More than a ‘Trip’

501 Collective in Ukraine

While serving with Fight for Freedom at a food distribution location inside of Ukraine, we were having some slight issues with controlling the crowds.  People cutting in line, pushing to the front, and coming back for seconds before others had received anything.

A couple of Ukrainian female police officers stopped by and helped manage the crowds. It wasn’t necessarily their job. They just saw we could use some help and stepped in. And soon, things were under much better control. Even when an angry citizen would start punching the police officer, she stood there with a smile on her face and kindly ushered them to the back of the line. It was pretty incredible simply to see her self-control and love for helping her people.

She apologized to us for the behavior of some of the people there but we reassured her that we completely understood the heightened emotions within a war-torn country where people were hungry and searching for their next meal. 

Many of us were able to talk to the locals either through broken dialects or Google translate and we were able to get to know the police officers.  And in modern society, that also means, we became friends on social media. 

One of the officers recently reached out to one of our team members asking about connecting her daughter with some of the young ladies on our team to be able to correspond with one another.

It’s a simple thing. But it signals something even greater. That it wasn’t just a trip. A time to go do some ‘good’work and go back home. It was the building of connections and relationships and families that will last a lifetime.