- Praised be Jesus Christ! St. Martin’s Caritas is with you again. Welcome to Sinyak, where we are shooting the next small video report for our supporters. We have just visited the refugee shelter in Sinyak, which is now in a spiritual home, and members of the neocatechumenate community now live here with their families. People came from different places, from Rivne, Zhytomyr, Kyiv. We talked to the family. This war has been going on for three weeks, so it is very horrible to face the testimony of people fleeing. No wonder I chose the statue of St. Michael, because we believe that it will end and will not last long. So today we started with Mass. So here we celebrated Mass, thanks to one Dominican refugee father from Kharkiv. In this difficult time, so in this service, let's keep our spirituality, let's say, take breaks so that we too can be energized and continue to help people. We are also looking forward to your prayers, thank you, thank you for all your support. Praised be Jesus Christ!
- My name is Artem, this is my wife Mariana, these are our children, Emma the older, Ira the younger, and we are still waiting for a boy. We are from Zhytomyr, from the second neocatechumenal community in Zhytomyr. We came here with the children to wait for the end of the war. On the first day of the war, at 5.30 am, the military airfield located in the town of Ozerne near us began to be bombed. We could very well hear the rockets coming, the planes flying, and we decided to go somewhere far away from the city. We went from the beginning to the village, near Zhytomyr, 50 km. It was more or less quiet there for a while, but then planes and helicopters began to fly, more and more. We also overseed these missiles that flew over us and flew to Kyiv. We also had familiar communities from Kyiv, we heard that a rocket was flying over us, and then we wrote to them that a rocket was flying, and then it fell into them, so that they would watch like that. My wife and I were here in Transcarpathia, we had our honeymoon here, we came here from Zhytomyr. We were in Mukachevo, mostly in Uzhgorod, but we also drove in Mukachevo, there visited some coffee shops, we also walked around the city center, well, we know a little more or less. We were also very happy to see familiar places that we have seen a few years ago, but never in our lives imagined that we would have to return here in a situation like this.
- My parents are now in Zhytomyr, and so it is still quiet. There were rockets flying, but more in the villages in the area, but my mother says it's very scary, because the lights are turned off in the evening, so that it is not visible. The streets are all dark, and too many people have left, and for example in a ten-story building, maybe a few windows are lit, and so quiet. There are always people running to work in the morning, a lot of people, and now very few are left, mostly all have gone.
- God is very merciful to us, we have very good conditions, compared to what people have now, we are also grateful to all who receive us here, all Slovaks, Poles, Hungarians, all who help, and also our Ukrainians, they are constantly work there to help, they don't leave us. Also a lot of help comes from Poland. My parents live in Poland, and all Poles now, all help, even those who can not help physically, morally are very supportive. We are very well, we want it all over as soon as possible and return home. And everyone, everyone wants to get home as soon as possible.
My name is Yana, I am from Zhytomyr, from the third neocatechumenal community, the parish of St. Sophia. It was very difficult to decide to come here at all, because I left my family there, my parents. It just so happened that my mother had a surgery to replace a joint in her leg, and did it two days before the war. And they called me in the morning, at 7 o'clock in the morning, that it was urgent to pick her up from the hospital. And I worried about how it would all happen. I also have a grandmother who recently had her leg amputated, she had gangrene, yes. These were very great experiences, and I tried to be in Zhytomyr until the last moment, but when it started, there were explosions every day. The worst thing is if the missile does not hit one important military infrastructure for which it was aimed, but something else. I also have two acquaintances, a family with whom I was very friends, and when a missile struck, we thought it had hit a military object, but no, it affected my acquaintances, even though their house is further away. When we heard that an explosion had taken place in that neighborhood, we hoped that everything would be fine because they were far enough away from that place, but it turned out that my girlfriend had died, her child was left, and her husband. They were also traveling to western Ukraine now. Then, literally 2-3 days later, I hear about another acquaintance of mine, the rocket found a dormitory where ordinary people lived, not a military. Thank God everyone survived, but the building did not survive, they have nowhere to live. And of course, when you see it all, it’s hard to make a decision on whether to leave because my heart can’t calm down, my whole family is there, I’m here. But I see, it’s true that God’s support is that if it’s not the word, it’s not prayer, well, you know, it’s really your mission, yes, it’s your mission. I liked how they said, that everyone has their own front and should not be judged over others, someone is gone, this is normal, someone is left, this is normal, someone is helping, someone is just at home, trying to stay calm, these are all normal stages, yes . And as I came here, I heard a word to myself that I hadn’t come here in vain because I wasn’t looking for this path, I thought, “Well, maybe I’ll leave like any person who was there if you really were in danger because you didn’t want to leave your house." And what happened was that there was a free space in the neighbors car, and then I realized I wasn’t here by accident. The fact that there are brothers here is a support that I am not alone, and God gives peace because here is relatively calm. And if you believe from the first day that good overcomes evil, there is hope