Courtesy of the Orphan Grain Train Newsletter
JAMESTOWN, N.D. (NewsDakota.com) – “I thought this trip was a calling from God, that I had the ability to do this, and there was no reason not to go.”
Those are the words from Kirk Rosin, ND’s Orphan Grain Train board member. With the conflict with Russia, Ukraine is perhaps the last place most would think to travel to at this time. The nine-day trip in April of this year included a stop in Poland and Romania. Kirk and his brother, Brian, departed Bismarck for a 20-hour trip by plane and then by bus to Warsaw, Poland.
From there, they traveled another 10 hours by bus to Ukraine. The following are the words from Kirk about his memorable and impactful trip.
When we got to Ukraine, it was 3:00 in the morning. All of Ukraine was under blackouts and curfew, so we had to stay in the bus depot until morning. It was an unheated bus station, with temperatures at about 30 degrees, so it was cold. When we got there, it was completely dark, so we figured we were just in the outskirts some place. When the sun came up, we realized we were in the middle of a city of about 200,000 people.
Everything had been dark and no one had been moving around, so we didn’t realize we were even in the city. There were sandbag checkpoints set up and a military presence. That day we took another bus about four hours to Chernivtsi, Ukraine. There we stayed at a church with refugees. We slept on mattresses on the floor, with six other refugees in our room.
The purpose of our trip was to verify that Orphan Grain Train shipments were getting to the places they were go to, to the people they were supposed to, and seeing what other needs there may be that Orphan Grain Train could meet. Orphan Grain Train had been responsible for raising a lot of funds and collecting a lot of donated items for airlifting to the refugees in Ukraine, Romania and Moldova.
In Ternopil, a city in Western Ukraine, we went to the warehouse where the Orphan Grain Train supplies had been shipped to. The fellow that was heading up that distribution there, had organized 1,100 churches in Ternopil to reach out to the refugees arriving. When the war started, they had 40,000 refugees come into their city in one week. The 1,100 churches in the city worked to house them all. We were there on Wednesday. The Orphan Grain Train supplies had arrived on Monday, and they said they would all be distributed by Friday.
We visited a number of churches where the refugees were at, meeting them and visiting with them and the pastors of those churches. In Chernivtsi, we had taken with us supplies of personal hygiene items, band aids, medicine, etc., which are very hard to get in Ukraine.
These items were also donated by the North Dakota Orphan Grain Train. We shared these with the members of an orphanage that were staying at the refugee center, as they had fled their orphanage after two days of bombing. They had been here at this refugee center for about two months.
After this, we visited an orphanage in Romania that North Dakota OGT had a shipment going to, the
Bread of Life Orphanage, who also took in refugees from Ukraine. The Orphan Grain Train supplies are going to help the refugees in Ukraine and also in Romania and Moldova. They will also be helping the people in Ukraine.
We met many, many new people there; we did not know anyone, so we met lots of refugees from all over Ukraine, as well as pastors and other workers in the refugee centers. There was military presence all over in Ukraine, as well as armed checkpoints. We saw a vehicle which had been hit with shrapnel. Of course, we saw all of the refugees and displaced people who told us stories of the war and the bombings, and how it had affected them.
I think the thing that really struck me was the difficult situation that the refugees were in, but no one complained. They were actually wanting to share with us what little they had, and to help us in any way they could. The pastors told us the churches were packed. We went to church services that were standing room only, in the middle of the week.
I think the most memorable part of the trip was just when I would ask the refugees what they needed. Many times, the response was they just wanted peace so they could go back to their normal lives; that’s all they wanted.
When asked if Kirk would consider himself a missionary, he responded, “I would call myself a missionary, strictly because we are all missionaries. Every one of us is called to share Jesus Christ with everyone. So, I would say I am nothing special as a missionary, just a plain, ordinary Christian, no different than other people.”
The North Dakota Branch of the Orphan Grain Train is located in Jamestown at 103 4th Ave. SE. The organization shares personal and material resources with needy people in America and in 68 countries around the world.