UKRAINE REFUGEE RELIEF
What is Happening?
With the Ukraine crisis, we were pretty sure that we were going to have to mobilize and swing into action, but we were all caught by surprise as well. We didn’t think Putin was going to make an all-out invasion of a nation state, to lie to everyone on the world stage.
Then suddenly here it is. Within hours after the invasion began, we were on the phone to our friends and coworkers here, strategizing, what can we do? The pastors of the churches in our broader network, probably fifty to a hundred churches, immediately began taking people out of the refugee masses and starting to take care of them.
What exactly are we doing?
Refugee ministry evolves super-fast. It can change in a heartbeat. You can have a program going and all of a sudden, you have a wrench thrown in the works and the refugees stop coming across that spot on the border. Suddenly the need is somewhere else.
The immediate challenges are people coming across the border. They’re shocked. They’re exhausted. They’re hungry. They’re thirsty. They have traveled for days and days to get to the border, and then actually stood night and day, waiting to cross. And these are women and children with just a few old folks. After walking and standing sometimes in the snow, sometimes in the rain, they just need a place to, to lie down and sleep. They need to drink some fluids, they’re dehydrated. Some of them, especially some of the children, are almost catatonic from the stress of saying goodbye to their fathers, fleeing, running, going night and day. At first they need the simplest of things, and then they need help moving on to the next step.
As people cross the border some people immediately go on. Other people are desperate for a place to sleep and recover before they go on. Still others need a safe place and longer term help. We only have room in each shelter for about 20 or 30. But we work together with a network of more than fifty churches that we send people to who need longer term housing.
What is Needed?
In general, because it is a fluid situation, we have to buy resources for the teams on this end. The shelters need food, basic supplies like diapers, toilet paper, baby wipes, over the counter medicines, which include of course, headache medicines, anti-diarrhea etc. They’re setting up field kitchens to feed large numbers. I was at one feeding site where they were cooking over a barrel with a top cutoff and they would just put a big dish pan on the top of a barrel with a fire under it. They need better cooking facilities. One of the pastors on the Tisza River, a stone’s throw from the Ukrainian border, told me, “We really need a freezer. We’re not able to give them very much meat because we simply have no place to store it.” So they need freezers, propane stoves, and fridges, and generators. (and everything is 220 volt)
We need generators because when you start running extra appliances, freezers, washing machines, refrigerators, you need more power. If you suddenly need to move to a different location you have to be able to feed people immediately. No time to wait for utilities to be turned on. We also need porta potties and dumpsters, as there’s no way you can put 20-30 people into a building that has one bathroom and a single trash can. Porta potties have to be maintained, and dumpsters have to be emptied.
What is the most effective way to give?
Sometimes people just want to do something tangible. People want to do a food drive, or a clothing drive. They have to do something with their own hands. And, I know that feeling. But almost without exception, the value of what’s put into the field that way is less than the cost of putting it there. As we can’t really ship a lot of stuff in from out of country, we just have to source it locally. Please just give and pray, and give and pray.
Funding all of these needs takes resources and we can purchase those in country if we just have the funds. So if people will really commit to prayer, prayer combined with giving is going to make an important difference here on the ground.
The scripture in James says that true religion is to care for the needs of the widow and the orphan. Giving means maybe I’ll have a need, I might have to trust the Lord to meet my needs if I give. Giving increases our reliance on the Lord.
How big is the need?
Well we hear that 200,000 people have probably crossed into Hungary already, in a little over one week! And of course, these are early days. The people who have had cars and had money to buy gas, got to Hungary first. There’s a big component of people who got across the border and they kept right on going and are now in other parts of Europe. The people that we are taking care of here are the people who don’t have anywhere to go.
One of the things that really helps us is the governments have all made it free to travel on the public transit. When you get to the Western border, you pick up a Ukrainian help ticket that combined with your Ukrainian passport allows you to travel anywhere in Western Europe. So once they’ve gotten through the border people with contacts can relocate into other parts of Europe. But getting through the border is no small thing. Depending on which border and what time of day, they can be stacked up for days.
Who’s coming across?
What are people like? What shape are they in? What we’re hearing in the news seems pretty accurate. The people coming across the border are, generally women and children. There are a few older folks with them, but I’m hearing from people that their grandmas and grandpas were too stubborn to leave.
The women and children are getting out for the sake of the children, because they love their families. And when they come across the border their condition depends on how far they’re coming from. The ones who’ve travelled a long way are in the worst states of exhaustion. The ones who are the closest, of course are less worn down. Large numbers of people are still up in Ukraine, just north of the Hungarian border.
Our sister churches in the border areas on the Ukrainian side need resources so we have started sending money to them. After they help people get rested and recovered a bit they send them on to us. We can’t get into Ukraine easily right now, but they can come and meet us. One of the problems of getting help to anybody inside Ukraine, if you go up there, you may have to wait for up to five days in the line to get back across the border.
What are circumstances like?
Some of the things that I have seen and some of the stories that I’ve heard, are shocking. I saw a video of Ukrainian families attempting to leave the country, just being executed in their vehicles. Medical workers checking each car for anyone still alive. In the background, very close you can hear rapid gun fire.
One quick story that you could multiply thousands of times. We were right on the border, and there was a young mother with two children who was with one of our coworkers. And every time this older woman gave the young woman a hug she burst into tears. She had two sons, the 10 year old was lying on the mattress where they slept. He wouldn’t even look at anybody. He had his hoodie pulled over his head, sort of catatonic. He hasn’t eaten or even drunk water for two days. He won’t even look up. But her other little boy, two and a half years old was totally unaware of what’s going on. The picture of this family was shattering. The one small boy turned in on himself, and the other, running around playing with all the other kids on the playground, the mother crying every time she talked to anybody and anytime one of our ladies would put their arms around her.
Lives are being changed.
In the midst of this urgent relief work, people are being helped, their lives are being changed. A lot of that goodness is happening in the lives of our Hungarian people who are reaching out. Volunteers who are loving on people, cooking, feeding, caring, and setting up tents. I see a new sense of thankfulness for what we have here in the lives of our people. I see a new sense of the value of family and friends and jobs and having just the simple things of life taken care of, having stability.
Toward the end of the day, a family came from one of our sister churches to take the lady with the two boys. (I mentioned above) The lady and her two sons and their small bags of things that they were able to carry with them were all loaded up. The Hungarian family took them to their home, where the woman and her sons will be hosted.
The family will personally walk them through the process of applying for asylum. They will get medical cards and food. They will receive counseling through the church there. Eventually housing as well. Their whole life is going to be rebuilt. That is all going to be walked through with them by this family that took them in. And that’s incredible. This family is going to grow and they’re going to see good things happen in their life because they reached out and they cared for these people.
We have excellent connections with what the cities are doing. In Zahony the mayor has put together housing in the school gymnasium, and he’s got 1600 beds. Szolnok has hundreds of beds in sports camps. In Bonyhad the mayor called us yesterday and gave us a place to house another 10 people.
Hungary has a FEMA-like disaster relief organization. They are helping with mattresses to convert empty space like gyms into emergency shelters. In addition we bought about 30 more mattresses to use where needed.
As the situation has evolved, we are increasingly taking longer term families into out church shelters. Helping those people is a good fit because we have church families full of people who are ready to lovingly walk the refugees through the application process to gain asylum. It’s as if they have family here in Hungary!!
Faithful with just a little.
Sometimes we get asked, how can you guys do so much, you don’t have a big organization? I always answer that question the same way. You know, when Jesus needed to feed the 5,000, he said to his disciples “Well, what have you got?” When we start giving what we have, new resources begin to appear. So we just have to launch out using what we have for Kingdom Work, and resources start coming out of the woodwork. And yes, we’re paying money for certain things. For instance we bought a lot of diapers and toilet paper, but one of the ladies went to the store and got talking with the manager at the grocery store, and she came away with 600 pounds of flour. It was all perfect. It wasn’t damaged. It wasn’t old. She just talked to the guy and the guy wanted to be part of what was going on. So there’s an ability of the national people to reach out and multiply the value of what we’ve got to do ministry with.
And they’re going to make lot of bread and a lot of donuts out of that 600 pounds of flour that she got given! We didn’t even have room in the vehicles, we’ll have to make another run to get it all up to the border.
So imagine if somebody sent a thousand dollars, and imagine what we would do with it. Of course, it’s going to vary from day to day depending what the needs are, but there’s always some things that we can’t procure, such as gasoline or diesel, porta potties and dumpsters.
When people back home think about giving, I hope they think about the sheer enormity of the need and the fact that we’ve got to be flexible, and we need to work as practically and quickly as we can.
Please consider helping with donations that can help fund the immense needs we are experiencing. DONATE HERE.
