From war to SC, Ukrainian family counts blessings on first Christmas in America

This could be a rough holiday season for the Mazur family.

It’s the first Christmas this Ukrainian family of five has spent in America after they fled Russian bombs and the war back home to seek a safer life in suburban Chapin. The family — dad Alex, mom Olga and kids Ilia, Kate and Vicki — will miss out on some of their usual Ukrainian holiday traditions. But after a traumatic year for the Mazurs and the rest of their country, they are spending this season counting their blessings.

“We get invited to a lot of places,” Olga told The State earlier this month, although at the time the Mazurs had no firm plans for where they would celebrate their first Christmas in the U.S. “We’re open to celebrating anywhere.”

Despite their struggles with everything from the language to the comparatively warm Southern winter, the Mazurs have also found a welcoming home in the Midlands since they arrived four months ago thanks to a local sponsor. Members of a local church helped the family find a place to live, to work and to celebrate being together at this time of year in spite of war and dislocation.

The State interviewed the Mazurs at their new Chapin home with the assistance of a Russian-language interpreter to overcome the language barrier.

“We’re adjusting. We feel warm, safe and secure, (but) we need to adjust to some things better,” Olga Mazur said. “Our biggest problem is the language. It’s a different climate than we’re used to in South Carolina. We were looking forward to the cold and snow, and we know that’s not here.”

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That kind of weather is back home, but so is a lot more danger. After Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February, a military airport was bombed near their hometown of Khmelnytskyi, and the family became nervous the nuclear power plant near their home could become a target.

“We had friends whose homes were totally or partially destroyed,” Olga said. “They said leave while you can. Don’t wait for tragedy.”

Olga and the children — ages 21, 16 and 10 — moved to neighboring Moldova to stay with Alex’s mother, initially expecting the conflict to last a few days or weeks at the most. As the war instead dragged on for months, the family were later admitted to Switzerland for up to a year.

Meanwhile, Alex stayed behind, continuing to work as a computer engineer for the local school system. His job was to keep local students connected when schools switched to remote learning during the war.

“Every day, several times a day, the sirens would blare,” he said. “We had to leave our homes and find shelter in basements.”

There were also practical reasons why Alex Mazur stayed behind. The Ukrainian government prohibited able-bodied adult men from leaving the country as it braced for a fully-mobilized nationwide conflict with the invading Russians. It was months before Alex was able to join his family in Switzerland. He was ultimately able to leave Ukraine because he is a primary caregiver for his oldest son, Ilia, who has spina bifida that limits his mobility.

”Ilia went back from Switzerland to prove he has a handicap so the government agency would let (Alex) leave,” Olga remembers.

Once the Mazurs were reunited in Switzerland, the family was able to get admitted to the United States through the Uniting for Ukraine program, a federal government initiative set up after the invasion to help relocate Ukrainian families through a sponsorship program that paired them with Americans prepared to help out.

That’s where Chuck and Wynelle Middlebrooks come in. The retired Chapin couple had some connections to Eastern Europe, having previously done mission work in Alex Mazur’s mother’s homeland of Moldova.

“We were watching the news like everybody else, when they announced they would be bringing people here,” Chuck Middlebrooks remembers. The couple decided they wanted to help, and eventually made contact with the Mazurs through a Ukrainian church in Spartanburg that was looking for someone to sponsor families escaping the war.

With the Middlebrooks’ support, the family quickly got approval to come to America, Lake Murray Country to be specific.

”I was talking to him on the phone one night when he got a text that his airline travel had been approved,” Middlebrooks said. “He said, ‘I just got my travel authorization.’”

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The Mazurs arrived in the U.S. in August, when the local faith community jumped into action to make sure they had everything they needed to feel welcome.

“It was like, ‘I’ve got a table, you’ve got a chair, someone else had forks and plates,’” said Alice Tenny, a member of Chapin Baptist.

Tenny got involved with the family when her pastor asked her to help out, unaware that she spoke fluent Russian. The Mazurs, like many in their country, are bilingual in Russian and Ukrainian. Tenny ultimately helped facilitate the interviews for this story.

One member of the circle of welcome was even able to provide a home “dedicated to God,” Tenny said.

“The biggest thing was finding a place to take them, and then somebody stepped forward,” Middlebrooks said, adding he sees the Mazurs every week now at church. “Another community service helped with the rent. A lot of people have come forward to help out with this.”

The Mazurs aren’t alone in needing the help. The Columbia resettlement office of Lutheran Services Carolinas, which provides a range of services to refugees, has assisted 70 Ukrainian citizens in moving to the Midlands this year, and at least 400 have been settled statewide.

Those numbers only include those Ukrainians who have taken advantage of their services, said resettlement director Seth Hershberger.

Uniting for Ukraine is different from some other refugee admissions in that it depends on private sponsors to admit Ukrainians to the U.S. Refugees from other parts of the world depend more on agencies like Lutheran Services to met their needs once they arrive in the country.

“The instant they get here, we pick them up at the airport, find them housing, help them in getting food, jobs, medical assistance, the whole range of services to get them self-sufficient,” Hershberger said. “And that’s what we’re always pushing them to do. Self-sufficiency.”

Last year, the priority was different as Lutheran Services helped resettle dozens of Afghans after the Taliban takeover of that country, many more of whom were dependent on direct government services.

Middlebrooks said he was partly inspired to assist Ukrainians fleeing war by another mission he served in Greece, where he primarily assisted people fleeing Afghanistan and Iran who had made their way to Europe.

“They had to have more provided for them,” he said.

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The Mazur family have gotten support locally from the congregation at Chapin Baptist, along with support from St. Francis of Assisi Episcopal, First Presbyterian of Columbia, and the We Care Food Distribution Center in Chapin.

Olga said the family was surprised at how international the Midlands of South Carolina are, meeting with other Eastern Europeans through their sponsors and community supporters. But they have also faced the challenge of sorting out their living situation in the Chapin area and trying to find work despite the language barrier.

“If it wasn’t for the support we’ve received, it wouldn’t be possible,” Olga said.

Everything is different here, from the groceries to the weight system used to measure the Mazur family’s produce. They have had to get used to telling the temperature in Fahrenheit and placing the day and month in different places in the date (12/25/2022 instead of 25/12/2022).

Alex is now working in a warehouse while Ilia looks to get back into college and Olga works on her English to get a new job. Kate and Vicki are settling into local schools as best they can, the older girl at Chapin High and the younger at Chapin Intermediate.

Even with all the community support the family has received, the Mazurs say they will miss the chance to visit relatives or even go out singing traditional Ukrainian carols. But they’re getting used to what Christmas in America is like. When asked what she likes best about living in the U.S., 10-year-old Vicki said she likes that we “decorate the tree on all sides,” including the one in the corner of the Mazurs’ living room.

“The Christmas decorations go up early,” Olga said. “They’re up all over, so we get excited.”

And they know things are still tough back home. “There’s no electricity, no heat, no water,” Olga said. “Prices are high, people are losing income and the sirens continue.”

For now, the family are unsure when or if they will be able to go back, adding another level of melancholy to this holiday season.

Alex said he was grateful to “the circle of welcome and the kindness of people within the church” for helping the family settle into their new home.

Eventually, the Mazurs settled on their holiday plans: a Christmas Eve service and dinner with friends in Chapin, then a trip to Spartanburg to visit a Ukrainian church on Christmas Day. All that after the family went out this week singing their traditional Christmas carols.