Federal Way church donates thousands of boxes to Ukraine refugees

Published 3:32 pm Friday, September 26, 2014

Anatoliy Kolomiyets recalls hearing the news that the Ukraine pastor he regularly communicates with witnessed people come into his church, take his two sons and four others and “just kill them.”

A Ukrainian immigrant himself, Kolomiyets felt the need to help his home country he left 13 years ago for a better opportunity in America.

“When the war started in Ukraine, we could not stand aside,” said Kolomiyets through translator, friend and colleague Angela Karelina. “I was watching a lot of news and saw people whose families were killed, people whose houses were destroyed and they were running from the [terrorists].”

The current Ukraine crisis is now being classified as a war between the Russians, rebels and Ukrainians. The Russian government and its businesses have continuously racked up sanctions from the United States and European Union in recent months for its “intervention” in Ukraine, according to the New York Times and other international news outlets.

The unrest has been going on since February 2014 but escalated this past summer when a Malaysian Airlines Flight was shot down over Ukraine.

In late August Kolomiyets and Karelina, members of Mission IMOCE and of City On A Hill Church in Federal Way,  developed a plan to send charitable goods to Ukrainian refugees in Donbass, a region in Ukraine.

Within two weeks, church members supported them in every aspect.

Karelina recalls a woman donating 500 new pairs of socks, a man donating cardboard boxes from his company, a man donating hundreds of shoes from Oregon and another church member calling around to local trucking businesses to transport the items.

“When people heard about it, they started calling us,” Karelina said, adding that she was at first fearful of starting the project.

In two weeks, City On A Hill Church members and others from the community donated enough pillows, shoes, socks, personal hygiene products, clothes and toys to fill 1,059 boxes.

Those boxes went into a large shipping container that was also paid for by donations. The large container costs around $6,100 to ship to Ukraine.

Karelina and Kolomiyets also worried about who would receive the packages in Ukraine but miraculously found a man with relief organization Samaritans Purse willing to deal with the extensive documents and border patrol.

The container will arrive in about a month, they say, but the church has already collected another 500 boxes of goods.

Kolomiyets said he is not going to stop the humanitarian effort.

“My vision is in two weeks we will have to send our second container,” he said. “We don’t have a plan, it’s just happening.”

Karelina said they are all “running behind it” and wouldn’t have been able to make it happen without the help from pastors Vasilly Boysyan, Russell Korets and the people who responded to them.

“Before I met with God, I lived for myself, my own needs,” Kolomiyets said. “My heart was transformed by Jesus. Now, my purpose is to help others.”

Kolomiyets, his family and others recently went to Mexico to serve those in poverty.

Ironically, Kolomiyets is now the one helping others but he remembers when he was a child he grew up in a large family of 11 and the Ukrainian government could not assist them but the U.S. could with a care package.

“I think this is the best country in the world,” he said, adding that he’s traveled all around Europe so he is able to compare. “The country who helps the whole world the best is America.”

While City On A Hill Church is open to everyone in the community, Kolomiyets said its church members are primarily from the countries that made up the Union Soviet Socialist Republics or Soviet Union. Those countries include Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

“We have one purpose — to be united and it doesn’t matter what nationalities we are,” he said.

According to Federal Way Public Schools, 604 students speak Russian, 498 speak Ukrainian, six speak Moldovian, five speak Lithuanian whose parents and grandparents have immigrated.

To donate to the Ukrainian refugees, bring items to City On A Hill Church located at 1336 S. 336th St. in Federal Way or contact Karelina at 253-737-7199 for more information on how to donate financially for the next shipping container.

For more information, visit www.facebook.com/cityhill.tv.