Nashville, TN (October 31, 2022)
Keith & Kristyn Getty have just released a powerful new music video featuring a young Ukrainian woman and a young Russian woman singing together on the stage of the famed Grand Ole Opry. The women—Milena Kabodko (Ukrainian) and Elizabeth Klimchuk (Russian)—are singing the hymn, “He Will Hold Me Fast” along with Joni Eareckson Tada in a poignant reminder of the unity that is shared in Christ.

The young Ukrainian and Russian women attend Word of Grace Church, a Russian-speaking church outside of Vancouver, Washington where over 1,000 people from Russian/Ukrainian backgrounds come together each week to worship together. A longtime friend of the Gettys attends the church and suggested they perform together with the Gettys at their annual Sing! Worship Music Conference held in Nashville in September.

Elizabeth Klimchuk was born in Vancouver, Washington, shortly after her parents immigrated from Rostov-on-Don, Russia, in the late 1990’s. In 2005, her family joined the mostly-Slavic, Russian-speaking congregation of Word of Grace Bible Church in Battle Ground, Washington.

Milena Kabodko was born in the small town of Mozhaysk, Russia. Her parents moved the family to Crimea, Ukraine, when she was an infant and where she grew up. The family immigrated to the United States in 2016 and, then in 2018, moved to Battle Ground, Washington, to join Word of Grace.

Keith Getty said, “While the conflict rages and lives are upended, the church still sings. The fiercest war cannot divide God’s redeemed people—whichever side of the border on which they live—because Christ died to make them one. No matter our nationality or ethnicity, our cry of faith is the same: “Bought by him at such a cost, he will hold me fast.”

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