By Tony Williams
You may recall that we helped the Ukrainian refugees in recent weeks with our bucket campaign. This is where we asked the congregation to volunteer to fill buckets with needful items to be sent to the refugees. You will be glad to know that the shipment of buckets made it to the Ukraine border and have been distributed to those in the church in Ukraine. You all really answered the call in a big way to help those in need by volunteering to fill the buckets and help in this manner.
The elders have now decided to help the Ukrainian refugees further by providing funds in order to purchase Arctic sleeping bags. The Russian missile strikes have been targeting infrastructure inside Ukraine causing widespread power outages. The Ukrainian winters are very harsh and being without power could be a matter of life or death. There has been a great effort from US congregations to provide generators and fuel to the Ukrainians in order to keep warm. We are now learning that the Ukrainian people are not running the generators at night in order to conserve their fuel. A few have been using Arctic sleeping bags that are able to keep a person warm down to -20 degrees. The Ukrainian refugees can sleep in those during the night and conserve their fuel. However, these are in very short supply. The elders here have decided to take up a collection in order to send the funds to Romania in order to buy sleeping bags for Ukraine. We ask that in this season of giving, that you be willing to give some in this effort. The collected funds will be sent to the Adairsville church of Christ where it will be wired to their missionaries in Romania. Then the sleeping bags will be purchased and sent across the border to those in need.
There are many ways to give. You can give online in “Rebel Give” where we have a special account set up for the Ukraine refugees. You can give by check (put “Ukraine relief” in the memo) and place it in the slot behind the sound room or simply give the check to one of the elders. We plan to act quickly; we will begin collecting funds today and will send what we collected to the Adairsville congregation on January 15th. Please continue to pray for those in Ukraine and pray for an end to the war.