Mission Day Two
Another Commentary Coming from
An American in Ukraine
by Dr. E. C. Olson, Mission Director
Our Mission Team has grown by three today, while a very grateful Governor Kozytskyy warmly received our Mission Team and led some very productive meetings to facilitate our Mission trip.
Tuesday, July 19, 2022, 11:32 pm Western Ukraine Time Zone
The Grand Hotel, Downtown Lviv, Ukraine
We started early today – 8:00 a.m. Ukrainian time, which was 1:00 a.m. US time – to get a head-start on a very busy day, with our Mission team getting together for a breakfast planning meeting. Given the extremely high value and importance of every single hour of our Mission trip, I declined our local team-members offer to either let me sleep-in today or even take the entire day off to get adjusted to the 7-hour time difference (on top of the 31 straight hours I was traveling to get to Lviv late last night).
Instead, having gone to bed here last night at 1:00 a.m. local time (6:00 p.m. US time), I didn’t sleep much because I was still running on adrenalin from the trip and equally as excited about getting to work today, but I did surprise myself by waking up at 7:00 a.m. local time (Midnight US time) without an alarm clock – that’s how anxious I was for today to begin. After splashing some water on my face, I went out on my room’s balcony and was greeted by a bustling scene of this vibrant contemporary Old World city (if our photo gallery doesn’t have those pictures, it soon will).
Seeing and hearing all the cars, buses, and street cars, coupled with hundreds of Ukrainians walking their way to work and several dozen more on bicycles, there was no way a person could convince themselves that this was a country in the grips of Europe’s largest and most harrowing war since WW II.
The scene that lay out before me was in stark dramatic contrast to the scene of last night’s silent empty streets and sidewalks that the war curfew created. Last night’s missile attack hit an apartment complex not far from my hotel, and yet 10 hours later you could never tell that happened. Such is the resolve of these courageous Ukrainians; they’ve sworn to never let the Russians take away their spirit…and they haven’t.
Damn I admire them.
On my first full day in Ukraine, the fresh warm glow of today’s sunrise lit up the ancient buildings of Lviv bringing sublime definition to the central city’s rich architectural heritage, with some buildings in my immediate view-scape dating back to as early as the 13th Century!
For us younger-heritage Americans it’s hard to comprehend that realization: I was surrounded by buildings where some dated back more than 800 years (what’s even harder to grasp is that the oldest of Lviv’s buildings, which was a Ukrainian Orthodox Church only four blocks away, dated back to the Ninth Century AD!). So my brisk early morning walk gifted me with spectacular structures dating back more than ONE THOUSAND-TWO HUNDRED YEARS! And to think that I as a native Floridian am so proud when I show visitors our nation’s earliest buildings in St. Augustine, which date back nearly five hundred years.
That is simply remarkable.
But see – I was so mesmerized by this city’s age and beauty that for one serene hour I totally forgot that less than eight hours earlier missile attack warning sirens pierced the nighttime air, followed shortly thereafter by the wartime curfew’s silent empty streets. Such is the dichotomy of the effect the War in Ukraine has on us.
Returning to the hotel to meet our excited Mission Team snapped me out of my serenity as we immediately got to work on the days and week’s agendas. Hopefully through my daily reporting and our visual documentation you will get to know our Mission Team because they really are an amazing bunch. They already deserve a more fitting introduction than time permits now, so when I get a short break in the next couple days I’ll post more information on each of them, because without their help our Mission couldn’t have even got out of the gate.
So here’s a brief introduction:
Our Mission Team
Yesterday you met our first two team members, beginning with the very first face I saw upon exiting Polish Customs at the Warsaw (Frederic Chopin) airport – that of our Polish driver, “Ruskin”. I’m a bit embarrassed that I don’t know anything more about Ruskin (including his last name) but my excuse for that was somewhat legitimate since Ruskin only spoke Polish, and my Ukrainian guide, Anastasiia Pozhar – who you likewise met yesterday – didn’t speak Polish (she “only” has mastered English, Ukrainian and Russian), while I was our Team’s lamest member, as my language skills is limited to English and a half-dozen Ukrainian phrases.
Over the past several months I have been recruiting and then communicating quite regularly with our growing Mission Team, who were represented at this morning’s breakfast meeting by Yaroslav Petrov, Fedir “Theo” Petrov (Yaroslav’s nephew) and Markiian Kobyletskyi.
Tomorrow our Mission Team will grow by three more as we’ll pick up a driver and his son and a military attaché (because tomorrow we’ll enter the regions where the fighting has been red-hot, and we’ll have to pass through several military checkpoints).
I’ve got to run to another meeting but next I’ll post a report on the incredible meeting we had today with one of Ukraine’s premier leaders, Governor (Lviv Region) Maksym Kozytskyy – another of Ukraine’s young, smart, courageous leaders, and a heck of a nice guy.
Following that I will lay out our next Mission trip – we’re leaving Lviv at 7:00 am tomorrow and going to Drohobych, where we’re going to rescue a “family” of five children ages 5 and up, who lost BOTH parents to The War – their father was killed in March on the front lines, and their mother died last month before her children’s eyes in a Russian artillery attack…and they have no living relatives left in Ukraine – that is until we arrive. We’re their new family.
From there we go further south to Odessa, then we begin the most dangerous part of the Mission, as we’ll push eastward toward the Donbas, stopping to rescue children, and feed, clothe and provide medical aid to those who have survived the Russian’s repeatedly brutal attacks. Throughout that trip through “The Gates To Hell” only the loss of internet connection will stop our reporting, but we’ll upload those reports whenever we can.
Please find at least one moment today to say to someone, “I Stand With Ukraine!”