ROMANIA — She is from Cluj-Napoca, Romania and now lives in Ireland. A few weeks ago, Ester Studnicka came to Romania together with her husband for a short vacation. Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine started and the little vacation transformed into a volunteer work at Kairos Agency in Suceava. Their calling and mission is in the medical field. Ever since she is here, Ester saw many situations of Ukrainian refugees that impressed her to tears.

Eszter Studnicka, volunteer, medical assistant – Ireland:

I think she took half of my heart. It is a very young lady, 19 years old, with renal insufficiency and many other problems. Poor lady, without talking any foreign language, English or something else, together with her mother and just a few items… She had no idea what is happening with her. I saw her like my daughter. I grew close to her and her mother. We are in process of transferring her to Iași, to get her ready for a renal transplant and more medical interventions she needs. They are not Christians, I can not preach to them, but I can love them.

There are a lot of things and sorrows that we can share with them and even if you don’t speak their language, you can feel with them. There are other cases. There is a lady with chemo and after a long amount of time we found out she needs chemotherapy. Then, in a couple of days we had to find a solution to help her. There was a church here in Suceava that helped us a lot, I don’t know them, only a few persons. There is Cristina Ungureanu, a medical assistant here at the hospital that helped us enormously.

I want to say I saw goodness and kindness at doctors that I have never seen before. I was amazed of how much time they spent with patients and how much they helped. I thanked them for their help, which was huge, and wanted to pay myself for their time. And they said: ‘No, no, no! This is the least I could do for these people and I wanted to help in a way.’ So I insisted: ‘But still, it’s your time.’ And she said to me: ‘How about you? You time isn’t valuable?’ And I said: ‘Of course, but it was my choice to do so, it was my decision to come here and help.’ ‘So is my decision to help,’ said the doctor to me. Then I just said: ‘Thank you, Lord!’ In the end, we didn’t have to pay anything for a very expensive and complicate procedure.

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