Out of the House and Home to Israel
The Fellowship | June 25, 2020
Meet Angelina. This sweet Jewish girl has endured many hardships during her seventeen years. Born with cerebral palsy and intellectual disabilities, Angelina is wheelchair-bound. She had also never left her home her entire life.
Growing up in Uzbekistan, a country that has become primarily Muslim and quite nationalistic since the fall of the Soviet Union, hasn’t been easy for Angelina and her family, either. Her family consists of three generations of women – including her 73-year-old grandmother Larisa whose pension supports the whole family and her 50-year-old mother Albina whose sole job is caring for Angelina.
Albina and Larisa knew that making aliyah (immigrating to Israel) would not only allow for better medical care for Angelina, it would also allow their Jewish family to live and worship as God wants them to. However, no other organizations could provide the care that Angelina would need in order to make the move to Israel.
That’s when The Fellowship – and our faithful supporters – stepped in.
We provided an ambulance to take Angelina to the Israeli consulate – her first time leaving the house since her birth – and helped the family prepare the needed documents. The ambulance then took the family to the airport and a Fellowship Freedom Flight, on which special arrangements allowed Angelina to lie down.
Once in Israel, The Fellowship welcomed Angelina and her family – new Israelis who were finally home! Our aliyah coordinator Regina welcomed the family, but was alarmed at Angelina’s appearance. “I did not sleep for two days after I met them in the airport,” Regina says. “The girl was actually grey because she had never left her house.”
The Fellowship has helped the family settle. And another new olim (immigrant) family from Belarus – a family with two disabled children – has befriended them.
The medical treatment Angelina receives in Israel has saved her life. But Israeli medicine has already saved the lives of her mother and grandmother, as well.
Shortly after arriving in Israel, both Larisa and Albina were diagnosed with cancer. Regina tells us that “both went through extensive medical examinations and life-saving operations. I am in touch with them until today. With tears and emotion they recently said to me that it is thanks to The Fellowship that they are alive.”
Yes, thanks to you, not only have three lives been changed, three lives have been saved.