Churches Help Refugees at Romanian Border

SIGHETUL MARMATIEI, ROMANIA — Every day, hundreds of refugees are entering the Romania border through Sighetul Marmatiei Custom. Some of them are only transiting the country, other families choose to stay in Baia-Mare.

Dinu Onea, Pastor, the Church of Faith Logos Baia Mare, Romania:

Here in Baia Mare I can say that there is a big wave of refugees every day hundreds are entering the country, probably I can say thousands. At Sighet border crossing, they are being welcomed very good, they have food, personal needs. Many churches and organizations are involved in their transport to the airport, to the train stations, to other cities or to other border crossings from which they will travel to other countries.

Their needs go from prayers, personal stuff, transit, and some of them choose to stay. I know a few families that decided to stay here in Baia Mare. This is the situation and they keep coming. In the first days of the war, the wealthy people came first, families or just mothers with children that had money to manage the situation, but after the 7th and 8th day of the war, families with a more delicate situation started to arrive and we are trying together with lots of good people to be a help for them.

For this area of the country, believers have organized and helped Ukranian refugees, but also sent help to the war zones in Ukraine.

Dinu Onea:

We, here in Baia Mare, have organized on three areas. First of all, we as a church, organizations that we collaborate with, other churches, we go frequently to Sighet area and we cross the border to Cernauti or Harneu and we bring food, medicines, personal things and materials to the people across the border. So we can cross the border, we have some green corridors and we can go to the cities that are close to our border.

This is one area that we are helping and everyone who wants to get involved can help. So they can send materials to many warehouses that we have here in Baia Mare, we have lots of them now, we, as a church, also have rented a warehouse together with seven other churches where we can store the goods and from there we send them to Ukraine.

Another area is the transit, where we take many refugees and transport them to different parts of the country like Cluj, Bucharest or Oradea. Others want to transit the country to go West, others want to stay. Here we need massive implications, there is a great need, even though we have many people involved. We expect many more people to come in the next days. And last but not least, we need finances. We always have to buy food, we have to buy medicines. We are sending daily to Ukraine trucks filled with products they need in the war zones.

Finally, pastor Dinu Onea says that there is a great need for prayers and fasting.

Dinu Onea:

We pray that God may have mercy on Ukraine and Russia, we pray that God protects the people there. We pray the war to stop, peace to come and everything to come back to normal. This is the most important thing we can do right now.

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Read more news on Christian Ministry, Ukraine, Russia, Disaster Relief, and the Refugee Crisis.

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