Large areas of liberated Ukraine do not have running water. Many people have had to get buckets of water from rivers and streams. For drinking water they had to buy bottles or line up to get water from a water truck (pictures below) This is a huge impact on life.

We are partnering with pastors and towns, installing water filtration installations that give entire areas a consistent, on demand source of pure clean water. Our first water purification installation is in a church. So in a very real way, people are being offered ‘living water’ as well as normal water !!

This equipment produces better water than their communities had before. The installations are not cheap, but people come from miles around !!

Blown up dams, surface water polluted from destroyed industry and petroleum depots, agricultural chemical spills … war has devestated the water supply for millions.

Pastor Sergiy and his crew are just finishing the second installation. This one has gone into the city hall of Bila Krynytsia, also in Kherson. Like many parts of Ukraine, Kherson Oblast continues to be under constant shelling and rocket attacks.

Thanks so much to everyone for your prayers and financial support !! Pray for the peace and safety of the people there. Our friend Daniel (w/ his young wife and baby) had a missile land in his yard this week. Thank the Lord, when it hit their house it did not explode … it was a miracle !!

We and everybody here appreciate you all so much !! Everybody has been so very generous and I know that the Lord is looking down with great joy on all of you !!

Love and Blessings,

Allen & Katy Lake, Directors

Our Harvest Eastern Edge website has lots more photos, news and stories

Every night for a week, scores of cruise missiles have swarmed the city of Odessa.

Apartment buildings and the main Cathedral were hit … people are dead and injured.

In spite of it all, three of our vans full of relief supplies rolled out of Odessa again within hours after the last missiles hit.

They were headed for liberated areas in Kherson Oblast carrying food, hygiene, animal feed, clothes and medicines.

Back in Odessa the streets are very rapidly being cleaned up.  All over town a “Babuska Army” of grandmothers and everyday people are carrying away rubble and sweeping up broken glass.

The store where I bought my groceries a few months ago was blown up the other day.

Russia drastically mis-read the Ukrainian people when they invaded.  Every attack and every war crime has made them more resolute and more unified.

Sergiy needs a new windshield.  Debris from a missile strike destroyed the windshield.

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Thank God everyone is ok and the rest of the car is not damaged !!

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Please pray for us, we need Divine help and guidance !!

Allen & Katy Lake

Directors, Harvest Eastern Edge

WELCOME

This winter has very a very long and cold time in Ukraine.

But people there have survived by wearing ‘layers’ for centuries.

Now we are getting semi-truck loads of food that our teams of volunteers are distributing.

Because we get the food for free we are giving food bags out for about $240 per ton !!

We can only provide basic essentials, but taking a family

from nothing to something is huge !!

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We have a system:

Find food for free from big agencies …

Store it for free in warehouses the Military provides …

Organize volunteers from churches and local organizations …

Take it to the places where nobody else is going.

There is a huge amount of work to do !!

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“We came back yesterday from Kherson. (Oblast)

We found new villages with people who really need help.

They don’t have electricity and drinking water. The road is really awful.

That’s why other volunteers don’t want to visit them.” — Аnnа —

Above: Millions fled Ukraine ahead of the Russian advance. Four million. But millions are still living somewhere in the country. Under the occupation, they hid away in basements and sheds. As the months slipped by, little by little the ones who couldn’t leave crept out to eke out an existence.

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Below: These kids (below) sleeping in the loft of a barn in a refugee camp. They are from Mykolaiv. As the Russians approached Mykolaiv and the shelling became intense, the fathers and grand fathers all volunteered to go to the front. They sent the women and children off in vans.

Each time a new area is freed, the strongest flee.  That leaving behind the old, the very young, the sick, the destitute and the disabled. 

Now, we are sending teams of volunteers in to search for them, and to take them food, medicines and supplies.

In this town (Above) the handful who have remained have organized a sort of “city council”. They keep a notebook of everybody who is still there. When we arrived, we didn’t do a normal distribution but rather we brought them a truck load of food. They will distribute it.

Fields are filled with ammo crates where the Russian gunners had their howitzers set up. Unfortunately, Ukraine is home to more land mines than any other country in the world now. In just one week, two people in this town alone had stepped on mines.

Thanks so much for your help in reaching them.

We absolutely can’t do this without you!!

Please keep praying !!

Blessings to you all,

Allen & Katy

Directors – HarvestEasternEdge

http://HarvestEasternEdge.com/

Picture Page … The realities of life in 2023

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Volunteers are moving tons of food and medicines into newly freed areas.

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As the Russian army retreats, Families are getting help. Teams of volunteers are going out into more and more areas to reach people.

We’ve been fortunate to be able to get semi-truck loads to distribute.  But it costs $200 to $300 per ton to get food bags to families. Can you help ?

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In the last week 10 tons of medicine came in from the UN.

Immediately, our co-workers were sending van loads into Kherson.

Only a few weeks ago the people there were still hunkered down under Russian occupation.

Volunteers go from village to village, giving out a big bag of food for each family !!

Lots of people are hungry, and lots kids are lonely and scared.

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Thank you all for your prayers and gifts !!! 

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Lord Bless and keep you all !!

Allen& Katy, Directors, Harvest Eastern Edge

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A fall Report



In a huge country with millions of hungry people displaced by war, churches are racing against time to save the lives of shocked and desperate moms, children, and grandparents. The able bodied men are at the front.

Thank you so much for your prayers, your care and your giving !! You are really making a difference !!

Ukraine is huge. The largest country in Europe.  Driving between projects and food distribution sites we often spend 9 to 13 hours driving each way.

Here’s a photo journal of some sites we have been serving.

Truck loads of food and fuel …

As Ukraine liberates more and more areas, hundreds of thousands of people need help.

In the west of Ukraine, we have been helping refugees who have accumulated in Lviv, Beregszaz, Chernivtsi, and Mukachevо.  We work together with churches and missionary friends there.  They have the personnel to handle distribution, we can provide truckloads of food.   

From there we send supplies north to feeding sites toward Kyiv & Kharkiv.   We can buy truckloads of food on the wholesale market in Munkacsavo and send it north with co-workers. 

Even before Russia’s specific attack on public utilities, so many refugees were living in Mukachevо that the city struggled to keep the water running … and that was when electricity was on.

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In Odessa, we are strengthening a pastor from Kharkiv who has a lot of people working up and down the front.

His church in Kharkiv experienced a strong revival and has become a mother church in the area.  Unfortunately, it was north of the city, even closer to the Russian border and pretty much everything has been flattened up there by 8 months of artillery barrages. 

The joy of Cooking … (or being able too !!)

Another big area we are trying to address is getting some basic cooking equipment for the most vulnerable. As supplies are distributed north from Odessa, up the ‘line of contact’, to newly liberated areas, the situation is unbelievably bad. The houses, basic as they were, have been looted if not destroyed. Russian soldiers looted everything of value. Kitchens, heating, the porcelain plumbing fixtures … everything. We are funding the distribution of small propane cookers of various sizes.

Different size stoves for different family units. It’s such a difference to be able to make a little hot food and tea for your kids !! So much of what is available is dry goods like pasta, rice, lentils, and flour.

After we left Odessa, missiles started coming in…

These were the Iranian-made drones, pre-programmed but with no active guidance system.  They just hit randomly within a general, zipcode-sized area.

They are not useful for much outside of terrorism, but they carry 100 pounds of high explosives.

Sadly, they destroy buildings, and vehicles and they kill people.

The war continues and there is no relief for the people living there.

Sandbags and Bomb shelters

This is where shocked and traumatized families get to share their stories with counselors who are giving them food and clothing.

Refugee moms come just to get a little food and some clothes for their children, and they find that it’s a place of peace in the storm.

They realize that this is a place where they can stop for a while and re-group. The sandbags protect from shrapnel in case a missile strike evades the air defense and the sirens don’t go off.

There is a bomb shelter set up in the basement under the food distribution site.

If a raid happens, everybody can run downstairs. There is water, beds and a generator for power.

There in the bomb shelter was a teenage young man wrapped up in a blanket, totally unresponsive as we walked through. 

He has not moved or spoken for 3 or 4 days the pastor told me. I’ve seen the same thing in other shelters. Mental and emotional trauma is so great that even after people get out of the war zone, sometimes they cannot even speak or interact with people. A PTSD reaction to the horrors of war that they have been through.

20  Ducks to the rescue !!

The other day I arrived at a church in Beregszaz that feeds as many as 300 people every day.  The ladies were cooking away in the kitchen, tables were being set up in the sanctuary for the noon influx of people.  The pastor was running late (I was not surprised) and then he called …

“Allen, Sorry, my wife and I were butchering 20 ducks somebody gave us !! I’ll be there as soon as I can !!”

Everybody is doing what they can.  All over the country people are pulling together working to do something.

So, this is what we are doing. 

Housing and heating will be very problematic over the winter, but the government will have to handle that sort of issue.  It will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. 

Revival in Ukraine is ongoing

Everyone is praying and many people are turning to Jesus. We channel all our resources through the pastors, and they are working night and day, feeding people, praying with people and counseling them.

The churches have stepped up and taken the lead in helping. Even when the believers themselves have fled from their own homes, they are feeding the hungry, and helping the needy. This labor of love on the part of the believers has not gone unnoticed. It’s going to lead many people to faith in the Lord !!

Special thanks to so many of you who have been partnering with us!!

We are blessed to be able to be here ‘At such a time as this’. To get to reach out and help thousands of Ukrainian people.

Please keep praying … we really appreciate you guys !!

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Blessings to you all !!

Allen and Katy Lake

Directors, Harvest Eastern Edge

A photo Diary from Ukraine

Always hungry, afraid and with their towns

flattened by Russian artillery …

Sadly, Ukraine’s children are the largest

demographic in the war.

All they have is their family, what they carried !

Questions are etched on their little faces that kids should never have to ask …

– Will I see my dad again?

  

– Will anything be left of my neighborhood if I get back home?

  

– Where are we going to live when we have to go on from here?

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Children and the elderly cannot get very far away from the danger.

Thanks so much for your prayers and your help for the Ukrainian people!

For lots more photos and stories go to:

https://harvesteasternedge.com/…

Please pray about how you can help.  Food bags for a lady and her children cost $5 each.  Hundreds of cities have no gas and only sometimes electricity.  $100 provides a family a small propane stove with a refillable tank. 

We are fortunate to be right here in the middle of everything so we can help. 

Thanks in advance for partnering with us to help people make it through !!

Blessings to you all !!



Allen & Katy Lake, Directors

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Last week we installed a playground in a camp in South Central Ukraine.

Here are a bunch of photos of the actual playground itself.

Blessings to everyone who’s generosity helped make this a reality !!

Special thanks to Levi, Rufus, and a bunch of volunteers who helped us make it all happen in an amazingly short amount of time !!