Food to Ukraine
You are my hiding place; you will save me from trouble.
I sing aloud of your salvation, because you protect me.
Psalm 32:7 (GNT)
I was surprised when asked to help deliver 2 tons of food to Ukraine, just hours before leaving on the journey. At that point Lindy and I were a couple of hours from the city, so we needed to get back to Bratislava by bus just in time for me to get picked up. We were a team of 5 plus one Ukrainian woman who was going back to Ukraine to check on the status of her and nearby houses just north of Kyiv. She was going with us as far as Lviv in the west of Ukraine, and had no idea how she would get to Kyiv that night or how she would return to Bratislava where she had left her daughter.
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| Wheresoever Team Mozambique Praying for Ukraine |
We crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border on a 50 seater bus so full of food that there was hardly enough room for us 6 to sit. It takes a few hours to cross the border, made a bit more interesting when 3 UN vehicles (which we thought were going to investigate war crimes) were allowed to jump the queue – obviously higher priority than the rest of us. In the end, we delivered most of the food to 3 churches in Lviv – one of them would send most of the received food to Kyiv where it is not easy for civilians to find food for their families, and the other 2 churches are trying to feed the refugees displaced from the eastern Ukraine. Lviv has a normal population of around 100,000 but right now is dealing with an additional 200,000 refugees from areas further east. It was encouraging to see so many Ukrainians in each location joining our team to unload the food. I was surprised that so few of them could speak English, but it was fairly easy to communicate using hand signals, Nobody on the team spoke Ukrainian, but 2 team members could speak Russian which was extremely useful since most Ukrainians can communicate in the language. But I find that language barriers are not a big problem when praying for people, which I was doing all the time whether they knew it or not. Prayer for the pastors is always very important, but sometimes I never saw the pastors.
Lviv was impressive. Every so often on the road you could see all the sand bags piled up and large metal objects to stop the progress of tanks. Other than that, I was surprised to see normal traffic on roads and people going about their normal business. One pastor was explaining that it’s safe to meet because it’s in the city, and it’s on the outskirts that the risk increases. I was very glad that there were no missile strikes in the city while we were there. One time we saw smoke in the distance. We wondered, but didn’t really think it was related to an attack. We were sorry to hear that not that many days after we left that the Russians blew up a number of power substations.
On the way back, much closer to the Ukraine-Slovakia border, we stopped at a university that had converted one floor of their building and were close to completing the conversion of another floor, to house 50 Ukrainian refugees. We unloaded the remainder of the food there. It was much easier for me to communicate there, several spoke English. We prayed for many, one stood out to me. He was very concerned because his best friend was trapped in the basement of the steel plant in Mariupol. He knew his friend was still alive but did not know for how long. It might look difficult but our Mighty God is a God of miracles, and we prayed strongly into that. The next day I read in the news that in a Russian state TV interview, Putin had announced that although they had planned to send troops in hand to hand combat to terminate the remaining Ukrainian fighters, he had now decided to back off and keep bombing until they surrendered. Although still a very difficult situation, I took it as the beginning of the miracle we prayed for – and I still pray for his safety, together with the rest of the fighters.
The intention of taking a large bus was to then return to Slovakia after unlading all the food with as many Ukrainians as would want to come back with us. It turns out that the flow of refugees fleeing the country is slowing down to a trickle compared to earlier in the war. Many refugees are wanting to return home, with the Ukrainian government warning that is not safe yet. There were only 3 persons returning with us to Slovakia, a father and 2 sons 9 and 11. The father thought he had the right papers to leave the country, knowing that men in a certain age group are not allowed to leave unless they have 3 or more children or are disabled. They made it through a couple of checkpoints, but were turned back at the border – so in the end we did not bring anyone back.
Crossing the border into Slovakia on the way back took about 7 hours. So this was the first real sleep we had in the bus during the whole time in Ukraine. For the 3 of us returning to Bratislava, the whole journey took right around 39 hours. It became clear to me that one of the most important ways to help the Ukrainian families at this time is to keep the flow of food going into Ukraine. Of course, donation of clothing, money, etc. is always greatly appreciated. But food, along with the hands and wheels willing to bring it into the country, are the greatest need that I see, of course together with all the prayer required to make it happen. Two of our team members make this journey nearly every week. I was asked if I could help again the following week, but it broke my heart to have to decline because of my return to England. If this war continues for some time, I pray that the significant donation flow required to fund these activities is maintained for as long as it needs to be.
From the beginning, Lindy had felt that I would probably go into Ukraine, I did not know that. She fasted and prayed all through our journey for my safe return to Slovakia! Thank you to all those of you who joined her to intensify that prayer.