"We can finally sleep horizontally"

Watch this 1-minute video from a thankful refugee family!


Victoria from Kyiv

“We have three children. We left Kyiv yesterday (March 5) as the situation in the city was becoming more dangerous. The children were in constant tension from the sounds of shots and explosions. Most shops are closed. There are few products left in the shops, there are huge queues everywhere. Pharmacies do not all work and it is also difficult to get there. We decided that the children and I would leave. The husband stayed in Kyiv.

We arrived at the train station and there were a lot of people, children, elderly people. People get on any train. We managed to take two seats on the train Kyiv to Lviv (where one of our partner churches have two refugee centers). People also rode standing or sitting on the floor. When a child is small, it is doubly difficult.

Arriving in Lviv, we spent two more hours on the street near the station, as there was nowhere to go to warm up, and the curfew had not yet ended. We were very cold and a little confused. Thank God we were received by brothers and sisters from our network of churches. They gave us beds in a warm room, fed us, offered everything we needed. We are very, very grateful that you are not indifferent and have the opportunity to give us shelter. Huge thanks to everyone who is taking part in helping us!”

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We fled our small, cozy, and beloved city of Izyum

“We are residents of the city of Izyum (a city situated on the Donets River in Kharkiv Oblast of eastern Ukraine). We lived, studied, worked in this city. But war has come to our country.

At first, it was just scary from everything that we saw on television and on social media. But the day came, or rather the night, when they began to bomb our small, cozy and beloved city. Until that day, we did not go to shelters, basements, but every day we prayed and hoped that they would not shoot in our city. But that night has come. We were in our apartment, I put the children to bed and prayed, but anxiety and a sense of fear began to appear, and for good reason. I prepared a place in the corridor, put chairs, took off the mirror, etc. And at 12:00 a plane flew over our house; I immediately woke up the children and we ran into the corridor. It was very scary, we prayed to God for help and protection. There was a very strong explosion, then the second and after it the room was filled with lime dust. The children were crying, we were in panic and horror, and the explosions continued.

My little son was trembling with fear and his teeth chattered just terribly. We sat shivering all night in the cold hallway. When it started to get light, things calmed down a bit. We went into the room, it turned out that the balcony door had been torn out by the wave from the explosion, the kitchen and bathroom had been damaged. We spent the next two nights and two days in the basement because we were bombed day and night. In our city there is no gas, water, electricity. Now almost our entire small town has been destroyed, houses, schools, a hospital, a bus station.

In multi-story buildings there were many victims of adults and children, wounded bloodied people lay on the street and screamed in pain. My mother did not want to leave the city, and every day I am afraid for her life. There is no way to buy food in the city, there is nothing in the city anymore!!! How to live further??? Living in such conditions is simply not possible, we had to leave the city.

Thank the Lord that there are people who, in such a difficult moment, lend a helping hand and support.”

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Over 260,000 Ukrainians have fled to Romania

According to Romanian news outlets, over 260,000 Ukrainians have fled the war and entered Romania in the last week. People come by foot or by car, and the queues at the border vary from 5 hours to 2 days, in winter conditions.

Romania does not have a very good infrastructure for such disasters and a lot of the help comes from individuals and churches.

We are working on the ground with Dan Iacob, a missionary who has been involved in work in Ukraine since the war broke out in 2014 in the Donbas. He coordinates drives back and forth across the border to help people out of Ukraine, housing in Romania, distributes food packages (in Ukraine and Romania), gives hygiene kits and buys bus or plane tickets to those who want to travel further to Western Europe.

Most of the refugees want to travel further to Western Europe and the US but many do not have the funds or connections yet to leave Romania.

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