refuge from the horrors they experienced. Paula describes one example of the difference that faith made to the suffering people:
“Galya became a believer just a little while later and softened considerably. She shared her faith along with her neighbours. Two of them, a blind elderly lady and a mentally-ill teenage lad, soon ended up with nowhere to go after their houses had been bombed and their relatives had died. Galya took them in and lovingly sorted them each, and we began a house group in her house. Our Father God transformed Galya with His love – and he or she, in turn, passed on His like to others.
“What an unfathomable privilege that God would select us, within the midst of our own brokenness, to be His body, hands and feet here on earth. Oh the enjoyment of being vessels for His like to flow through as He woos His precious lambs gently to Himself and heals them from the within out. One touch of His love – even sometimes through our far-from-perfect hands – transforms all the things. None of us would ever be the identical again. Hallelujah! What a wonderful Saviour we serve.”
Paula’s positivity and faith shine through her book, but she also tells how the years serving Chechnya amidst the horrors of its war took its toll on her, and he or she began to experience symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. She hung out on the Pentecostal healing charity Ellel Ministries to recuperate, and has stayed in each the UK and Spain for periods of time, though still involved in healing and other ministries. She also returned to the region and served the Chechen people in refugee camps.
Today she faces a recent challenge. In the center of 2023 she felt a call to maneuver to Israel and he or she began exploring easy methods to get there. She didn’t know then that the nightmarish events of October seventh would soon unfold. Yet her experience of ministering to the traumatised and suffering people in Chechnya should help her in her recent challenge, to serve a people reeling from the Hamas attack, and facing missiles and attacks from their neighbours on a day by day basis.
Her book concludes: “Even though it is not all the time easy, being a follower of Jesus is essentially the most exciting and fruitful life you could possibly ever imagine and you will see a number of miracles along the best way. It’s the life you were created for!”
Quotes taken from Miracles within the midst of war: a faith adventure, by Paula O’Keefe, published by Sovereign World, 2021. Paula’s Stewardship page is here.
Heather Tomlinson is a contract Christian author. Find more of her work at https://heathertomlinson.substack.com/Â or via X (twitter) @heathertomli
