Inside Ukraine: Refugees In Vinnytsia 'Become Family To Us'

Valentyna Zakharchuk is a Ukrainian citizen who will provide daily on-the-ground updates of the Russian invasion for Benzinga.

I am Maryna and I am from Vinnytsia in central Ukraine. 

We are in Vinnytsia with the whole family, with all six children. The youngest is 3 years old. Our seventh son is the husband of the eldest daughter.

The first day we had thoughts of leaving, but then we prayed and made a decision. We will be together with everyone, because not every family can leave Ukraine. Some have no funds, some are liable for military service, some have a child with disabilities, and we decided to stay. But to stay not for fear, but in order to do what God expects from us!

We receive people who flee from their cities and we receive more than 300 people every day in the church building at home. We accept those with small babies, pray with them, eat, run to the basement when the sirens are yelling, take them to the hospital if necessary and look for diapers, insulin, gasoline and spare parts for the cars.

They become family to us during this time. They call and write until they reach their destination.

They report their joys, that they gave birth to a baby and named it after the son or daughter of the family where they lived. 

They write that we will definitely meet after the war and eat not in the basement, but in a restaurant in Poland, Israel, the U.S.A, Iraq ...

Yes, yes, in Iraq ... We have a boy student, a citizen of Iraq, without knowledge of Russian and Ukrainian. He spent the night at our house, because everyone was afraid to take him because of his appearance, but we accepted him and my daughters speak English fluently.

When he saw hot food and a pillow, he began to cry. And when in the morning my youngest 3-year-old son hugged him, he was just very touched. He has become like a son to us. We sent him further to the border so that he crossed Poland and from there flew to his brother to Finland.

So he called every two hours all the way, wrote and thanked me. He even sent photos and videos of the meeting with his relatives. 

There are hundreds of such stories. I can’t describe everything, there is no time … But we are very grateful to God for this time! I know there are no guarantees that we will wake up tomorrow on earth, so we are now living life in a very concentrated way. We have mixed goodness, love, faith and hope in large doses.

Photo by Shyam Peelery via Wikimedia.