BEING HUMAN

#BeingHuman. #PeopleOfTheBridge. Ninety days. May 2022… When we wrote to you at fifty, some part of us still assumed it would be over by now… Unfortunately, it is not… That is the first thing this report has to say and the hardest to write. The Russian war did not loosen its grip in its second month; it settled in and made itself at home. And here is the fact we did not expect: the numbers below are larger than the ones we sent you last time. More people were evacuated, and more were fed. A relief effort is meant to be a bridge you cross once, in an emergency, and then leave behind you. This one is filling up rather than emptying…

There is a lesson in the wilderness we are only now beginning to learn. When Israel came out of Egypt, the bread from heaven fell one morning at a time, and the manna could not be hoarded; what they gathered was for that day, and whatever they tried to store away spoiled. It was provision for the road they were actually walking, not for the one they kept wishing they were on. At fifty days we were braced for a sprint. Ninety days in, we are learning instead to gather the day’s portion and keep walking, with no way of knowing how many mornings still lie ahead… Faithfulness, it turns out, is less a burst of courage than the plain discipline of coming back to the same work in the morning… Here is what these weeks have held:

• 512 volunteers kept serving, more of them now than in our first report, many still displaced themselves
• 345 people were carried out of areas the fighting was reaching
• 1,308 displaced people were housed and cared for on seminary campuses
• 27,266 people moved through our hubs on their way further from the front
• 98,776 food boxes and packages were placed in the hands of families who had lost everything
• 1,448 tons of food and humanitarian supplies were delivered to where the need was sharpest

We are now past the point where this could be mistaken for a brief “crisis.” That changes what we must ask of ourselves, and of you. Not a single heroic surge, but the long and unglamorous kind of faithfulness that shows up again once the adrenaline has drained away… Easter never abolished the slow work of ordinary Mondays. The tomb stood empty, and then the disciples still had to rise and feed people. So must we…

If you would keep walking this road with us, you can stand alongside these hubs here:

• Ukraine: Refugees Assistance (through our seminary hubs): https://www.mesaglobal.co/projects/48505
• Ukraine: Bibles for refugees and military: https://www.mesaglobal.co/projects/65548
• Ukraine: Mental Health and Well-Being Care: https://www.mesaglobal.co/projects/45809

Peace be with you, and keep your children away from war, Taras D (project manager in Ukraine for the “People of the Bridge”), on behalf of the Coordination Group: Roman Soloviy (Langham, EEIT), Olga Marchak (Mesa Global), Ivan Rusyn (UETS), Oleksandr Geychenko (OTS), Kseniya Trofymchuk (EEIT), Kateryna Shutko (EEIT), Scott Cunningham (Mesa Global), Evan Hunter (Scholar Leaders), Valentin Siniy (TCI)

PS. The same twelve communities carried this second month, still improvising, still saying – “yes”:

1. Chernivtsi Bible Seminary
2. Dialogue in Action (Peacebuilding group)
3. Eastern European Institute of Theology
4. Evangel Theological University (Zaporizhzhia)
5. Kremenchuk Evangelical Seminary
6. Lviv Theological Seminary
7. Odesa Theological Seminary
8. Tavriskii Christian Institute (Kherson, Ivano-Frankivsk)
9. Transcarpathian Christian Institute (Khust)
10. Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary
11. University Divitia Gratia (Moldova)
12. Zaporizhzhia Bible Seminary