‘Please pray for Ukraine and stand with us for peace in our world’
Ukranian teenager KSENIA YAKUTINA and her family are still facing an agonising wait for visas to allow them to leave their tiny flat in Poland and travel to a home they have waiting for them in the centre of Ashbourne. For four long weeks the application process has been moving along, thanks to the work of Ashbournebased volunteers from the charity Theotrust – but with no happy outcome yet, Ksenia, her parents and her three brothers have been finding ways to fill their time.
TALKING about our place of living now, we are one hour away from Wroclaw in Poland. Big thanks to Theotrust – we have a nice flat to live in, food and most needed things.
We live on a pig farm here. Also, because we live in a village we have the opportunity to walk in forests, fields and see all the beautiful green plants which appear now in spring.
Nobody in our family has work now, so we are on “economic” mode. We cannot really find work, as nobody would want workers for an unknown period of time.
We cannot help it because we don’t know when the visas will come. We were hoping that they would come in 10 days but are waiting for a month now.
In our flat we have one bedroom with three beds. We (the kids) sleep there. My parents sleep in the kitchen on a floor on a mattress.
I am the luckiest – I have a separate comfortable bed, while the boys have to sleep all together in two beds and the sleeping places of parents are not as comfy as mine for example.
But we are really happy that we have a shelter above our heads as lots of other refugees don’t.
Every day here is pretty similar. We go on 5-10km walks, the boys play games on their phones, we speak with our friends in Ukraine and eat.
We didn’t take any things with us, because we were in a hurry – so the only entertainment is the phones. The boys like that very much because in “normal” life they do not really have time for that.
Also we went to collect some rubbish in the forest, help on the farm and do some work which we have found.
Thanks to Theotrust again, we had the opportunity to help some of my friends from church who didn’t have anywhere to go.
They have connected them with AMAZING host families and provided great help with applications.
I had some work to do as well! Helping with translations, applications and information. We already have helped four families, and they are coming to Ashbourne, Denstone and Nottingham. And that is not all! We will have some more people who we can help.
News in Ukraine isn’t better. A few days ago I had a nervous breakdown because all this month I was being “strong” and tried not to stress so much in order to support my friends and family and be someone who’s “in their mind”.
My friends in Poltava are the same. I have a friend whose husband is in territorial defence and she has panic attacks really often, she worries and does not know what to do.
My other friends who had evacuated from Okhtyrka are better than they were but a few days ago when they had rain and thunderstorms all her family were sitting in a corridor thinking it was a bombardment.
Lots of my other friends help lots in church, they knit camouflage nets, help refugees from Kharkiv and other places.
Really often they can’t sleep at night – all the time they have air raid sirens and have to go to their basements.
They are really emotionally tired.
My best friend said to me yesterday that she just wants to feel safe for one day, because it is really hard living like that.
Tonight Russians started to shoot missiles in the western part of Ukraine.
My friend who is in Lviv said that they shoot five missiles tonight and forecasts for this week aren’t good.
We do continue to pray for Ukraine, help friends with what we can and support them.
Please pray for Ukraine and stand with us for peace in our world.