Current aid trip to the Ukraine May 5th, 2022

Gert Pohl /  5 May 2022

Dear brothers and sisters, friends and pray-ers,

As of May 5th, 2022, our donation account has grown to €12,737.03 (plus the €91.30 remaining in the account after our last trip). We thank you and our LORD for blessing these trips in this way. We have therefore been able, as planned, to successfully complete the preparations for this trip.

In addition to you, those many donors from Germany who have already repeatedly supported our aid deliveries, a large proportion also comes this time from sisters and brothers from our churches in America and their mission arm Encompass World Partners. From them we have also received the indication of possible further support, for which we are very grateful.

So this Friday at around 6:00 p.m., accompanied by many prayers, we will drive back in the direction of Ukraine with our Sprinter-Van. This time we are fully loaded with medical bandages for the soldiers on the front lines which we will deliver to the churches and contact points in Chernivice as well as to the capital Kiev.  From a centrally cooridnated distribution point located in Kiev, the supplies will be distributed directly to the front.

We anticipate having time once again on Sunday to attend a church service with our fellow believers in the Chernivtsi area. And we are also pleased to be able to provide the small Baptist church in rural Anadoly with the sum of 2000.00€ to locally purchase food for soldiers at the front.  These supplies are regularly prepared by the ladies of the church and sent to their husbands on the front lines.

For this trip we have budgeted €11,000.00 (plus the remaining €91.03 in the cash box left over from the last transport). Once again we will use most of this money in the Metro-store in Chernivtsi to purchase food, hygiene products and other essential items - the very things that our brothers and sisters most need. The remaining funds in the account will be reserved for a future trip.

In particular, we are grateful that the 110 tourniquets (a device used to tie off limbs after gunshot wounds to stop bleeding) that we ordered in April arrived on time. These items were specifically requested by our Ukrainian friends. Even in Germany they have all been sold out, or (if you can get them at all) you pay €20-30.00 a piece. Tourniquets are part of every soldier's emergency equipment and save many lives from gunshot wounds or severed limbs.
I ordered these in April from China with a delivery date of May 6th for around €500.00, and we actually expected that they would probably not arrive in time for this transport.  Since we purchase a lot of our supplies from Asia and the supply chains are all disrupted, we know that the delivery dates are usually unrealistic.  But this time the complete shipment arrived last Wednesday, May 4th.  The quality is also good, which of course made us happy and gave us another reason to express our gratefulness to the Lord.

So we will load up the van early on Friday, then we have an appointment before 12:00 noon at customs, where we will obtain proper export documents. For items exported outside of Germany, we get the German VAT (value added tax) of 19% paid back from the tax office at the end of the year. This money will then be able to be used for further projects.

We thank you for all your prayers, donations and for supporting the needs of our Ukrainian brothers and sisters. After our anticipated return next Wednesday or Thursday, 11th or 12th of May, we will report back to you with details of our trip.

Glory to HIM!