Part 1
The skies were clear as we headed East, and as we neared our destination, we could see Russian jets dropping their bombs along the frontlines. We went ahead, stopping along the road a few miles out to gear up and pray together.
First of, we stopped at a village 21⁄2 miles from zero line to bring the Gospel and distribute aid at a few locations.
From there we could hear an almost constant barrage of artillery and grad rockets being fired back and forth in the direction we were headed.
As we finished up with distributing there, we decided to continue as planned and headed in, praying for direction as we drove.
We raced along, swerving around potholes and unexploded rockets and parked beside one of the few mostly intact multistory apartments.
Jumping out, the shelling had begun again, so we ran to the basement to find the locals.
Our main goal was to find someone who had reached out and requested evacuation, but we soon found out the general location was right on the Eastern edge of town, a risky place to go on a quiet day, and we didn’t know exactly where to find her.
So we decided to offload some more aid for the people there and leave, so we headed back out to the van to start unloading.
Not a minute after we were outside, something flew in hitting a house across the road, and then another right behind us much too close! We once again ran for cover and began to reassess the situation.
The people there told us that the house across the road that had been hit was lived in, so as soon as there was a lull in the incoming shelling we ran across to check on them. We found the residents unharmed, gathering as much of their stuff as they could save from the fire.
The roof was now engulfed in flames and burned with a fierce crackling, almost sounding like machine gun fire. We quickly helped them grab their stuff and got them safely to a basement nearby. The husband & wife and their grown son were clearly in shock as they trembled uncontrollably.
