Above Photo: The last snow of the season continues! The snow today was lighter than that portrayed in the above photo. Temps are still hoovering around freezing and the snow mixed with rain chills you to the bones with a cold dampness!
I arrived in Kyiv from Kherson and was greeted literally by mountains of snow that had been piled up. It is slowly melting but so far, every day has seen some snowflakes falling!
The time in Kyiv is being consumed with various maintenance tasks for our operations and with meeting and discussing the problems we are having with Ukraine’s government in shipping benevolent supplies to our contacts and distribution of those supplies. This conversation has been on-going for several years and each time I’m assured the problem has been corrected and will not happen again, BUT then it only worsens! Maybe this time it will work out as I expect and Lucy will not pull the football away as Charlie Brown once again runs full speed to kick the football…
Kyiv has been placed on lockdown but you would never know it from the masses that are out and are not social distancing or wearing masks. Throughout Kyiv today there were public demonstrations and loud speakers protesting the lockdown because Ukraine’s small businesses are being erased. The banners read “Save our Small Businesses.” Then there were other protesting groups against the COVID vaccination. Over here the government has contracted with India for the vaccination because it was cheap. The general public does not trust this because all of the elite politicians have been vaccinated with serum from the large pharms in the USA. But over here those injections cost $200-$300 each.
This coming Wednesday at 9:00 am CST, Montgomery will load a container that is scheduled for Ivano-Frankivsk. This container is going to the hospitals as it contains a large amount of PPE and COVID testing supplies. Gif will be coordinating the load and I am sure he can use as much help as possible. There will not be any heavy lifting—just packing the boxes as tightly as possible so we can ship as much as we can stuff into the container. This container has an interesting story…brother Emmanuel from Ghana had cone to Ukraine for medical training. He started in Donetsk but then Russia invaded and the school was moved to Ivano-Frankivsk. Emmanuel sought out the Church and began meeting. Emmanuel asked Gary Jerkins, Ron Swang and John Durham to help present a practical training seminar for the medical students. Gary took on this challenge and the first seminar was a great success and subsequent seminars have followed and increased. In the process it was necessary for Emmanuel to register his group as an “Non-Government Organization” (NGO) in order to receive teaching supplies that we shipped. This was done and even though Emmanuel has long returned to his beloved Ghana, the NGO continues and it is to this group that the container is going. The contents will be distributed to a number of hospitals and clinics and items can be used in the medical school’s training. This is a wonderful fruit of Emmanuel’s devotion!
So…if you can assist Gif, please be at the NEW warehouse around 8:30 am. If the container arrives early we can begin loading. We must close the container’s doors at 11:00 am!
Thank you for your interest, concerns and prayers!
John L. Kachelman, Jr. Kyiv, Ukraine
