WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Texas — Three weeks ago, Jeff Teasdale and Debrah Candelas set out to help Ukrainian refugees heading to Poland to escape Russia's military attacks.
They traveled to a town just outside Krakow, Poland. From there, they went daily to the Polish-Ukrainian border to help where they could. Candelas, a nurse, has medical training. Teasdale has helped in natural disaster zones in Texas.
"In my experience, you know, a person or maybe a family have a traumatic event, but around them, everything else remains the same. So while they're dealing with the one thing, everything else is as they have known it, and in this case, that is not true of anything," Candelas said. "Nothing is untouched. And so the scope is much, much larger and all-encompassing."
Candelas and Teasdale signed up to help through a French agency but, a few days after arriving, shifted gears to help the Polish National Guard and another group. With that second group, the two volunteered to go pick up more than 40 children in Chernihiv, Ukraine, nearly 600 miles away.
Mechanical problems caused delays, so they missed the pickup. The kids were helped by somebody else, but the couple continued on to Chernihiv with various supplies in a reformed city bus.
"You have a Polish guy, an Irish guy, a Dutch guy and two Texans driving a German bus through a Russian war zone," Teasdale said. "And it sounds like the beginning of a great joke, but it was the true story of something that actually happened."
PHOTO: Central Texas couple returns home after visiting Poland
Teasdale said what should have been a 12-hour drive to get to Chernihiv actually took three days. The group was able to pick up nearly 30 adults who needed to get to Poland and brought them back in a caravan, eventually leaving the city bus to be repaired with the leader of the group and a military escort.
The entire mission, as Teasdale called it, took about six days.
"They actually took us on a tour, put us in the bus and drove us around through some various locations in the city," Teasdale said. "I'm convinced that there is not a single location in that city that you can't stand and look and see some kind of damage from shelling or missile attacks, things of that nature."
Candelas and Teasdale took donations with them, many for children, including puzzles, bubbles and candy. The two also raised a few thousand dollars via a GoFundMe to help with expenses. They donated the remaining money to the organization that sent the caravan to Chernihiv.
"In addition to targeting civilians and civilian neighborhoods, [the Russians] targeted hospitals and every hospital in town, grocery stores, libraries, dentist offices, football stadiums, things that made it a little bit more difficult for the people in Chernihiv to kind of go about their daily functions," Teasdale said.
"You fear for what might happen, but [Ukrainians] are not letting it stop them there. They're going to fight. And the the fortitude of the people is heartwarming," Candelas said.
The couple spent their Easter holiday driving back to Poland. Despite the destruction around them, they saw signs of hope.
"They're going about planting their flowers," Candelas said. "This is the time of year that they plant their flowers and Chernihiv has decided that they're going to look to plant all the flowers like they normally do, and they're going to have their celebrations like they normally do. ... They go to the graves and clean them, tidy up around the graves and decorate them and so forth. And there wasn't any sign that that wasn't going to happen, even though there is some great concern that there were some landmines that were left in the cemeteries."
The couple plans to continue donating supplies but after visiting the border and talking with the fighters in Ukraine, Candelas and Teasdale plan to source and send helmets and bulletproof vests to the country instead.
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