Paula O'Keefe's early life was perhaps a foreshadow of what it was to become 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 likely to survive, but a cleaning lady recommended 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 become a believer but 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 both the UK and the US at times.
Paula's faith was strong enough that when at university, she wanted to study medicine, or psychology and a language, to prepare her for missionary work in Africa or Brazil. However she kept hearing about Russia and its need for Bibles, it being the early 1990s. 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 want to go to Russia. It is cold there and filled with communists."
You can guess how the story ends. Paula studied Russian and fell in love with the country and its people on her student year there. Once graduated, she felt a call to go to a part of the region that was an even tougher mission field than the motherland: Chechnya.
Her first views of the region weren't promising: "A bullet-riddled house came into my view, followed by a burnt out building, then another. We were passing through some sort of deserted ghost town, devoid of people 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. Paula would see its shocking consequences first hand. Even more than the bombs and the fear of attack that might be expected when battles rage around, there was widespread banditry - hostage taking for ransom, rape, battering - so much so that Paula said it was a good week if only a few in her church had suffered such violations. Her book recounts:
"Many came to the meetings depressed. In a good week, perhaps only 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 things happen to family, neighbours, or friends. In a bad week, most of the church could have had something similar happen to them during the week.
"If you didn't intentionally lift the conversation to something more positive, people would constantly be talking about awful situations. Sometimes there seemed to be absolutely no good news whatsoever: life just seemed to be one nightmare after another. And the doom and gloom could become worse with each new topic of conversation.
"Hurt and traumatised people clashing with other hurt and traumatised people caused a lot of distress and friction even within the church."
Which all sounds incredibly bleak, but Paula's book is full of positive and faith-fuelled anecdotes of how her belief in Jesus brought joy and healing as it spread to those around her – along with multiple cases of being protected from the surrounding difficulties, and the provision 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 a little while later and softened considerably. She shared her faith 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 looked after them both, and we started a home group in her house. Our Father God transformed Galya with His love - and she, in turn, passed on His love to others.
"What an unfathomable privilege that God would choose us, in the midst of our own brokenness, to be His body, hands and feet here on earth. Oh the joy of being vessels for His love to flow through as He woos His precious lambs gently to Himself and heals them from the inside out. One touch of His love - even sometimes through our far-from-perfect hands - transforms everything. None of us would ever be the same again. Hallelujah! What a glorious 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 she started to experience symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. She spent time at the Pentecostal healing charity Ellel Ministries to recuperate, and has stayed in both 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 new challenge. In the middle of 2023 she felt a call to move to Israel and she started exploring how to get there. She didn't know then that the nightmarish events of October 7th would soon unfold. Yet her experience of ministering to the traumatised and suffering people in Chechnya should help her in her new challenge, to serve a people reeling from the Hamas attack, and facing missiles and attacks from their neighbours on a daily basis.
Her book concludes: "Even though it's not always easy, being a follower of Jesus is the most exciting and fruitful life you could ever imagine and you'll see lots of miracles along the way. It's the life you were created for!"
Quotes taken from Miracles in 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 freelance Christian writer. Find more of her work at https://heathertomlinson.substack.com/ or via X (twitter) @heathertomli
