DALLAS — The war between Russia and Ukraine has torn apart families and changed many lives.
But in an unforeseen and unexpected way, it also brought together two women and created a flourishing relationship they never saw coming.
This is the story of Valentina Fesenko and Carol Mathus -- the former Ukrainian reporter, and the latter, a swimming instructor in Dallas.
Their connection began a decade ago.
But it didn't really start until this summer.
Escaping home
Fesenko grew up in Kryvyi Rih, one of the more industrial Ukrainian cities. In 2006, she moved to Kyiv, where she eventually became a press reporter for Ukraine.
"I always wanted to do journalism," Fesenko said. "I deal with a lot of stories. A lot of people."
Even though she worked as a journalist, Fesenko said she was always skeptical of the chatter that a war would actually break out between Ukraine and Russia. Then, one night in February 2022, she got a call -- from one of her friends in the United States, actually -- that Russia's invasion of her home country had begun.
She wasn't sure what to do.
"I remember this night very clearly," Fesenko said. "I just opened my eyes, and I heard [explosions] outside of my apartment building. I heard it. This explosion is so far away from me -- but I heard it."
Along with hundreds of other people, Fesenko immediately fled her home. First, she went down to the subway for safety, spending about a week there along with many others. Eventually, she decided to seek shelter with friends in Warsaw, Poland.
"I didn't pack anything," she said. "I wasn't prepared. I didn't think about money or anything. I just live my life."
The train to Poland normally takes about two hours and holds around 200 people. That day, it took 28 hours and held 400.
"Women, kids, everybody crying," Fesenko said, recalling the journey that took her away from home.
Finding a new home
Nearly a decade before Russia's invasion, a different journey saw Mathus' family embracing Ukraine as a home of their own.
Mathus has lived in Dallas since 1990. She planted roots here. She raised a family here.
And, eventually, she tearfully watched her children move away to new destinations where they'd start their own families.
One of her daughters took this to the extreme, moving halfway around the world.
She and her husband, who met in high school, decided to serve together with The Navigators, a Christian ministry that spreads the Gospel worldwide. That work sent these them to Ukraine in 2005.
They never left.
"They dated, got married, and I thought, 'Oh, they're going to be so close to home! All my grandkids will be close by!'" Mathus said. "God had different plans."
A leap of faith
Fesenko didn't really have a plan.
She eventually made it to her friend's place in Poland. But, almost immediately, her mind turned to where she'd land next. Her friends, knowing she spoke English wanted her to travel with them to the United States, where they figured Fesenko's ability to speak English would be helpful to them all.
She decided to take a leap of faith.
Even with her entire family still in Ukraine, unable to leave the war-torn nation due to their jobs or war requirements, Fesenko decided to travel to America with her Polish friends in April 2022.
"My mom, she cares a lot about what I'm thinking about," Fesenko said. "The most sad and beautiful thing about war is that you don't expect anything. You just accept what it is. And you just trust God."
Upon arriving in the States, Fesenko and her friends ended up in Colorado. She wasn't sure how long she'd stay there, either. She figured the war would be over soon, and that she'd be back in Ukraine within six months -- max.
As the war stretched on, however, her stay in Colorado started to become an extended one. She hadn't quite prepared herself for that possibility. And it began to take its toll.
"I didn't really have anybody here," Fesenko said. "I have some friends, but in different states."
She was able to work, fortunately. Her employers in Ukraine let her keep reporting remotely.
But her life was largely in limbo.
She worried about her family. She worried about how long she could legally stay in America. Through the Unites States' Humanitarian Parole Program, she knew she was OK to remain for a year. But after that? Things started to get complicated.
The only certainty within her day-to-day reality was the uncertainty that surrounded it.
Then, finally, came a stroke of good luck: Fesenko, who had been regularly applied for a visa to stay in the States long-term, won the green card lottery, allowing her to stay in the U.S. for the next 10 years and plant roots rather than continue the transient lifestyle to which she'd become accustomed.
"It's time to just move on and live your life wherever you are," Fesenko said. "And now, it's the biggest dilemma for me: What's next?"
Providing a helping hand
Mathus has rarely questioned her lot in life.
For 46 years in all, and 35 of them in Dallas, she's maintained a swimming lesson business that's brought consistency not just to her own life but to those of her friends and clients.
"Everybody asked me how to teach their kids to swim," said Mathus, a lifelong swimmer. "Eventually, that led to this business where we teach almost 1,000 children every summer to swim in our backyard."
Her company Swim With Carol provides lessons for kids in the East Dallas, Lakewood, Lake Highlands, Mesquite, Forney, Rockwall and the Park Cities areas.
She has help, too. Mainly, Mathus hires college students who are home for the summer to assist with the lessons. Many of them end up staying at her house for the season, too.
"They're the ones that are working hard," Mathus said. "We just prayed that this home would be a welcoming place for people to feel accepted and loved and that they would feel the presence of the Lord. We wanted it to serve people."
This summer, one of her employees is her granddaughter Hannah Sanderford, who normally lives in Ukraine with Mathus' daughter and her family. Sanderford is about to go into her senior year at John Brown University but has been helping her grandma with her swimming lessons during her break from school, just as since she was seven years old.
Still, despite her ties to Dallas, Sanderford doesn't quite consider it home.
"I feel more like a foreigner here in the States than I do there," Sanderford said.
Mathus has made a conscious effort to embrace her offspring's love for Ukraine throughout the years. Before the war broke out, she made it a priority to regularly travel overseas and visit with her family.
"I would go over to Ukraine at least twice a year to visit and to see the grandkids, of course," Mathus said. "Ukraine is a beautiful country -- not only the land but the people. They don't warm up to you very quickly, but once they get to know you, you are theirs forever. And they would do anything for you."
A small request
Over the course of her regular visits to Ukraine, Mathus met and got to know many of the people her daughter and son-in-law worked with through their ministry.
One of those people she met about a decade ago -- a woman named Oxana Bratus -- once asked Mathus to pray for the health and safety of one of her friends, another young woman named Valya.
Even back in the States, with a prayer book in her study, Mathus started to include Valya in her daily prayers. She generally breaks who she prays for into groups. it's a wide range that includes everyone from her family to her friends to the people she meets in Ukraine.
"I always pray that the person's heart would be drawn to the Lord, that they would see Jesus in everyday life" Mathus said.
A special connection
One of the people she regularly includes in her prayers is a friend that she visits in Colorado every March for her birthday.
This past March, Mathus' daughter told her that Valya -- the woman Bratus had asked that she pray for -- would actually be in Colorado Springs at the exact time she was taking her birthday trip.
So Mathus reached out to arrange a coffee meet-up, so she could get to know the person she had been praying for all these years.
Turns out, that name "Valya?" was just a nickname. Her full name is Valentina Fesenko.
"She just is fun to be with -- and just joyful," Mathus said. "I already love her. I knew immediately that I wanted to invite her to come to my house."
So Mathus did just that, inviting Fesenko to spend the summer with her family in Dallas. Without anything keeping her in Colorado, Fesenko took her up on the offer.
Over the course of the last few months, Fesenko has spent her time helping where she can with Mathus' swimming lessons, cooking in the kitchen and getting to live within a family unit -- something she hadn't had since she left Ukraine.
She's embraced it all. And the more time Fesenko has spent in North Texas, the more it reminds her of a city from her past.
"The City of Dallas reminds me of Kiev a lot -- because you have a lot of parks, people walking everywhere," Fesenko said. "You have coffee shops that I miss very much. Dallas, Texas, is a really beautiful place. I felt like, 'I'm home, home, home.'"
What's next
As she gets more comfortable with this chapter in her life, Fesenko is starting to let herself really envision a future for herself. She could see herself working with other Ukrainian refugees and helping them become accustomed to life on the other side of the world, just as she had to herself only two years ago.
"It's hard for people to deal with different cultures, especially when they don't speak language," Fesenko said. "I want to be useful. I want to be a part of society."
Mathus believes Fesenko would be a perfect fit for this line of work. She's been encouraging her friend to pursue it, and to do so here in Dallas.
"It's a great place for opportunity," Mathus said. "We serve an amazing God that just orchestrates things. We have no idea what he's going to do with us and through us. We just need to be willing and open."
Fesenko is considering the idea.
For her, it all gets back to the same question she has continued to ask herself: What's next?
While she said she wants to continue to let God lead her on the winding path that has brought her to the Lone Star State, she's mostly trying to be present in the moment, to be grateful for those who have been brought into her life and for the opportunities that are still to come.
"War is horrible," Fesenko said. "But through this thing, you can see the true colors of people and life as well."