By Ray Scippa

Before retiring from ConocoPhillips in March 2018, Tim Cornelson had a well-deserved reputation for always being the first one to step up and ask the CEO a question during town hall meetings. He was gregarious, engaged and always looking to spark a good conversation.

Like many ConocoPhillips retirees, Tim shifted his focus from business matters to helping others in need.

In 2022, the plight of Ukrainian refugees caught his attention.

“I had watched so much news that my heart was aching over what was going on [in Ukraine],” he said.

Recalling a trip to Krakow, Poland 25 years ago, Tim decided he would go there and do something to help Ukrainian refugees. He started reaching out to mission agencies in the area.

“Everyone said, please don’t come. We don’t need outside help. You’ll just drag us down.”

He understood. Often volunteers show up with a lot of needs that no one has time for. But Tim was still determined to do something. He took a few days to “get neutral” and help himself discern if it was just the sheer excitement of the idea driving him.

A week later he remained convinced that he needed to do something.

“I went to Home Depot and brought a bright yellow safety vest like you see on TV,” he said.

One of the people he had reached out to early in the process told him about European Initiative, a Christian Evangelical ministry in Eastern Europe that had pivoted to taking food into Western Ukraine. When Tim contacted them, he was told, “yes, we need drivers.”

Two days later, Tim flew to Budapest. Someone from the ministry met him at the airport, gave him a ride to his hotel and told him where to meet at five the next morning.

“You’re just thrust into it,” he said. “I was paired with Mark from England and we made the drive through Slovakia and into Uzhhorod, in far Western Ukraine. We drove supplies in, dropped them off and drove back to Budapest to load up again.”

It was a four-hour drive one way. Crossing the border from Slovakia to Ukraine took two hours the first day. From there it was five minutes to the Nehemiah Center where 50-60 refugees were housed. The center also serves as a distribution point for another 50 nearby churches housing refugees.

Volunteers unload supplies at the Nehemiah Center in Ukraine. 

For each trip, Tim and Mark packed their van with two metric tons of food, including rice, canned meat, coffee, flour and other essentials. They made their first delivery on a Friday; when they arrived on Saturday, everything they had delivered the day before had been distributed.

Purchasing the food for each trip required as much as five hours at the METRO store in Budapest, a warehouse store much like a Costco or Sam’s Club in the U.S.

“There were four of us shopping and typically, we took everything on the shelf in each category at the low price point,” Tim said. “The total came to about $6,000 a van for the two metric tons of food.”

After making three runs, including one alone, Tim felt terrible that his time was up, and he had to leave.

“When I got home, I wrote to let them know I’d like to help more. I’m saddened that the conflict continues to go on. It’s hard thinking, I’m done, but the problem isn’t. If I get the opportunity to go back one more time, I’ll do that. It was long days, lots of driving, early starts, but in the moment, it didn’t seem hard, and I never felt at risk. They told me if I ever felt nervous to let them know and we could stop. I’ll tell you when I felt nervous was after landing back in Houston and getting on Interstate 59.”