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Within six months of the Berlin Wall coming down, Fr. Duran was on a “fact-finding” mission in eastern Europe, ready to fulfill a longtime hope and dream of establishing Miles Jesu in that region of the world. Our first community in Ukraine (for men) was started in L’viv in 1990 and was followed shortly by a women’s community.
This article is taken from an interview with Theresa and Halia, Miles Jesu members who worked together to found our L’viv soup kitchen in 1995 and continue to keep it going.
When Father was in L’viv once at the very beginning of Miles Jesu’s foundation there, there was a woman on the street begging and he gave her a donation, and she asked him, “Will you be here tomorrow?.” Father promised her that one day he would open a soup kitchen where she could come and eat all the time.
And he never forgot that promise. We have little kids that come in, a whole bunch of little kids, and then the children can eat at the tables. There’s also a ‘take out’ window where we hand food out to people who take the food home with them.
We use $1250 a month to feed 300 people, we can feed more, but we need more funds. Of those we feed, 178 of them are children up to 16 years old and 120 are invalid soldiers from WWII, handicapped children, families with many kids, lonely old people and the homeless.
We feed people every day—Feast days, Christmas, Easter, Sundays, it’s never closed. And it’s open to anyone. The poor were very thankful during the Easter season for the Easter baskets which contained sausage, bread, eggs, etc. If it wasn’t for Miles Jesu, these people wouldn’t have had anything to bless and eat.
The men come first, we have a half hour break, they go, and then the women come. Men and boys and then women and girls.
A lot of little kids come in because their parents send them in to beg. And some of these same little kids are daughters of parents who actually sell them. In several families i have met, the fathers are gone and the mothers actually sell their daughters. I mean all of them. These girls come into the soup kitchen to get something to eat and because we give the family something to eat, they don’t do this to their own kids.
Once we were in some government office waiting, and a woman came in with a cane and when she saw us she came up to us and started kissing us and thanking us and saying, “Without your help I wouldn’t have anything to eat at home.” And this happens a lot now. We really need more help, more financial help, because we could help many more people if there was not such a shortage of funds.
There’s a family with twelve children that comes every day. They’re really a beautiful family and so polite. Because abortions in Ukraine are very high, i’m really glad we can help these large families.
We get the poor people to pray for any of our intentions. Like whenever Father is sick or in the hospital we tell the people to pray for Father, that he’s going to have an operation. Father has been to the soup kitchen. A lot of these older women will start crying and they’ll really pray. I really think that a lot of things that God is blessing Miles Jesu with is because of these poor people around the world that we’re helping.
And also there at the soup kitchen we give out a lot of literature. For pro-life, for prayer. Everybody prays before the meal, whoever’s in the building, and they say the Our Father, the Hail Mary together, and then they eat. We give out a lot of literature and rosaries at the soup kitchen.
Halia, the director of the soup kitchen, never shows any repulsion away from the people. She loves them! Really. She can tell me about everybody that’s coming in, about their medical problems, about how many children are in their family or if there are invalids in their family — she knows everything about them! People come to us when they need medicines. We look for crutches and even wheelchairs. One invalid came in crying because somebody had stolen his wheelchair and we were able to get another wheelchair. So it’s not only a soup kitchen ... it’s a distribution center for evangelization, pro-life materials, medicines and food.
Would you consider making a donation to support the Miles Jesu Missions? You can make a donation online or call us at 1-800-654-7944.
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