Through contacts in the community gained through the Rise Against Hunger project, Larry Turner learned that several local churches are helping with the Ukrainian refugee crisis on the other side of the globe.
“We worked with Dean Carlsen before in the Rise Against Hunger here, and he put a message out about what the United Methodist Church was doing (profiled in the March 30 Times-Courier),” said Turner, the Grand Knight of the Knights of Columbus Council associated with Good Samaritan Catholic Church. “We had already decided in the Knights Council to donate the net proceeds from our last two Lenten fish fries to the Ukraine Solidarity Fund, run by the overall Knights organization. They (Solidarity Fund) had immediately donated $1 million to help with the refugees going from Ukraine into Poland.”
Turner said local funds will be added to the $1 million.
“They initially donated their first million dollars on the 25th of February when Ukraine got invaded; they’ve now raised close to $10 million dollars,” he reported of the Knights.
Turner added the funds are specifically helping refugees who have fled Ukraine during the brutal war with Russia.
“One hundred percent is going to Knights Councils we have in Poland; there’s over 7,000 Knights members in Poland,” he noted. “All the money’s being used to provide temporary shelters — they call them ‘mercy huts’ — that they’re erecting on their border, for food, providing medical supplies, clothing and religious supplies. There is no overhead involved, this is money going directly to the Polish Knights of Columbus that know exactly where the need is the greatest and how to deploy it there.”
The fundraising efforts going on among Gilmer County churches to help the refugees is certainly ecumenical in spirit.
The Rev. David Smedley of Hope Lutheran said recently the church raised close to $4,000, and added “checks are still coming in” after an appeal to the congregation.
“Lutheran World Relief is working with relief agencies in Poland, Slovakia, Moldova, Romania and I can’t remember where else,” he said of refugee destinations. “Social service agencies there are working directly with refugees. Our denomination is certainly doing everything we can to help the people that are coming across the borders.”
Bill Ford of Cartecay United Methodist Church said the church used its friendship with First Methodist to raise $725.
“We caught ‘em as they were coming out (of the worship service),” said Ford of the April 3 hot dog lunch in the portico of the larger church. “The choir was practicing too. They were going until 2 o’clock, so it was like, ‘What can we eat? We can eat a hot dog for Ukraine.’”
long with others giving within the Cartecay fellowship, the church was able to send $1,200 to the United Methodist Committee on Relief.
“They knew what it was for, and we were basically trading hot dogs for donations,” Ford said. “Given that, because it was going to UMCOR — and that 100 percent of the stuff that goes to UMCOR is designated (for an area of need) — I think many of them gave for the Ukrainian people.”
For East Ellijay Baptist Church, the fundraising centered on the interior of Ukraine. The Rev. Chad Kelly said “an unusual year” led to an outpouring of support for the embattled nation.
“We had just a really large amount of foreign missions giving,” he said. “We do a quarterly foreign missions offering, that’s how we support our missionaries. It was to the point where we were looking for ways to get our money into the field in some way, and one of our guys on the committee said he felt we ought to use some of that money for Ukraine and the efforts there.”
After research, it was learned Samaritan’s Purse had a field hospital in Lviv (pronounced La-VEEV), a city in Ukraine.
“That’s what (the missions committee) recommended to the church, and we also took up a love offering,” he said. “So we were able to send about $11,000 to support that. We were just kinda blown away by how that went. That’s about as much ‘boots on the ground’ help that you can do. There’s other ways we could’ve channeled those funds, but that’s the way we went.”
Turner added, “I think it’s great that so many of the churches in the community are participating and trying to help in this humanitarian crisis.”