If you would like to support our work, please use the following bank account or Paypal:
Frankfurter Sparkasse
IBAN: DE95 5005 0201 0000 2341 41
SWIFT/BIC: HELADEF1822
A donation receipt will of course be issued on request. Enter “Ukraine and your address” as a note.
Donations are also possible via PayPal.
Please use the „Family and Friends“ Paypal-Method. Otherwise Paypal deducts a fee from the donation.
If you have any questions, you are welcome to contact us at bfh@bibelfreizeitheim.de or via the Bibelfreizeitheim Facebook Channel.
The Trägerverein Bibelfreizeitheim Gemünden/Ts. e.V.
Thank You!
We would like to thank all previous donors for their commitment. We have received donations from churches in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and the US, but many individuals have also donated, including many former camp participants.
We also received many concrete offers of support and inquiries by e-mail and via Facebook. It is encouraging to experience and be able to pass on this wave of helpfulness and support.
Escape from Kyiv
Personal contacts to the Church of Christ in Kyiv-Obolon have existed for a long time through the churches in Hamburg and Kelkheim. And so it turned out that we were able to take in 25 refugees in Gemünden. They came to us, with God’s protection (in a sometimes adventurous way by train, in their own car and even by plane from neighboring countries of Ukraine). Some were caught off guard by the outbreak of war while on vacation abroad and couldn’t/wouldn’t want to go back. There were odysseys through areas threatened by war, uncertainties and long waiting times at the border.
Spontaneous support
The last regular group, European Ladys Retreat, spontaneously collected money and bought groceries before their departure, as well as designed welcome signs, even in Ukrainian.
Thanks a lot for this! It helped enormously at the start on march 14th!
Thanks also to the camps and groups, some of which have been booked for a long time, who are willing to give up their appointments as long as it is necessary.
In a short time it was necessary to put together a working group with the help of church members from Kelkheim and Wiesbaden in order to organize many things, such as preparing the recreation center, providing transport services, buying food and hygiene items, collecting clothing and everyday necessities, and classification of care, and last but not least, registration with the authorities.
Starting difficulties and internet problems
In the beginning, some of the problems only became apparent on site in detail or what it means to have little or nothing… ranging from slippers to charging cables etc. At the same time it is surreal that we are currently having problems buying larger quantities of pasta, flour or cooking oil.
It was good to be able to fall back on the existing „Anziehpunkt“ of the church in Wiesbaden.
In the meantime, we have also been able to improve our internet connection through SIM cards and hardware donations from Telekom. This is important to ensure contact with the families and the men who stayed behind and are not allowed to leave Ukraine, but also to enable remote schooling for the children. The previous connection would have been completely overloaded with the current number of users.
The Ukrainians, for their part, would like to thank the Bibelfreizeitheim and all donors!
They already organized themselves well:
• Vania is ideally a trained cook and now, together with his wife Ania, provides the whole group with typical ukrainian food.
• Eugen from Kyiv-Obolon is a kind of group leader and our translator as he speaks English very well.
Refugee Aid Weilrod
As a Bibelfreizeitheim-Taskforce, we now receive valuable support from the Weilrod Refugee Aid, an association of Weilroder citizens who work on a voluntary basis. They have a wide range of experience with refugees, since 2015. And above all: they have Ukrainian/Russian native speakers who have helped us a lot.
Thank you very much!
In addition, the Weilrod Refugee Aid cooperates with us in tasks such as personal advice, arranging language courses and jobs, daycare and school registrations, doctor visits and, if necessary, psychological support.
How everything will continue now is in God’s hands! Let’s pray that the war stops and that all refugees who want to can return home soon!
Continue reading: How everything started