Yesterday morning, one of the Sisters drove Sister Veronica and me to the train station in Przesmyl. Most of the refugees are brought to the station by volunteers from all over the world.  I've met wonderful people from Japan, Northern Ireland, Scotland, France, Italy, Germany,  the United States and even Mozambique just to mention a few. Some arrive solo like me, but others come as representatives of  organizations such as Good Samaritans, Jehovah Witness, Catholic Charities, and many Christian and Jewish church groups.  I am amazed at connected we are, united by our desire to help those who are being persecuted and as we Sisters of Saint Joseph call them, "our dear neighbors". I loved seeing priests with sleeves rolled up,  Franciscans and Sisters working in the midst of the people and how I wished that I spoke Ukrainian!

Volunteers help in any way they can:  cooking meals, giving directions, using their cellphones to call the numbers on the papers clutched by the refugees and helping to carry belongings.  People arrive in large groups as the buses and trains empty.  I used the word "relief" in earlier posts. because it is the most common expression on the faces upon arrival. One woman who spoke English started to cry as she said it is so different here:  "we are being greeted so warmly and then, she looked to the East, and said "there we have lost everything.  There are only bombs and demolished buildings".   The refugees shake their heads in disbelief when they find out all the trains, taxis and buses are free to take them wherever they need to go:  Germany, Cracow, Gdansk:  any city where there are either friends, relatives or more opportunities for work and residence.  Przesmyl is a small town with limited resources, however, the townspeople are at the station helping and even cleaning up the debris from the crowds.  Are we surprised? I am so proud of my heritage.

What other stories can I share with you today that you might be one with me in this journey?  So many tear at my  heart. and yet there is a universality to this experience of displacement.  As I watch the Ukrainians walking with drooping shoulders and faces showing strength, yet confusion and numbness at the same time,  I remember vivid pictures of other peoples who were forced out of their homes.  Prior to coming, parents had to make gut wrenching decisions. This is what I heard over and over from the young mothers traveling with their children and elderly relatives.  "Do we stay in the Ukraine or journey into the unknown with our children?  If we stay, our children will bear the lasting scars of what they are seeing and hearing.  I witness these effects on the children who are staying with us in the convent:  they are startled by every fast movement and noise. Yet leaving for these women means saying good bye to their husbands or  elderly parents who are not strong enough for the journey. How do you say goodbye not knowing if you will ever embrace them again or tend to their wounds if they are injured fighting.   For many the choice is made with a sigh of resignation and they come.  The lines from Deuteronomy are at the core of these gut wrenching decisions:  "...choose life, that both you and your seed may live".  Deuteronomy 30:19. 

For some, they make the decision to return.  Sister Christina, a Sister who has spent many years teaching in the Ukraine, cries as we stand watching families enter the trains heading to Ukraine.  Why are they going back, I ask he?  She tells me that the men want to return to fight and they don't want to leave the wives with the children to fend for themselves.  So, they return to fight for their country.  Another woman who spoke English tells me that she was working in Poland when the war broke out and now, she wants to return because her parents are there.  She will join the war effort. The love and pride for their country is palpable in the train station as I listen to a man playing the national anthem on an accordion.  Some begin to sing and a man walking by waves a Ukrainian flag. 

Last night several Sisters and I returned to the train station to see if there were any women and children who needed housing and to bring them back to the convent.  Here's one more story with a lighter note.  A younger man handed his baby to Sister Veronica so he could go and get a ticket for the train.  If you're wondering how a man was allowed to leave, men who have four children or a child with special needs are allowed to leave the Ukraine.  When he didn't return for quite a while, the Sisters teased Sister Veronica and said maybe she would be the child's godmother.  Thank goodness, he did come back. We waited for two more trains to empty.   When they arrived, we gathered a few families, tried to squeeze them and their belongings into cars and two of us walked home.  

This is an image I painted yesterday.