Providing Food to Refugees in Ukraine

by Tim Cornelson

Feeling a deep burden to respond with God’s love to the Ukrainians, I joined European Initiative link in the delivery of food and bedding to Uzhhorod, Ukraine. I got to make three driving trips from Budapest to Uzhhorod, and spent another two days buying food / loading vans. European Initiative is an evangelical ministry located throughout Eastern Europe. The Budapest branch got a call from ministry friends in Uzhhorod, and they pivoted their mission in responding to the need of their neighbors in crisis. European Initiative (a 501c3 in the US) is continuing to purchase and drive in food; your help is welcomed link.

We would shop at the Metro store in Budapest (think Sam’s club but bigger). In some sections we would take everything off the shelves. On Tuesday it took five hours to shop, check-out, and load two Citroen vans.

It takes about $6,000 to buy the 2 metric tons of food that would fill each van.

The four-hour drive there started at 5am and went NE through Slovakia. Then at the border we needed anywhere from 2 to 5 hours (depended on the volume) to get through the weigh station, customs, and passport control twice, once for the EU and once for Ukraine. Another four hours to get back to Budapest each trip, with a shorter 1-hour journey through the Hungarian border crossing as an empty van.

We would see passenger cars and vans, sometimes pulling trailers, filled with food and bedding and clothes. They were coming from all over Europe, heading into Ukraine.

The destination was the Nehemiah center in Uzhhorod, Ukraine, about 2 km over the border. This is a local ministry center where about 50 refugees are living. About fifteen guys would rush out to help unload our vans. Then the food would move on to about 50 other churches in the city of 100,000 that were also hosting refugees.

The food would be sorted and inventoried, and moved on fairly quickly. We made a delivery on Saturday, and everything we had delivered on Friday was already gone.

A local Ukrainian, Martin (from Florida), me, and a man from Kyiv helped us get a tire patched (we realized it was flat when we went through customs.

Our vans had over a million kilometers on them; no one wants to rent a new van to travel into Ukraine. All of the indicator lights stayed lite up: ABS, check engine, airbags, the parking brake didn’t work, and the drivers window wouldn’t move. On Saturday going through the border we discovered our back tire was flat (15 pounds of air, not 70). It didn’t matter that we had 2-metric tons of food on the axel: there was no spare tire or jack. All we could do was continue on slowly and hope that the tire didn’t shred; if it did we’d just have to deal with it. Thankfully we got through the border and got help with an air compressor; that got us into the Nehemiah center and then on to a tire shop.