IRMO, S.C. — From South Carolina to Ukraine, one local pastor in Irmo helped thousands of refugees last month.
Raymond Washington volunteers with a group called Gracism Global, which serves people in crisis and bridges cultural and racial divides.
"I got a phone call on a Friday night and basically was told we would love for you to be a part of our team again. You have 72 hours, and we need to know whether you're going to go or not. So, that Monday before I would board a ship to go on a cruise with my wife, I called and told them 'I'm in,'" Washington said.
Washington said in his decades of service, he's never been so close to an immediate war zone.
"We spent time in Budapest, that was our base of operations. We went to the train station in Zahony, where we would be receiving refugees from Ukraine and then we spent some time in Romania, Transylvania to be precise, with some other churches and aid agencies that were serving," Washington said. "We were reasonably safe, but our people that we were having contacts with actually in Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine, they were sending us videos pretty regularly of some horrific things that were happening."
"We're buying groceries, we're feeding these individuals that are fighting for not just their country but their very lives," Washington said.
He said he feels honored to have helped and that as people, we're called to love and accept our brothers and sisters here in South Carolina as well as overseas.