ATLANTA — A metro Atlanta man is back home after helping refugees escape the war in Ukraine. For the past couple of months, he helped transport Ukrainians to Germany and back here to the United States.
Coleman Bailey, with the organization Serving Orphans Worldwide, shared videos from his trip in Ukraine. The videos and photos were just a glimpse of the destruction and aftermath there.
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His organization helps refugees escape hostile environments.
“We work with 64 orphanages around the world. Most of those are in Africa,” Bailey said.
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His latest missionary trip was in Ukraine.
“Our orphanage in Mariupol got blown up,” Bailey said.
For the last two months, he traveled back and forth from Ukraine to Germany to help as many people as he could leave Ukraine.
He just returned to Georgia. “I been here less than 24 hours, so I’m still trying to process everything. This has been the craziest and busiest time of my entire life,” Bailey said.
Coleman said it’s hard to believe the images from Ukraine unless you were there.
“I’ve seen a lot of pain, a lot of hurting people, a lot of sorrow, I’m still trying to process it all,” he said. “It’s just people crying for the first time. They lost this person in their family. Their home was destroyed, but they haven’t had an opportunity to even cry yet. Seeing those people cry for the first time after they’re living through hell for weeks, it’s heartbreaking to see that.”
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Bailey said there were multiple trips back and forth. Often times, they didn’t realize the danger they were getting themselves into.
“Most of the people that we moved, we moved initially from the Eastern Ukraine to Western Ukraine and then from Western Ukraine to Poland, to Germany and even into Spain. I came over here with just a lot of people, a lot of women and children from Mariupol. The men, they still have to stay in Ukraine.”
After one of those rescue missions, Coleman described a moment where he was leading a prayer with the children from Ukraine after they left the country. He said it was a powerful encounter he will never forget.
“One of the kids was praying, and they just said, ‘God, thank you so much that you brought us here. We know our nation is suffering, but thank you for that we’ll never have to hear an air raid siren again. Thank you so much that we’ll never have to go into a bomb shelter again,’” Bailey said.
Bailey said they were able to help about 2,300 people on this trip. They plan on making another trip to Africa to build more orphanages. If you want to help, go to www.soworldwide.org. 100% of the proceeds go to the rescue missions.
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