Project Spotlight: Rescue Flights for Elderly

The Fellowship  |  January 24, 2023

We already reported about the 100 Ukrainians we brought home recently in December, including elderly who waited months to escape the war zone. They thought of the flight as a miracle, just ask Ella, who says we have helped her by “bringing me light and warming my heart by giving me a chance to get to the Holy Land and be safe.”

‘I’ll Be in a Better Place’

Ella, 76, has lost so much during her lifetime, but recently she gained so much more after getting the chance to immigrate to the Holy Land during Hanukkah on a special Fellowship rescue flight to escape the war-torn nation.

“I never thought that I would need to go through the horror of real war,” Ella says of the war in Ukraine. “This war is not just on the battle fields; it is in the cities. It touches our homes and our lives.”

This is not the only tragedy she’s suffered. Over the years, she has lost so much. She’s lost her only two children—one in a terrible car accident and the other to a devastating illness.

And now, Ella, bedbound after a fall, tells us she had no choice but to risk the horror of war or leave Odesa, the place she was born and lived for most of her life. She’s lost the city that she’s always called home.

Thankfully, because of you and The Fellowship, we’ve stepped in to become her family. And now, she’s found a home in her biblical homeland, Israel.

“I see how much help I got from the Jewish community and from The Fellowship team and volunteers, and it makes me believe that in the Holy Land, in the Jewish state, surrounded by Jewish people, I’ll be in a better place, and will get a chance to live for as long as I still have,” Ella says.

Ella thanks her many friends around the world who have helped her by “bringing me light and warming my heart by giving me a chance to get to the Holy Land and be safe.”