“My husband and I got married a year ago, and [we] were choosing a place for family life,” began Anya. “We selected the city of Hostomel. We decided that this was the place where we would like to live and bring up our children in the future.”

Anya and her husband, Sasha, served a lot in the church. They created a music team and were planning a big concert for Easter. 

“On February 24,” continued Anya, “my sister called me and said, ‘War has started!’

I looked out of the window and realised that people [had] packed everything to leave the city. There was silence in Hostomel until 1 o’clock. Then the Antonov Airport was bombed.”

The explosions were very powerful, so powerful that everything in the apartment shook. 

“I just sat and prayed all day,” explained Anya.

Sasha was able to leave work and finally reached his home at 9 p.m., thanks to somebody with a car who picked him up on the roadside.

Anya and Sasha hugged, prayed, and began to decide what to do next. The first night, they did not fall asleep for one minute. The explosions became stronger and closer.

“On the third day, we closed our apartment and went away. Russian soldiers surrounded us but did not touch us. God protected all of us,” said Sasha. “Many cars were shot down … and we needed to [fill] our car with fuel. We trusted God and knew He would send us angels who would hide us from the bullets and show us the way to flee. Finally, we found a friend who gave us the fuel for our car. Thus, we began our dangerous trip towards the border.”

Adrian Duré, producer and documentary filmmaker for Hope Media Europe, and his team were at the border between Ukraine and Romania during these recent days and produced a few stories of people entering into Europe and looking for safe places on our continent.

Duré and his team got a request from Hope Channel International to do a mini-series of short films focused on stories of people leaving the country.

This series is a part of the global Hope Channel and ADRA campaign called “HOPE FOR UKRAINE”.

This article was originally published on the Inter-European Division’s news site