Triangle chefs, former soldier called to help Ukraine: 'We have to do something'

Watching the news from his home in Hillsborough, Eric Gephart's pulse began to race. He watched as thousands of Ukrainians were forced from their homes to begin a new life as a refugee. At the same time, he saw thousands of Russian soldiers, doing their jobs to make sure that horrible transition became a reality.

This talented chef thought, “Those Russian soldiers will end up eating better than the refugees!”

He was determined not to let that happen.

Gephart called his fellow chef, Matt Fox, who owns the Wooden Nickel. “We’ve got to do something,” he said.

And something they did.

They flew to Poland and on to the Ukrainian border, where for the last few weeks they have set-up shop and fed thousands. Literally thousands.

Fox beamed, “One day we made 10,000 sandwiches. I set up an assembly line, and we were making 1,000 sandwiches an hour. 1,000! Man it was crazy.”

Because necessity is the mother of invention, they found it necessary to help the mothers.

“We saw mothers coming across the border with little children, infants. They had no food. Yeah, think about that,” Gephart told me.

“So, we learned how to make baby food.”

Now these two have joined forces with others to do even more. They drive into Ukraine most everyday to make a delivery.

Today might be food. Tomorrow, blankets for an orphanage. Next week helping to replace a clean water system destroyed by Russians. The next day a generator.

Whatever it takes.

“We cross the border loaded up, We return with a car full of people. We just want to help.”

We just want to help.

It’s a refrain I heard for weeks before I left Raleigh for this assignment and have continued to hear since we landed in Poland.

Earlier today, I met Brian Davis from Cumberland County. Davis is in Warsaw volunteering with Baptists on Mission. A veteran of many deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne, he's committed to helping any way he can.

“I can’t change the world, but I can change the six inches around me.," he says. "And tomorrow I can change six more, and the next day six more. Maybe with those little changes along the way, someone else hears about it and they change another six inches, and before long someone has been helped. If I can do that, so can others.”

Davis blinked back tears as he explained, “If we truly want to be the hands and feet of Christ, (again) we have to do something.”

As Davis continues his work, so does the work of Gephart, Fox and their colleagues. Today they are in Lviv, Ukraine, installing showers, finding water and helping children pack gauze for first aid kits.

​Yes, helping children pack gauze for first aid kits.

The six inches around each of them continues to spread like ripples on a pond until the pond becomes a lake, the lake a river, the river an ocean.

Change can and does happen.

To those who are served and those doing the serving.

As the relentless war against Ukraine by Russia rages, people continue to be displaced. People continue to be slaughtered. And people continue to answer a call to action in their own way, all motivated by their own declaration: “I’ve got to do something.”

Even if it's the most unimaginable.