PART ONE

(Editor’s note: eyeoncleveland.com has dedicated many of its stories in the last 15 months to the plight of Ukraine and to the efforts of Slavic Full Gospel Church, SFGC, to help Ukrainians in need, both in their native land and those fleeing to the United States. This is the first part of a three-part series about the breadth and scope of SFGC’s efforts — John Kerezy)

BROADVIEW HEIGHTS – By the evening of February 24, 2022, the cell phones of dozens of members of Slavic Full Gospel Church (SFGC) were ablaze. Family members and loved ones living in Ukraine were calling, and their stories were horrific and tragic.

“We’re at home watching the news about Russia’s invasion, and at the same time we were getting frantic phone calls from loved ones back in Ukraine,” Diyana Gabyak of Granger Township recalls. “Some were asking for financial help to pay astronomical medical bills. Others were seeing their neighborhoods shelled and hit with missiles. And some needed help to get out of Ukraine and to flee to safety in adjacent countries in Europe, or in the U.S.”

Before that following Sunday (Feb. 27), the elders of SFGC had discussed the war. They had decided that, beginning immediately, they would begin taking two offering collections each Sunday, one for the church and its missions and ministry, and the second to help the Ukrainian people.

“We weren’t certain what Ukraine would do in response to Russia’s brute force attempt to wipe our homeland away,” Roman Skalsky of Broadview Heights, deacon at SFGC, says. “When President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his government chose to fight for the nation’s survival, our church and its members dedicated themselves to doing all we could to assist our relatives and friends in their hour of need.”

For many years, SFGC had been sending missionaries to Ukraine and helping to support churches there, spreading the Gospel message about Jesus Christ. It already had an informal network of pastors and congregations in place. Suddenly, in a time of great crisis which was seeing thousands of innocent civilians killed and wounded, the informal network became transformed into a lifeline.

RELIEF MISSION TO HELP A WAR-TORN NATION

Quickly, SFGC also chose to ask for public support to help fund its relief efforts and to also see the situation first-hand in Ukraine. Its offerings received $4,000 to $5,000 weekly in donations, but it knew it needed much more to make a dent in the vast needs.

“We realized that millions of Ukrainians were fleeing the eastern part of the nation,” Skalsky says. “Some were staying in cities in Western Ukraine, such as Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk. Churches there were becoming refuges centers out of necessity.”

About 5.4 million Ukrainians have been internally displaced, many moving from war-torn Eastern Ukraine to relative safety in the Western portion of the country.  Russian invaders have killed at least 8,900 civilians in Ukraine also, according to the UNHCR. Russia’s war machine has severely damaged or destroyed more than 900 hospitals across Ukraine. There are numerous documented instances of mass murders of innocent civilians, such as the killing of over 400 men, women and children during Russia’s month-long occupation of Bucha. (See the New York Times story about this massacre, linked below.)

“Others still were fleeing further west out of Ukraine, into Poland and elsewhere. We knew the day would come when some of the refugees in this group would head to the U.S., so we felt a responsibility to make some preparations to help them also.”

But the immediate step SFGC took was to assist those war victims, and some of the Ukrainian combatants, in Ukraine. Members of the church flew to Ukraine as early as March to assess the situation and to provide aid. “We quickly learned how many bags of luggage we could check in ourselves when traveling, and how much each bag should weigh,” Skalsky explains. “We picked up all the first aid supplies we could, and we learned there was a great need for bulletproof vests for both military and civilians at the front lines of the fighting. We purchased all the supplies we could, and then we also went public to ask fellow Americans in Northeast Ohio to help us.”

In those first two months after the invasion began, SFGC, a church with about 220 attendees, saw more than $150,000 donated to it from the public for aid and relief. It then sent an 11-person mission team to Ukraine in early April. Members purchased their own airfare, and the church filled check-in luggage with bandages, first aid kids, and bulletproof vest and other body armor. Skalsky also connected in person with many of the churches and ministry leaders that SFGC had assisted in years past, assuring them that more help would be on the way. The mission trip was a tremendous success, for both physical and psychological reasons.

“These supplies are vital because they change the atmosphere,” says Pastor Igor Bubna. Bubna has led a church in Rohatyn in the Ivano-Frankivsk oblast for 22 years.  “The current power structures and officials are unable to supply the front-line regions and displaced people with ample food and hygiene products that are necessary for survival. “It’s also vital because everything done in the name of Jesus, no matter how seemingly small, is impactful and will bring about fruit.”

RELIEF VIA FULL SHIPPING CONTAINERS

As the war continued into the summer, SFGC engaged in even more creative way to move massive amounts of relief aid to Ukraine. Church member Vladimir Gabyak owns a trucking business, and soon his terminal in Richfield became a warehouse filling up with relief supplies. Gabyak and others lease 40-foot shipping containers, and use volunteer labor and tow-motors to fill up the shipping containers with all types of relief supplies.

When a shipping container is filled, a trucker drives it to Connecticut. There it is placed onto an ocean-traversing freighter to Gdansk, Poland. Dockworkers there unload the container, and a driver then hitches his truck to trailer and drives it into Ukraine. Once there, SFGC counts upon Pastor Bubna and his network and others to distribute the food, medicine, hygiene products (such as baby diapers) and other badly-needed supplies all over the nation. (See pinpoints on the map above for some of the locations.)

SFGC and its members have repeated this relief delivery process over and over again, 25 times, thus far. No two shipments are alike, but each one contains as much as 50,000 pounds of relief supplies of all varieties.

The Toledo area charity Impact With Hope has donated thousands of white and blue five-gallon buckets filled with food and medical relief supplies (one of the buckets is the featured image of this post). Southwest General Medical Center donated 40 medical beds which have found their way to hospitals still operating in Ukraine, and a hospital in Michigan provided additional medical equipment. Akron-based Jennings Heating & Cooling also donated two 25Kw generators, which are being used to power medical equipment donated from the U.S.

SFGC uses relief funds to purchase first aid supplies, hygiene products, and additional food. It also purchased and shipped small portable generators to help provide power once the Russians began targeting Ukraine’s power plants. All the donated and purchased goods are loaded high onto pallets, covered in protective stretch wrap plastic, then loaded into the shipping container for transoceanic shipment (see photos above and video below).

Through its own member giving, and through partnerships and donations, this church has already sent many millions of dollars worth of food, medicine, first aid, portable generators, and other relief supplies to some of the most war-torn areas of Ukraine.

“What SFGC is doing is very important because this gives people the chance of survival,” Pastor Bubna adds “It has been indispensable. Food and medical supplies coming in is going to people that have been displaced from the areas of conflict and are currently residing in the  Ivano-Frankivsk oblast. Our volunteers go out and also send supplies to the Sumy oblast, Kharkiv oblast, Zaporizhzhia oblast, Kherson oblast, Donetsk oblast and Mykolaiv oblast (Editor’s note: An oblast is an administrative region, similar to U.S. states. There are 25 oblasts in Ukraine), to the people and military units that they encounter there.

“It is proof that God is inspiring and moving hearts to help our country and its people.”

WAYS YOU CAN HELP: 

If you want to assist Slavic Full Gospel Church, click on this link:

https://sfgchurch.churchcenter.com/giving

Once there, select Ukraine Aid to make a donation. A full 100% of the funds go directly to helping displaced refugees living in Ukraine.

If you are in a position where you can donate a vehicle, or provide temporary (six months or more) housing for refugees, email Roman Skalsky at romans65@hotmail.com

You can reach the story’s author, John Kerezy, at john.kerezy@tri-c.edu or on Facebook or Twitter as well.

NEXT IN THE SERIES: Stories of refugees now safely in Northeast Ohio

Link to the New York Times story about Russia’s massacre of civilians in Bucha: