Day 4 - You Never Know Who You’ll Meet in Ukraine

We arrived in southern Ukraine at a food distribution center.  The population there has added around 100,000 refugees from other parts of Ukraine. In turn, this has created a vast lack of food and supplies in the city.

While walking the streets prior to the distribution, we bumped into some soldiers. Some were Ukrainian and one was from Maryland and the other from Florida. 

“I flew into Poland, got on a bus and took a 16 hour ride.  I found some soldiers and told them I was here to help,” the American medic shared.  “I started floating around Ukraine training others.”

On the other side of the soldiers, were a group from Canada who had come as a humanitarian group.  We chatted with them for awhile and then headed to the distribution.

After finishing up at the food distribution, two of our team members, Jon and Melanie were able to visit with local Bible Project translators who were translating the Bible Project into 5 different languages, Ukrainian, Russian, Greek, Romanian, and Croatian.

The thankfulness conveyed by those we encountered has been overwhelming, even when it’s simply our presence.

At dinner, our restaurant asked a couple of women if they could move tables to make room for our team. We let the waitress know we’d like to pay for their meal. At the end of their meal, they walked over, would not let us pay and simply said, “Thank you, thank you so much for coming over here to help.”

And as another shared, “I’m sorry. I’m getting a little emotional because I don’t know if this (city) is going to be there. Everything we know and love could be destroyed. The fact you would come all this way just to care.”

“Thank you so much for your prayers. Thank you for not forgetting us. Thanks for letting us know we’re not alone.”