June 10-17, 2023

Fastiv, 10.06-17.06.23

Praised be Jesus Christ!

This week, for us – is Kherson. Practically, we have been in the city for almost a week already, seeing how the city lives and what people need. Our task, which we have set ourselves, for this difficult time, especially when the liquidators are working, and a lot of residents have left the flooded areas, in particular from the district of the Island of other villages, and there are 18 of them, to help with dinners. These days, we took a maximum efforts to serve 700 meals per day with volunteers in our social kitchen. For this, we also brought the necessary products and equipment with us and delivered these lunches to the flooded areas during these days.

The suffering of people living in villages – is a separate story, they lost all their property, one of the villages we visited is Kamyshany, the lower streets here are flooded and unfortunately these houses cannot be restored, actually people need everything from scratch. These days, the city is being bombarded by enemies non-stop, we hear explosions every hour, we also know that there are a lot of injured, and there are also dead. In this situation, the city is constantly in anxiety. A special hope is that when we deliver lunches, today we were in the Ostriv microdistrict, people came to Kherson from all over Ukraine – these are people from Irpin, Ternopil, Pereyaslov, Kropyvnytskyi, Bucha – all these people – the liquidators who rake this swamp daily, restoring the consequences of the terrible tragedy at the Kakhovskaya HPS, they are here to streuggle and restore life.

The help of all our benefactors is priceless – it is a great gift for us, we are grateful to everyone who responded, 162 people, some of Your names are mentioned in the transfer, we remember You and Your families in prayer, we thank everyone for your donation, Mrs. Anastasia, who made a donation of 4 hryvnias and Mr. Mykyta, who donated 30,000 gr., Mr. Oleh who donated 5,000 and Mrs. Maria who donated 25, Mrs. Zhanna who donated 1,500, Mrs. Nadia and Christopher from the USA, as well as Mrs. Victoria from Great Britain, Mr. Eduard, Mr. Svitlana, Mr. Alli, we remember everyone by name, together you gave Kherson 133,346 hryvnias. Thank you to the community from Zwolle, brother Peter and Franz, Dominicanenklooster Zwolle who collected 3750 euros for Kherson, Your Support in this long marathon is very important for us! Our beautiful and courageous woman Larysa Kerzhentseva, who passed on so many things, is always there! Due to your support, we were able to purchase 1044 kg of meat, 504 cans of beans, oil, vegetables, a motor pump, lunch boxes, water, disposable tableware and the necessary supplements for preparing delicious dishes for the long-suffering Kherson and the region.

This week, we distributed 1,362 food sets of first necessity, 11,420 kg of humanitarian aid.

Thank you, Office of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland, for all the positive decisions you made in response to our request and the first humanitarian shipment actually arrived today, thank you very much for Your trust and support.

Today, one of the women who had been helping since 6 o’clock in the morning, peeling potatoes in our kitchen, told us that she had to run to buy flowers, because there was to be a funeral for a little three-year-old child who fell into a well due to flooding, the child died, the funeral was supposed to be today at 10 in the morning, but in the morning the city morgue was shelled and it caught fire and this funeral could not take place – this is such a double tragedy for people and there are dozens of such tragedies here – it’s all very sad and terrible, unfortunately.

I remember in prayer and I ask for prayer. Mykhailo Romaniv OP