Members Travel to Hungary to Give Aid to Fleeing Ukrainians

Apr 29, 2022

Two members of Atascocita Lutheran Church (ALC), Dr. Steve Beyer and his son, Nathan, traveled over spring break to the border of Hungary and Ukraine to give aid to families crossing the border into Hungary. Nathan Beyer is from Ukraine and was adopted by Dr. Steve and Chris Beyer. The letter below was written by Dr. Beyer to his congregation. 

Nathan is the third person from the right. March 20, 2022. 

To our ALC Family:

First of all, we want to thank all of you for your prayers as Nathan and I decided to travel to Eastern Europe a few weeks ago. Pastor Brian has done a great job praying for the Ukrainian situation and Putin at our services for a month now. Initially, this was a very unknown and uneasy situation for us. We tried to make contacts in Europe before we left (even with Lutheran World Relief) but with no luck. We decided to travel on our own to help out as much as possible at the Ukrainian border.

We decided to go to Hungary for several reasons and flew into Budapest. We purposely rented a station wagon so we could carry supplies or immigrants if necessary. As we drove further and further east (over 3 1⁄2 hours), the traffic eerily became almost nonexistent. We finally got to the small border town and found a site where refugees were being brought in vans. At this remote site, we ended up assisting with Ukrainians as they were unloaded from vans, then went back to a city and bought supplies, and also took two Ukrainians to the Romanian border and dropped them off on a three hour round trip.

The next day Nathan and I woke up at 5:30 am and decided to go to a different border town called Zahony, where a train from Ukraine arrived about every three hours. They put Nathan and me to work by 7:30 am in the immigration tent, wearing Police badges, where Ukrainians without paperwork arrived and waited (sometimes for hours). We helped carry luggage, served candy, sandwiches, meals, and drinks. We also passed out diapers, work information, and eventually Bibles, and took care of pets. Nathan and I also went to the grocery store everyday and bought supplies. The first night we ended up leaving at 11:00 pm and had an hour drive to our hotel and saw only one vehicle on the road during the drive. We did the same for the next three days but left at 8-9 pm each night. We felt welcomed and very appreciated for being there and Nathan met many Ukrainians from the country from which he was adopted.

The consensus of most of the people we spoke with was that with better world leadership this tragic war could have been prevented. We have many fond memories of the generous people of Hungary and the hundreds of Ukrainians who seemed to appreciate our help. Please keep them in your prayers so they can return to their homes one day soon.

~Nathan and Steve Beyer