Ukrainian Conversion Stories

Anatoli Pnomarev

Kherson, Ukraine

 

 I was born into a family of believers. It was during the Soviet times when atheism reigned, and Christianity was mocked. In the eyes of many people, my parents and siblings were viewed as enemies of the Soviet regime.

Our family was as poor as it was large.  In addition to me, there were five boys and four girls making twelve of us in all. In spite of the disagreeable position of our family in the society, we lived happily because the values that my father drew from the Bible – love, humility, patience, and faith – created a positive atmosphere in our home and shaped our worldview. These values kept us from getting disillusioned with life.

Our mother did not work outside the home. She had a strong conviction that there is nothing more important in life for a woman then to bring up her children and give them all the attention she could. My mother put all her resourcefulness into the effort of keeping us fed, always managing to cook tasty food out of scarce supply. She never got discouraged in the difficulties. Mother even made clothes for us. The most amazing thing is that we children never felt like we were lacking anything. The love and care of our parents met all our needs.

Father worked very hard from early dawn to sunset on the collective farm.  At the end of his long days of work, when he would arrive home, he always seemed glad to see us. He would spend time with us no matter how tired he was. He would show us that he cared for us by his kind words and wise paternal advice.  My father did not fear to hold an opinion that was different from the society around him, even if he was persecuted for that opinion.  He demonstrated great courage, fortitude and steadfastness, personal qualities that had a profound impact on me.  I consider my parents as heroes of faith.

In 1980 I finished 8^th grade and started working with my father to help our family out financially. At the same time I continued studying at school taking evening classes.

In September of 1983 I was called up for military service in the Soviet Army. They originally planned to send me to the navy, but a certain event seemed to radically change the course of my life.  About this same time, my sister became a believer and left the Komsomol (the Communist youth organization).  This created ill will towards our family, and I was reassigned to Uzbekistan where I was placed in a training program to prepare me for the war in Afghanistan.   

In December of1983, I began serving in Kabul with those responsible for delivering fuel to military machinery on the battlefield. They referred to our group as the brigade who was “sentenced to death.” During the time of my service I was part of a convoy that made 120 trips to battlefields with fuel supplies.  We were aware that any one of these trips could be the last one.  The enemy was desperate to disrupt the fuel supplies by attacking these convoys.  If hit by enemy artillery, the tankers would explode and turn the convoy into a fiery inferno, taking the lives of many men.

When I saw men dying, I often asked myself, “Is this all there is to life?” At moments when I was on the verge of death I thought much about having to face God. To my surprise, right there in Afghanistan, I experienced His presence and His protection, even though I knew I did not deserve it.

As the time of my service was coming to the end, I went through an experience which I will never forget to the end of my days. We were taking 200 tons of fuel over the Salang mountain pass to Kabul. When our column stopped at the block-post, a shell fell right in front of us. We were warned that an ambush of mujahideen (Afghani holy warriors/soldiers) was waiting for us in the pass.  I understood that it was very likely that we would perish in a blaze of fire.  I was struck with dread and horror.  As I gripped my gun, deep in my heart I promised God, “If You’ll spare my life and lead me out of this hell, I will serve You!”

As we followed the ordered to move forward, I was gripped with the terrible anticipation that any moment something horrifying was going to happen. To my surprise we went through the pass without even a single gun shot. I remember the commander asking us, “Who is the talisman here?”  He asked this question because a talisman is a person who brings good luck or charm to a situation.  I, of course, was not the talisman, but because my parents and the church at home were praying for me, I believe God spared us.

I returned home in February of 1986. I thought that the bad times were behind me, but I began to encounter new problems. The memories of war and scenes of death plagued my mind, and I felt guilt over the mistakes and failures of my life.  Furthermore, I lost my sense of purpose in life, and quite honestly, I do not know of anything more devastating to the human heart than to loose all sense of purpose.

I started to look for a purpose to my life.  Out of deep love and respect for my parents, I went to church several times. Every time I heard the pastor preach, the sermon seemed to be speaking directly to me. I was greatly irritated by this. After all, I was certain that I could find a way out of my problems by myself. However, the more I tried to understand life and work my way out of trouble, the more I realized my inability to help myself.

Quite often, I felt reminded by God of the promise I made to Him in Afghanistan.  Instead of understanding that God was reaching out to me and wanted to give me His love, I became angry and hateful, regretting that I had begged God to spare my life back then.

To silence the voice of my conscience and the memory of the past, I started to drink heavily. I lived in this debauched condition for eleven terrible months.  My life felt like a hell on earth twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.  I finally understood that the drinking was not going to help me and started to look for something new. I remember thinking that if I got married, perhaps that would lift me out of my hopelessness and heal the emotional scars left over from the war.  

In 1987 I married Galina, a girl who had been orphaned at the age of seven.  What I failed to understand was that a good marriage comes through wisdom, patience and mutual understanding. I had none of these characteristics. When I recognized that marriage would not be the cure-all for my problems, I put my hope in having children.  I thought that they would provide the joy that I had not discovered in married life.  I loved children and waited eagerly for our firstborn. I was heartbroken when we discovered that we could not have children.  Again my dreams were dashed to the ground, and I wonder what the meaning of my life could possibly be for me. Often during this time, I would come home drunk and inflict even more pain on my wife and parents. Instead of giving my wife the comfort she needed, I realized that I was creating even greater problems for her and everyone.

On one occasion while in a state of intoxication, I asked myself the question, “What is the sense of my life?” Again I could not find the answer. I thought, “What if I live in this condition until I am 60-70 years old?”  That possibility overwhelmed me with horror.  I did not want to live this way another day, much less the rest of my life.  I contemplated suicide.  I heard an evil voice tell me, “Just hang yourself and all the problems will end!” I was ready to do it, but another voice, tender and kind, told me, “Don’t do this! Remember Who you turned to before and Who always came to your help!”

In my despair I concluded that God had no more forgiveness for me. I had committed too much evil and had pushed God aside too long and too often.  A terrible war was going on inside of my heart and head. In my frustration and rage I grabbed my own hair and plucked out a strand of it screaming, “When will there be an end to this?!” I was gripped with fear when I realized that I was totally out of control. The next day was Sunday, so I decided I would go to church and give God a real chance to change my life.

After the service I felt relief and hope. I eagerly waited for the next Sunday to go to church again. When it arrived, it became one of the best days of my life. After the service I briefly looked at the pastor and felt drawn to him like to a magnet. When I stretched out my hand to shake his, he looked me right in the eye – it felt like he was looking into my very soul – and said the crucial words, “I don’t know any other man to whom God would show as much mercy as to you.” At this moment I felt like God was right beside me. I felt like His tender arms helped me kneel down. I sobbed intensely not understanding what was happening to me. These words gushed from my heart, “Give me freedom, Oh God!” At that moment my wife came to me, and she knelt with me before the Lord.  What a great miracle that both of us were converted together.

A week later we were baptized. To our great joy we soon found out that Galina was expecting a baby. I asked God if He would please give us a girl. Months later when I looked into the face of a beautiful baby girl, my heart was filled with delight.  Our joy however was only beginning.  After her we had four more children, two more girls and two boys.

 In 1990, when I was 25 years old, I became the pastor of a church that was started in my home. I became very busy with the work that was connected to this new ministry.  What a different man I had become.  In the past, I had been disillusioned and depressed while I looked for the meaning of life.   But now I had a family and a ministry that kept me busy.  

However we all know that life is not just a constant stream of unmitigated happiness.  Life has its problems and sorrows.  Tragedy struck our home when our 3-year-old son Vanya got sick and died.  My wife and I both took it very hard.  We wondered why God would allow our little son to die at such an early age.  We wonder if God had some special purpose for allowing this sorrow to become a part of our lives.

Later we would receive an answer to our questions.  In 2001, I visited an orphanage.  I will never forget what I felt when little children ran up to me with joy shouting, “Daddy!”  My heart was deeply touched by the fact that these little children who had never seen me before were calling me their father.  I heard an inner voice tell me, “Your son is here in this place.”

This proved to be such a moving experience that my wife and I decided to adopt a child. We adopted a baby boy and called him Vanya. Today he is seven years old and our family dearly loves him. In 2005 we adopted another boy, two-year-old Valik.

Through the experience of adopting these children, I began to feel the call of God to start a new ministry of helping other families adopt orphans.  With help from my friends, I founded an organization called “My Home”.  Today over 75 children have been adopted into good homes as a result of this new ministry.

            I am so glad that many years ago as a young soldier in the Soviet Army that God heard my prayer one night while going through a dangerous mountain pass in Afghanistan.  I am thankful that He spared my life and then gave me a new life in Jesus Christ.  I am grateful that he lifted me out of the despair and depression in which I was engulfed and gave me the joy of the Lord in its place.  I  praise God that he has given me a large family and wonderful ministry.  My new life has only one explanation:  Jesus Christ. 

 

 

Victor

Crimea, Ukraine

 

I was born into a simple village family in 1955.  Because hospitals were not as plentiful as they are now, my mother gave birth to me at home.  One day as she was bringing straw to the cows in the barn, she was suddenly seized with birth pangs and gave birth to me right there on the straw in the barn. 

Our home was fatherless and my mother and I experienced more than our share of difficulties. Life in a simple village without a man leading and caring for the family was not easy.

            When I was brought to the Orthodox Church as an infant to be baptized, the priest accidentally dropped me into a basin of water.  After that, to redeem himself, the priest did something very unusual.  He carried me into the “holy of holies” behind the altar of the Orthodox Church where only the priests go.  My godfather often told me, as a child, “You are special, Victor.  I don’t know what the future has in store for you, but you must be special.” 

During my childhood, I enjoyed taking part in sports even though I had some health problems.  By my teenage years, I was a good athlete.  When I joined the Soviet military as a young man, I was able to get a very good position as a sailor aboard submarine 921, project 641, out of Polyarnye Port in northern Russia. 

One day in 1975, we experienced a tragedy that changed my life.  Our submarine was going through maneuvers in the Mediterranean Sea in an area where there were many mines left over from World War II.  To avoid them, we were instructed to enter and travel through a cave at 150 meters deep.  However we were not the only ones using this strategy to avoid mines.  Suddenly we collided with an American submarine that was coming in the opposite direction! We had no idea that there was another submarine in the area.  The other boat was a small computerized submarine with only two pilots on board.  They were killed instantly, but we survived. 

After the collision, our boats laid in the bottom of that cave for five and a half months.  The generators in the front of our submarine had been damaged, and we had no electricity during these horrendous months and very little food. We lived with constant fear and hopelessness.  Because we lived in complete darkness, my hair turned totally white.  The Soviet government gave up searching for us and my mother received a letter informing her that I had been killed in the line of duty. 

The trauma of living in darkness and hopelessness proved to be too much for many of the sailors.  Of the ninety-five men on board our submarine, forty-three of them died after suffering nervous breakdown and heart-failure.  We were forced to shoot their dead bodies out of the torpedo tubes.

Those weeks and months in the submarine passed like an entire tortuous lifetime.  I can hardly bear to look on the sea even today, for when I look into it, I see the faces of my dead comrades.  I, too had a nervous breakdown, and felt like I was dying.

One day I had a terrifying experience that I still cannot understand.  I was sleeping, and when I got up I looked down and saw my body still lying on the cot.  I seemed to be separated from my body. Suddenly I ascended and rose up through the submarine, through the caves, out of the water, and into the sky.  I felt like I was face to face with some bright golden light.  In that moment, I felt a sort of transcendent peace.  I heard a voice say, “It is still early.  This is not your time.”  I remember thinking, “I don’t want to go!  I want to stay here!”  But in a moment I awoke, and I was back in my body feeling the same old pain, misery and fear as before. 

This experience followed me for years, and I often contemplated on it, trying to discover its meaning.  Later in my life, despite the communist propaganda that surrounded me, I remembered that experience and sought God in the only way I knew.  I would visit the Orthodox Church and even considered myself a believer.

In time, the Soviet fleet decided to disarm a mine field that lay above our submarine, perhaps hoping to find out what had happened to us.  It had been assumed that there had been an explosion, and that we had all perished.  But when the searchers found our cave, they sent underwater divers who discovered our submarine.  When they knocked in Morse code, “Is anyone alive?” on the side of our submarine, they were shocked to hear us return with the answer: “We are alive!” 

That knock electrified us with hope!  What a feeling, after all those dark months in a watery grave, to feel like we had a chance to live.  Soon, rescuers came and lifted our boat.  As we were raised to the surface, all fifty-two of us who had survived passed out because of the change in pressure.  When I awoke, I was wearing a pair of special dark glasses and was lying in bed looking up at a nurse dressed in white.  I asked, “Am I in heaven?”  There was laughter, and then the answer, “No, you’re in the hospital!” 

Eventually I was taken to Leningrad for a time of recovery.  Some doctors had warned us that we would not live for long due to the strain that the ordeal had put upon our health.  These warnings and the memory of my fellow sailors dying before my eyes caused me to live with a great fear and awareness of the eminence of death. 

            Slowly my vision returned and my health improved.  Within a short time, I married and my wife Olga and I started a family.  I held various jobs with a collective farm near our home in the Crimea.  My wife had grown up in a Baptist Christian family but had turned her back on her parent’s faith.  Her parents were frightened by the Communists who had warned believers that they would lose custody of their children if they tried to pass along their faith to them.  Olga’s parents knew that this was no idle threat because they had heard and seen terrible things done against Christians.  Because of their fear of the authorities, they gave very little spiritual instruction and guidance to Olga and her siblings.

As the years went by I felt a deep sadness and emptiness in my heart even though I tried to put up a good front before people.  I was pleasant, and I made people laugh.  I was respected and liked by those who knew me.  However I was drinking heavily, and while my visits to the Orthodox Church made me feel better for a time, soon afterward I would feel the same old emptiness and sorrow within me. 

Once, I was at the cathedral, and was looking up at the cross.  I asked the lady selling the candles, “Why is He up on that cross?  Why is he suffering?  Why?”  Instead of giving me an answer, she began to shout at me and berate me for my ignorance.  When I would mix up the order in which to light the candles, I was sometimes reprimanded for that.  Eventually I stopped going to the Orthodox Church. 

In 1992, our nation experienced a new time of openness, and I began to see Christian programs on television.  My wife and I watched them attentively.  After one of the programs, I remember kneeling and praying that God would heal me and deliver me from my health problems which I was still experiencing.   

My wife too was feeling the pressure of my health problems and especially my drinking. She began to remember small details from her upbringing in a religious family.  She began to attend a Baptist church and repented of her sins and gave her heart to Jesus Christ. 

At first, I was displeased and even outraged by her conversion.  I screamed at her, “Why have you betrayed the Orthodox faith of our fathers!”  I threatened her, and even wanted to burn down her House of Prayer, the church building that she attended.  My behavior was disgusting, and I made our home like a war zone.  Although I treated her so badly, I could not help seeing the difference in her life!  When I would drink, I would still watch the Christian television programs and think about death.  I would often ask God to forgive me for my sinful lifestyle, but I would then again allow my doubts and sin to lead me astray and I would continue my wicked life. 

But God was so merciful and patient to me.  My wife was eventually baptized, and my heart gradually softened.  I began to visit her church.  On my first visit, I didn’t enter the church but stayed outside.  On subsequent visit, I stood on the balcony.  Later, I finally sat in the sanctuary.  I became more and more open to the truth of God.

After one service in October of 1992, I heard an invitation to come and repent and receive Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.  I tried to stand, but it seemed that my body was stuck into the seat.  I failed to go forward.

The next Sunday I again wanted to get up and repent, but again, I felt like my legs lost their power to stand.  Afterwards the pastor spoke with me and urged me to pray and repent. He had noticed my struggle.

Finally on the following Sunday, I knew that I could not live without God and salvation any longer.  I walked into the church and proceeded straight to the front of the church where I knelt and prayed for God’s forgiveness. 

I was expecting to feel some kind of strong emotion.  When my wife had turned to God for salvation, she had experienced a comforting sense of euphoria.

I couldn’t understand why God had not given me this same sense of joy and peace.  Perhaps God had not forgiven me?  Perhaps there was no change?

A week passed and the next Sunday as I was preparing for church, I reached my hand into my pocket.  I felt a pack of cigarettes there, and to my amazement, I realized that I hadn’t smoked all week!  I had never been able to stop smoking, and when I realized what had happened, I suddenly felt a joy and peace come flowing over me!  God had accepted my repentance just as He had promised!  He had delivered me from sin and made me a new creation!  I rejoiced in God!

Other changes became apparent.  I used to steal from my workplace, but I no longer had any desire to steal anything.  The consumption of alcoholic beverages became a thing of the past.  My wife and I began to establish a family based on the principles of God’s Word.  I was baptized in June of 1993. 

Even though these were times of economic difficulty, God met our needs.  I learned how to be a beekeeper and provide for our family.  This kind of work gave me time for my family and for the ministry of the Word.  I am an evangelist and have planted a small Baptist church in our area of Crimea.  I have been able to study the Bible and serve the Lord in many ways. 

God had completely changed me!  People have come asking, “Victor?  Is it really you?”  They cannot believe the difference in my attitude and my behavior.  I tell them that there is a living God who has power to change lives.  We are precious to Him, and He brings us through the various circumstances of our lives for the special purpose of reconciling us to God and granting to us eternal life. 

As for me, I have been forgiven much, and that is why I  love others and believe that God wants to forgive them!  Who would have ever thought that the young man, who sat in the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea in total darkness for over five months in a sunken submarine, would now be living in the light and fellowship of Jesus Christ?  Praise to the God for His mercy and grace! 

 

 

Vasili  

Maryupol, Ukraine

 

I was born in 1960 to parents who were common factory workers. I was the youngest of two sons.  In my early years my parents were heavily occupied in building a new house for our family, and because this project took up most of their free time my brother and I were left mostly to ourselves.  The Bible says that “a child left to himself will bring his parents to shame.”  In my case this is exactly what happened.

Initially I was a good student in school, and my mother was very proud of my academic achievements.  But while I was still a young boy, I began to disobey my parents and often skipped school.  This behavior continued to worsen as I got older.  I had a rebellious nature, and from very early on I wanted my own way.  Many times I was ordered to appear with my parents before the court for unruly children.  There were many complaints from other parents about my appalling influence on their children.  I was naturally a leader and was a powerful influence and example for evil.

Because I hated school, I constantly tried to create problems there.  I even broke the windows of my school during winter, hoping that classes would be canceled because of the cold, but the repairs were made quickly and school went on. 

This is when I decided to do damage that would take much longer to fix.  I set the school on fire!  Some friends and I started a fire in the basement of the school which soon spread to the first floor.  Sure enough, we were out of school for two weeks, and I was very proud of my work, even though the principal of the school nearly got caught in the fire.

Naturally, in time it was discovered that I had instigated this deed, and for the eighth time I was called with my parents before the police.  This time I was sent to a special school for juvenile delinquents.  I was there for seventh and eighth grade, but I failed to make any changes.  In fact I tried to escape thirteen different times but was always caught and brought back.  After being released, I was returned to my home where my waiting parents were hoping that I had been reformed.  Their hopes were not realized.  I was still uncontrollable, and unfortunately I became even worse. 

I became a leader among the local youth that would gather and were involved in mischief.  I was seventeen years old at this time, and five months after my release from the school for delinquents, I got into a serious gang fight at a dance club.  Many were involved in the fight, and many were seriously hurt.  One individual was actually killed.  Four of us received a prison sentence for our involvement in the fight.  For the first time I was sentenced to three years in prison, and this would be but the beginning of a long period of my life spent as a prisoner of the state.

            It turned out that I was the same rebel in prison as I was on the street. I never wanted to submit to orders and was often placed in solitary confinement by the prison authorities.  On one occasion I was part of a group of prisoners who beat up some of the prison helpers who were working for the administration of the prison.  To avoid the punishment that we knew was coming, the twelve of us that were involved, cut our veins open so that we would end up being taken to a hosptal.  Because of my evil ways, I was labeled by the prison authorities as a serious troublemaker and warned that my sentence would be increased if I did not shape up.  These warnings fell on deaf ears; I continued my troublesome ways.

One day we were sent out to work in the rain with inadequate clothing.  We were so angry that we set the prison wood mill on fire.  Information about our behavior traveled to the Donetsk prison authorities, and they sent orders to control us at any cost.  A special police squad was dispatched to put us in order.  It was my first time to experience this kind of wrath from prison officials.  After we troublemakers were separated and beaten we were transferred to other prisons.  I ended up in the Kherson region of Ukraine in solitary confinement. 

I was released after seven months and was met by my mother and father, who again hoped that I would be different.  I sincerely desired to be a better son, and I did not want to disappoint them, but all my efforts were in vain.  Within a few months I broke into an apartment and committed robbery.  As a consequence I was sentenced to another five years of prison in the Nikolaev region.  Again, I was a leader in mischief and a problem for the authorities.  Half of my sentence was spent in solitary confinement.  I also became ill with tuberculosis during this time. 

When it was time for me to be released, I was disgusted with prison life, and I purposed to never return again.  I was free for two years, got married, and even had a son.  For the most part I lived a sober life, and though I occasionally used drugs and alcohol, it was never a serious addiction.  I even had fairly decent job though the wages were low.  But my old habits resurfaced, and trying to improve my circumstances, I turned to the wrong once more and committed another robbery.  Again I was incarcerated in the Donetsk region. 

            During this imprisonment I thought much about my life, and tried in my own power to break the habit of my destructive ways.  I read a lot and worried about what my behavior was doing to myself and to others.  I knew that I had to rethink the direction of my life, and I truly thought that I could change if I tried hard enough. 

            When I was released, I took my family to Siberia, hoping to start over.  In a short time however, I was again arrested for robbery.  I told my wife to go back to Ukraine since there was no one there in Siberia that could help her and support her.  I was so ashamed that I had let down my wife. 

I was given four years in a prison of the Krasnoyarsk region of Russia.  In two years my wife stopped writing me letters, and I also stopped writing her.  I realized that I had no right to make her suffer with me, and I did not judge her for the decision she made.  Eventually, our divorce was finalized. 

            It was also during this prison sentence that I first met believers in Christ.  I went to one of their services and received some literature from them.  They prayed for me, and I left that meeting with a positive impression of them.  Some of my fellow inmates were Christians who witnessed to me, and their good lives also impressed me. But I could not understand them.  I knew that they were talking about something that I did not possess.  I read the New Testament that they gave me, but I still could not understand it. 

During this sentence I corresponded with many women by letter.  At one time I was writing to twelve women who were all very different.  For some reason I was fascinated with female psychology.  Just before my release I wrote to one of those women and told her that I would like to meet her.

On the day of my release, in 1995, she was there to meet me.  Her name was Marina, and I went home with her and met her parents.  Her mother knew that I had been in prison, but not her father.  I was able to make a good impression on her and her family.

When I told her that I needed to go back to my hometown of Maryupol, Ukraine, to take care of some personal matters, Marina was worried that I would not return and insisted on going with me.  She struggled with this fear because she had three children from a previous relationship, and thus she knew that I had the added burden of looking after four more people other than myself.

  Within a year I was again arrested for robbery, and in 1996 I was sentenced to another 8 ½ years.  I was very concerned about Marina, knowing that she was far from home and knew almost no one in Ukraine.  I cared deeply for her and wanted to marry her, and eventually after my release from prison years later, we were married. 

Meanwhile, my life seemed so empty during this time in prison that I began to think again about God and to read Christian booklets. Occasionally, I would talk with Christians who visited the prison, and they would tell me that I needed to repent.

I had seen people in prison come to God and then fall away, and I did not want to be that kind of person.  I would sometimes hear the believers singing and praising the Lord, even during the rain, cold, and snow.  They were prisoners like I was, yet they were different. 

It was during this time that I was writing letters back and forth with a woman who had questions about God.  She was asking me questions that I could not answer, and since I had friends who were visiting the Baptist services in prison, I turned to them for help and advice.  This communication was another experience that forced me to think even more about God and the meaning of my life  

            One evening I was talking with a close friend about these letters that I was writing, and he listened with genuine interest.  We talked about repentance and other spiritual truths.  Finally, we parted and went to bed.  The next morning he was visibly a new person!  I was amazed at the change in his countenance, and I was even more amazed when I learned that he had prayed during the night and repented, calling on Christ to save Him.  His change had a powerful effect on me.  Together we visited a service held by Baptists in our prison.  It was there that I began to realize that I could not help myself.  Only God could change me. 

One night shortly after, I lay in bed and began to pray to God.  I told Him that I realized my inability to change without His help.  I prayed and asked for His forgiveness and for His help to become a new person.  I told Him that I knew that He was the only One who could change me.  After I prayed I felt a feeling of freedom come over me!

I soon began the practice of keeping a Bible by my bed at all times so that I could regularly read and study it.  I started going frequently to the prison “prayer room.”  I would kneel down and pray, and even though I knew that others were looking at me and wondering, I did not care!  I would even sing to the Lord!  I had decided to follow Jesus.  God gave me the deep assurance that He had forgiven all my sins, and I  knew that God had changed me, that He was real, and that others could see the difference in me just as I had seen the difference in my friend. One fellow prisoner even told me, “Vasili, your voice has even changed.”  Of course, there were skeptics who thought that my change was only temporary.  But thank God, they were wrong!

In July 2002 I was released after 23 ½  years behind bars.  This chapter of my life was over, thanks to the power and grace of God!  When I told my family and friends on the outside about the change God had made in my life, they smiled and said, “That’s nice!”  But they did not really understand.

My wife at first seemed fine with the fact that I had become a believer.  She said, “I’m a believer, too.”  But she had never truly repented and committed her life to Christ.  We began to have problems in our relationship.  I told her that she needed to repent, and she would agree and cry, but she could not believe that God would truly help her.

One day at the store where she worked, I saw that she had been dishonest in a transaction.  She had incorrectly set the scales upon which she would weigh the produce.  I saw that she was bothered, and I invited her to come and sit by me, and I encouraged her to examine her heart.  Some time later, I noticed that she had corrected the scales.  I saw a change in her after this, and she began reading the Bible with me.  Soon, she repented and also received salvation from sin. 

My mother was concerned that I would not be able to get a job because of my past, but God miraculously worked it out for me to get a good job.  This too was a testimony to my relatives and others as they saw God working in my life.  One day she told me, “I suppose that I would believe in God, too, if someone would come back from the dead and tell me.”  I told her, “Do you think I was alive all those years?  I was like a dead person!  I should have never come out of prison.”  She agreed that she never expected me to change.  I told her that God wanted my change to be a witness to her.  Before long she too came to the Lord, as did my daughter.

In 2003 God allowed my wife, daughter, mother and I to all be baptized together!  What a blessing that my own change led to changes in my family.  You can imagine my joy as I entered the baptismal waters with them to give public testimony to the mercy, grace and power of Jesus Christ.

I am now involved in prison ministry along with my church, visiting six different prison colonies.  We hold services and many of the administrators know of me for I was in their prisons.  They never expected me to make a lasting change, but now as I go back to minister in these prisons, it is a great testimony to them.  I am so thankful to God for finding me and saving me in such a wonderful way.  He blessed me with a wonderful church, with health, and with a precious family.  Because of all that He has done for me, it is impossible for me not to preach the Word of God! 

 

 

 

Andrey Karpus  

Zaporozhye, Ukraine

 

I was born in Zaporozhye, Ukraine, in 1976 to a working family.  When I was four years old, my father, who beat my mother and me, left our family.  Some time later, my parents were divorced.

My mother then met and married another man, and my step sister was born.  My step-father was no different than my father however. He also mistreated and beat us, so when I was seven years old, my mother divorced him as well.

As I grew older, my mother was unable to control me, and I began to live a sinful, carefree lifestyle, smoking weed, drinking and finding friends who lived that same way.  In fact, I was smoking marijuana before cigarettes.  By age fifteen, I was doing more serious drugs, and these drugs soon became my god.  I lived to enjoy the high that they gave me. 

My mother was horrified at my lifestyle.  On one occasion when I was a teenager, she found drugs on me and tried to take them away from me.  For the first time I actually raised my hand against my own mother and forcibly took my precious drugs back from her.  I couldn’t bear to do without them.

I began to spend most of my time on the streets. When I was nineteen, I was arrested for the first time for stealing money and given two years probation.  When I saw how easily I got out of this situation, I was emboldened.  Soon I was again arrested for possession of illegal drugs.  This time I was sentenced to prison for two years. 

During my time in prison, I met with Christians who would come to visit the prisoners.  I spent time with them only to get the clothes and food that they gave me, but I didn’t think about the message that they shared.  Only thirty days after being released, I was again imprisoned for illegal drug possession.

My mother was devastated by all of this and was constantly trying to get help for me.  She had done her best to get me enrolled in a drug rehabilitation center, but I resisted all her efforts to help me.  This time while I was in prison, my mother turned to believers for help. They gave her hope when they told her that God could help her son if she would pray.  She however needed to become a believer herself.  Through their instruction, she repented and put her faith and trust in Jesus Christ and then began to share the message of the gospel with me. 

I was irritated when I heard that mom had become a believer.  My understanding of Baptists was twisted by what I had heard during my Soviet upbringing.  I thought my mother had gotten mixed up with the wrong people!  It was rather interesting that she was concerned about me because I was a drug addict, and I was concerned about her because she was involved with Baptist Christians

During this third prison term, I met some fellow prisoners who had become Baptist believers, and when they tried to show me kindness, I used them, took advantage of them, and basically stole from them.  I was amazed though at how kind that treated me in return.  Their gracious response to my evil behavior made a deep impression to me.

When I was released, I continued my drug use.  On one occasion I overdosed and fell into bed paralyzed, and in my terror-stricken stage, I could only call out for my mother to help.  Because this scenario had played out many times before, my mother knew that if she called for an ambulance, they would not be willing to help.  The last time they had come, when they saw my drug induced state, they simply left. 

At my bedside she urged me to call upon the Lord, and I did. I wanted to live, and I recognized this as my only hope.  I begged God to help me, and incredibly I was able to get up!  My mother rejoiced, and I did feel a deepening interest in learning more about God.

But a true change in my heart had not yet taken place.  I knew that for God to truly save me, I must be willing to give my life fully to Him, and I wasn’t ready for that.

The next morning, I found money and went out to purchase drugs as before. 

One day I met some acquaintances who had done drugs with me before.  They had become believers and began to talk with me about God.  I told them, “Some day soon I will become a believer like you.”  Meanwhile I continued to use drugs and live my evil lifestyle.

I did however begin to lessen my drug use somewhat because I had met a very nice girl, who although not a Christian, impressed me by her clean lifestyle.  I recognized how special she was and wanted to marry her.  For a time, I stopped my drug use almost completely except for an occasional use that I would hide from her.  Eventually she agreed to marry me. 

Unfortunately after our marriage I began to use drugs again.  To pay for them I began selling all of our wedding gifts.  My wife cried and begged me to stop, but on one horrible occasion, I literally squeeze her hand between the door and the doorway, so that I could tear the rings off her fingers and sell them for drugs.  My lifestyle and cruelty knew no limits. One day I awoke to find the house empty, and I realized that my wife had left me. 

Having hit the bottom, I finally agreed with my mother to visit a meeting for Christians who had been former drug users.  While I was expecting something completely different, I was amazed to hear the beautiful songs they sang and to hear their words of hope.  I felt love and kindness radiate from them. 

One of the men came to speak to me after the service.  He knew who I was and greeted me by name and asked if we could talk.  Although I was filthy dirty and bruised from a fight I had been in, and he was dressed neatly in clean clothes and a necktie, I looked at him, and said, “What do you want to talk about, you abnormal fanatic!  You’re looking into the face of normal civilization!”  Instead of acting offended by my rudeness, he replied humbly and quietly, “Oh, I’m sorry,” and turned to go away.

The meeting however had made a deep impact upon me.  I was completely unaccustomed to these type of people.  I told me mother that I was impressed.  She was glad to hear this and invited the pastor of the Baptist church to talk with me.

I behaved rudely towards him too, blowing cigarette smoke into his face as he tried to talk politely to me and help me.  Finally he left.

I continued my drug abuse even more, stealing money from anyone I could to buy more narcotics.  I was missed my wife during this time, and I tried every way I could to get her back.  My efforts were in vain though as she continue to collect the necessary documents to file for divorce.  In my depressed state, I took more drugs and drank alcohol.  I came home in anger and found my mother kneeling on the floor praying for me.  I grabbed her roughly by her shoulder and picked her off the floor.  I held a needle before her eyes and yelled, “Who are you praying to?  Why isn’t it working?  Look!”  Right in front of her I gave myself another dose.  In tears, she spoke these words to me: “I believe God will save you!” 

Her words struck my heart deeply and seemed to strip me of my anger.  The next day I took my money and went to buy more narcotics, but on my way I kept hearing those words from my mother, “I believe God will save you.”  I finally turned around and went home.  Giving the money to my mother, I said, “I don’t want to buy drugs.  Let’s go to church.” 

We went to the church where there was a fellowship for drug addicts.  As I entered, the man to whom I had been so rude before met me again and called me kindly and politely by name.  He treated me like an old friend and offered me tea and refreshments.  My heart began to soften.  I felt a deep desire to be like these people!

I met with the director of a Christian drug rehabilitation center in Zaporozhye.  I told him of my desire to enroll in the center, and after we prayed together he agreed to let me come.  I was so glad, for I knew that there was normally a list of people waiting to go to the center. 

I went home that night, but before I left one of the Christian ladies warned me that there would be temptations, and I should be on my guard.  I went to my room and heard a noise at the window.  Looking out, I saw one of my friends outside holding a huge sum of money in his fist.  He said, “Let’s go and find some drugs!”  I tried to refuse, but he kept insisting.  My mother stood in the doorway quietly and fervently praying.  I continued to refuse and yelled to him that I had quit!  I literally crawled under the bed to escape the strong temptation that was assailing me.  The next day I went to the rehabilitation center to live. 

Three weeks went by and although I had no understanding of God or of Jesus Christ, my knowledge grew, and I began to see my need to repent and find salvation and forgiveness.  I spoke with some of the Christian men of the center and told them that I wanted to repent and be delivered from my sin.  One of the men that I spoke with was the man that I had earlier called an “abnormal fanatic”.  He encouraged me in my desire to change.  At the next church service, I went forward to repent, and  I immediately knew that God had forgiven me and delivered me by His power and grace!

            I continued to stay at the rehab center and grow in my understanding of the Bible and my relationship with God.  One day I received a letter from my wife.  I was terrified to open it and kept it closed all day, fearing that it contained divorce papers.  But when I finally opened it, I found a letter from my wife asking for my forgiveness!  I was amazed and filled with praise and gratitude to God! 

            Not long after this I was at a church service where a visiting pastor came to preach.  To my amazement it was the pastor in whose face I had blown cigarette smoke.  Pastor Peter was amazed to see me and even more amazed to see and hear about the change in my life!  He was able to stand before the congregation and say, “Friends, God truly lives!  He saves sinners, even drug addicts!”  

In time I was able to leave the rehabilitation center.  My wife began to attend church services and to associate with Christian women.  Together we attended home Bible studies and at one of these meeting, my wife repented and was saved from her sins!  In 2003 it was a joyful day when Pastor Peter, the very man to whom I had once been so rude, baptized my wife and me.

My wife and I attended and helped in the ministry meetings that I had first attended as an unsaved drug addict.  In time we took a more active role in this ministry, leading these meetings and ministering to people who were just like me when I had been without Christ. 

As I grew in Christ, I began to preach and teach the Word of God while I studied in seminary to increase my understanding of the Bible.  I was shocked and pleased to be selected as a deacon of our church.  It has been a joy to serve the Lord and my brothers and sisters in Christ in this way. 

My life is totally new!  Before my conversion, I was violent and would even attack a person with a hammer and beat them unmercifully to take their money.  Now I meet people and find that I love them and want to tell them about forgiveness and freedom in Christ.  God gave me peace where I previously had no peace.  He has given me courage and the desire to make restitution for the wrong that I had done.  There have been temptations regarding the addictions of my former wicked lifestyle, but God has been faithful to uphold me during those times.  One dear friend of mine told me, “Remember, Satan will always remind you of the pleasure that you experienced in that past life, but he won’t remind you of all the bad times when you wallowed in the filthy dirt of this world.” 

I want to tell everyone that no matter how far they have fallen; there is hope for them if they will turn to God.  I walked for years in the filthy attire that the devil offered me.  Today I am wearing the new garments of righteousness and salvation that Christ gave me!

 

 

 

Nikolai Bezugly  

Lebedin, Ukraine

 

            I was born in 1957 in Ukraine, the youngest of four children.  Our family was Russian Orthodox and like most people in our culture, we normally attended church only on holidays.  During those few times of going to the Orthodox Church, I was fascinated with the beautiful pictures and the lovely singing, but since it was in the old Slavonic language, I could not understand it.  As I grew older, I never considered myself an atheist, but I did not possess enough knowledge of God to seek Him deeper. 

            As a child I enjoyed school and was a good pupil.  I was the recipient of many academic awards.  In 1974 I went to study in the Ukrainian Agricultural Academy.  My favorite courses were mathematical classes, and this helped me to cultivate a mind that was very logical and systematic in its approach to reality.

At the Academy we were required to formally study a course on Scientific Atheism.  This was the one class that I could not grasp logically.  It seemed to me to be propaganda that was not based on scientific fact, and it was the one class that I had to merely force myself to memorize the information so that I could pass my exams. 

However, like any individual who wanted to advance educationally and professionally in the Soviet Union, I was a member of the communist party and went along with the established order of our society. 

            I graduated at the top my class, received a degree in Agricultural Science, and was assigned as a chief agriculturist to a collective farm in the Chernigov region.  My duties were connected with the planning and organizing of crop production on the farm. 

After a year and a half, I was reassigned to a larger collective farm in the Nikolaevsk region of Ukraine and was given a higher position.  In 1986 I was sent to the Lebidinsk collective farm, and was given the highest position as director of the farm.  I was only 29 years old. 

My career was moving fast, and I was so busy with my work and continuing studies that I never really thought about God during this time.  I lived a very structured life.  I would awake at five, hold meetings with the workers at six, and then was occupied with the agricultural work of the farm until evening.  As director of the collective farm I had six hundred workers directly under me. 

Despite my busy life and advancing career, I made time to start a family.  My sister introduced me to an acquaintance of hers, a young lady name Nadezhda, and after dating for a short time, Nadezhda and I were married. 

            In 1989, I had such a great desire to continue and broaden my education that Nadezhda and I left our home and position with the collective farm and moved to the city of Kharkov to pursue higher education.  There I enrolled in a pedagogical institute specializing in management of agricultural economy.  After a year and half I was invited to begin teaching as a student/professor. 

During this time there was a new atmosphere of freedom in our country, and a new course was offered on the sociology and psychology of labor.  My supervisor was the chair of this department, and he asked me to help him develop and teach this course.  In order to do so, I had to do a lot of reading, research and investigating.  Some of the books that I read were by Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People and The Art of Public Speaking) among others.  I was greatly surprised when I read these books.  Carnegie’s books referenced the New Testament and he actually quoted from the Bible as if it was a scientifically reliable document!  I had the impression that he viewed the Bible as some kind of absolute authority.  This was a view that contradicted everything that I had been taught in my Soviet education. 

I began to think that if this important author, so well known in the West, thought that the Bible was an important and authoritative book, then I must also find a Bible, read it and discover for myself why Carnegie and other authors quoted from it. Some time later I was in the capital city of Kiev and walked by kiosk near a cathedral.  There I found a New Testament which I purchased and began to read.   

I began studying the New Testament and actually started sharing my findings from the Bible with my class.  I didn’t realize at the time that my “preaching” from the Bible was still illegal and there were people who had been put in prison in our country for such things!  I was merely using the Bible as an objective reference for my teachings on sociology and psychology. 

In the winter of 1992, when my course of study was over, I put my New Testament aside and stopped reading it.  For me the Bible was a valuable reference tool, and I now knew it was considered a book of authority by educated men in the west.

After my graduation, I had to make a choice of where to go.  While we were working through this decision, my wife and I returned to our Kharkov apartment one day and found that we had been robbed.  We decided that Kharkov was not the place for us to live and so we moved back to Lebedin, where I became the administrator over all the collective farms in the Lebedinsk region. 

Some time after our return to Lebedin,  I was walking home from work one evening when an event took place that changed my life.  It was already dark and as I was walking, a car stopped and from the open window I heard my name being called.  “Nikolai, sit down and I’ll take you home.” 

I did not recognize the man driving the car, but since he knew my name, I sat down and rode with him.  As he drove he told me that he remembered me from a previous collective farm where we both had worked.  He told me that he was a believer  now and he began to share the gospel with me.  I was fascinated while I listened to his words and compared them with the words of scripture that I had read back during my studies and teaching.  Even though it took only ten minutes to drive home, when we arrived, I sat in his car for another 1 ½ hours listening to this man speak about God and spiritual matters.

The man invited me to church and promised to bring me Christian literature.  He kept that promise and brought me some books, including Billy Graham’s book, Peace with God.  It was simple and easy to understand, and I was able to read about Christian doctrine in an comprehensible way. 

My wife and I began to visit the Baptist church to which the man in the car had invited me.  I immediately noticed a marked difference in the lives of the people who attended this church.  I discovered that the man who had witnessed to me was an evangelist of this church, and he would travel to various locations doing evangelistic outreach. 

One day when this evangelist, Sergei, was taking a group of young people to a military base to do evangelism, he invited me to go with him.  By this time I already had a deeper understanding and knowledge of God and the way of salvation.

During the service at the military base, there was an opportunity for people to repent of their sins and receive salvation.  God was dealing with me, and I felt deep emotion in my heart, but I did not respond.  After all, the invitation was for the soldiers, not for me! 

Sergei however noticed my reaction and began to talk with me.  Back at home we continued to talk and Sergei shared with my wife and me the importance of repenting and receiving Christ as Savior and Lord.  That evening we both knelt down and together we prayed that God would forgive our sins and make us new in Christ.  An incredible joy and peace swept over me as we prayed, and I knew that I was a Christian. 

After our decision to follow Christ, my wife and I began to attend church regularly where we began to grow in our new faith.  I had a new understanding of the truth of God’s Word.  Before I had looked at the people on the church and seen them as if they were on one side of a river and I was on the other side.  Now I felt like I was on the same side of the river with them!  I thought to myself, “How did I not understand this before?”  As I began to share and witness about my relationship with Christ to others, I was amazed that they could not see the truth!  But my eyes, too, had been closed to the truth just a short time before.  Now my eyes had been opened.

I did well in my new walk with Christ for a while, but as I was preparing to receive baptism, I began to have doubts.  What would my colleagues think?  What would my friends and coworkers think?  There was a battle in my mind all the way up to the time of my baptism.  The thought kept coming to me, “They will laugh at you if you take this step.”

But one day I listened to a sermon and heard the words of scripture, “Those who are ashamed of me [Jesus], I will be ashamed of them before my father.”  Suddenly it dawned on me, if my unbelieving friends were not ashamed of their sin, why should I be ashamed to make a public testimony for Christ?  After that my doubts and fears disappeared, and my wife and I were baptized together in 1993. 

            With the new system of government in our country, I became involved in several business and marketing opportunities.  Currently I own my own successful business in the field of manufacturing and marketing of oil products.  Through this enterprise, I have opportunities to share my faith in Christ with other business leaders and many of my former co-workers. 

 

 

 

Victor

Shaktyorsk, Ukraine

 

I was born in April of 1960 and was an only child.  I grew up like most Soviet children, taking an active part in all the communist youth programs.  I heard next to nothing about God during my childhood.  I used to visit my grandfather’s house and see some Orthodox icons hanging on the wall, but that was the limit of my knowledge concerning religious matters.

I do remember thinking about death as a child.  There was a funeral in my village, and I was sitting in my yard watching as the mourners went by.  I began to cry, “I don’t want to die!”  My mother comforted me by saying, “You’re too young!  Don’t think about death!”  But not knowing God herself, she couldn’t give me any true comfort. 

When I was a teenager I attended technical school and was involved in sports, especially soccer. I had many friends from my neighborhood but not all of them were good.  Coming under their evil influence, I began to drink.  My parents were casual drinkers, and they would often offer me a little alcohol.  Before long however, I was drinking to excess. 

            I graduated from school in 1978 and moved to the Vinnitsa region of Ukraine to work with my aunt.  There I received my license to work as a truck driver.  While driving for a collective farm, I would make deliveries, and people would often customarily reward me for my favors with a bottle of vodka or some other type of alcohol.  At first, I would drink just to put myself in a good mood.  As time went on, I found any and every excuse to drink.

In 1980 I married a lady who also worked on the collective farm, and we moved back to Shakyorska in the Donetsk region.  There I began working for a coal loading company.  Later I was enlisted into the Soviet army. 

The army trained me as a cook, and after my initial training period, I was allowed to go home for ten days.  Of course, a vacation without alcohol wasn’t a true vacation, and so I continued my drinking at every such opportunity.  The army continued training me, and I eventually ended up in the Gomel region of Ukraine at an army base.  I was given the position of head cook at the military base which was a privileged position.  My father was ill during this service, and so I was also given special treatment and allowed to visit him several times.  But again, on every leave that was given me, I would engage in drinking, carousing, and much sin. 

My father passed away during my army service.  I had a fairly good relationship with him, but he had been a strict communist and had no belief in God.  Once, I had even brought some icons from western Ukraine to decorate the room, but he had ripped them up and said, “Shame on you!  This trash is unworthy of the son of a good communist!” 

After my army service, I found a job at a coal mine, but my job didn’t last long.  I moved to work at another coal mine and found a job operating heavy machinery.  My salary wasn’t very large, and so I looked for ways to steal anything that I could from my job—coal, metal, concrete—and I would sell it off for money.  I actually made a business from stealing.  I would take stolen coal to a neighboring region and sell it for a profit. 

Because I continued drinking heavily and missing work, I eventually lost my job.  My wife and I were having problems too and before long we divorced.     

My friend and I then went to the Rostov, and I hoped that leaving my surroundings would save me from my destructive drinking and wrong lifestyle.  But my sin and inward depravity followed me wherever I went.  Soon I had the same kind of friends as before, and was living a prodigal life and drinking heavily. 

The director of the collective farm where I was working in the Rostov region initially appreciated my knowledge of heavy machinery and allowed me have many privileges, allocating to me a lot of land and a nice house.  My godless lifestyle continued.  I lived with a succession of women and continued my drinking.  The director eventually grew disgusted with my ways and forced me to leave.

I traveled back to Vinnitsa region and lived with my aunt.  I found a similar job but failed to change my lifestyle.  My outward appearance easily deceived people.  I seemed to be a very capable and professional man, but sin still ruled my life.  For some time my ex-wife and I moved back in together, and a daughter was born to us, but we soon broke up again.  Once more I moved to the Donetsk region. The year was 1986, and from then until 1994, I bounced around working in various coal mines. 

In 1994, I took a job as a truck driver.  That year, I was arrested for the first time for failure to pay child support.  There were those who told me, “You have good credentials, and you should be able to get off all right.”  But when I went to my court hearing with white pants and a white shirt, thinking that everything would work out fine as always, I was handcuffed and taken immediately to a prison work camp!  I was shocked!  I had lived a sinful life but had always managed to keep up a good front before others.   God, however, was beginning to humble me. 

The lady with whom I was living at this time, Valentina, filed a complaint on my behalf, and the authorities began to reopen my case.  Soon after however, she was involved in a terrible accident and was seriously hurt.  In a short time, I was shocked to find out that she had died!  I was devastated because she had been a very kind and stabilizing influence in my life.   Furthermore there was now no one to appeal for me. 

I was finally released from the work camp after one year.  Sadly, however, my prison experience and Valentina’s death had not really changed me at all.  In fact, as I was leaving, I threw a wild party for my friends and six of them ended up for a time in solitary confinement.  The guards wanted to punish me as well, but I was already a free man and was able to get away. I found a new job at the coal mine and began living, working, and continuing my wicked lifestyle.

 One day in 1996, on the Ukrainian holiday called Driver’s Day, I went to my mother’s home for a visit.  My mother had recently remarried a man who drank heavily.  I found that my new step father had stolen my mother’s pension money, had gone out to drink, and coming home, had gotten into a fight with my mother.  She had been beaten and was crying; I became enraged.  I took him outside and began to give him a serious beating.  Then I threw him out of the house. 

The next day he came back to apologize to my mother.  I was still at my mother’s home, and I observed their reconciliation. He and I decided to sit down and drink together, but I observed that he had been seriously hurt in our fight the day before.  He couldn’t even eat or drink . I knew then that something was seriously wrong.  Alarmed, I told him, “You’d better get to the hospital, Lyosha, you’re hurt badly.  I could end up in prison.”  I called the ambulance, and he was taken to the hospital.  Tragically his condition and internal injuries worsened, and within two weeks he was dead.

            The police came to question me, and I told them the truth.  After acknowledging what I had done, the legal proceedings began.  On my court date I was totally drunk.  I knew that I could end up in prison, and in my despair I gave myself to drinking.

The judge sent me to a temporary jail, but my behavior was terrible.  I was rude and insolent, and finally the local guards had enough.  They dragged me into the hallway and began to beat me unmercifully.  Again and again they hit me with their batons, creating severe internal injuries as well as splitting my head open about seven centimeters. 

I ended up in a prison hospital for three and a half months.  I was afraid of what those prison guards would do to me when I returned to the prison, so I signed a document saying that I had no complaints about the treatment I had received there. 

            In the prison hospital I began to think seriously about my life.  I knew that my verdict would be a minimum of five years, and could be much, much more.  I wanted to be free and it scared me to think of being in prison. 

At some point while at the prison hospital I was given a New Testament.  My fellow inmates and I used the first several chapters of Matthew to roll cigarettes, but then, my eyes fell upon the Lord’s Prayer.  I wanted to get out of there so bad, that I began to memorize the prayer thinking it might help me.  At first, I repeated it as a type good luck charm.

As I continued to read the New Testament, my heart was touched.  That little book began to turn my thoughts toward God.  I was sick and still bleeding internally at the time.  I was desperate, and in my despair I begged God to get me out of the horrible mess I had made of my life.  My prayer seemed to give me new strength. 

To my amazement, after this, one of my fellow inmates was sent a large amount of fruits and vegetables, and he shared them with me.  From these vitamins and nutrients, I began to feel new health and was even able to get up and exercise.  My health began to improve greatly. I was moved to the regular prison quarters and soon forgot about God for the most part.  The words of the Lord’s Prayer however stayed in my heart.

My verdict was announced in September of 1997.  I was sentenced to seven years in a Donetsk regional maximum security prison.  After being transferred to this prison, I went through medical testing as was customary for all prisoners.  I had been feeling weak from the experience of the past months, but I was surprised when I was diagnosed with tuberculosis.  I was immediately transferred to a special prison hospital for inmates with tuberculosis.  It was there that I learned that the tops of my lungs were actually disintegrating.  I realized the seriousness of my condition and again my thoughts began to turn to God and spiritual matters.  Even though I did not know or serve God, I began to pray for His help.  My health began to improve and through exercise, sport activities and cold showers, my health began to be miraculously restored. 

During this same time there was a man in my hospital who had become a believer in Christ, and we became friends.  He began to tell me about Jesus and gave me excellent literature to read about God and Christianity.  He shared with me about the One Who loves us and wants to save not just our bodies but our souls!  He told me about Jesus Christ, the one way to salvation.  From the Bible, he showed me that I must repent and received Christ as my Lord and Savior.  At first there was much that I didn’t understand, but as our relationship developed he continued to share with me, and I continued to listen. 

In August of 1998, it was time for me to leave the tuberculosis hospital and be returned to the prison.  I was not yet a true repentant Christian, but my heart has been prepared.  On the day I was scheduled to depart, my friends from the hospital kindly gathered together whatever clothes and pleasant things that they could find, and gave them to me as a gift. 

I waited for the transportation to come and take me away, but all day, the transport never came, and I was sent back to my friends in the tuberculosis prison hospital.  My believer friend, Sasha, walked and talked with me in the prison yard the next day.  Once again he shared with me about God, trying to convince me to pray, repent, and give my heart and life to Jesus Christ. 

When Sasha turned away to leave, I was left to myself.  In prison one is almost never alone, but I found myself in the prison yard all alone.  God’s conviction fell upon me in those moments.  I lifted my heart to heaven and said, “Oh, Lord!  You know my sins and you know my life!  How can I come to you?”  I began to repent and prayed that Christ could come into my life and cleanse me from every sin.  As I finished praying, there was such a peace and relief that came over me!  I went and told Sasha that I had repented and we rejoiced together!  He presented me with a beautiful New Testament with Psalms.

The next day, I was transported to the regular maximum security prison. 

 My heart and life however, had been changed. I was born-again, and I truly felt the difference!  I had a new freedom in my soul.  I treasured my Bible, and my soul was longing to do good and to grow spiritually.  I still knew very little about the Christian life, but I was trying hard to serve God. 

I was sent to the work camp sector of the prison, and little by little, people began to recognize that I was different, that I was a believer.  I was introduced to other believers and began to spend time with them.  I had already lost the desire to socialize with the people who lived the lifestyle that I had previously lived. 

One day my aunt sent me a package of tobacco.  It was right after my repentance, and I was still a novice in my walk with God.  I decided to have a cigarette, so I rolled it and began to smoke.  I was halfway through when I was filled with a feeling of revulsion.  I threw down the cigarette and never smoked another one after that.  God was helping me in my new relationship with Him!

Every evening, those of us who were Christians were allowed to meet together before and after dinner for prayer and a time of sharing together.  We had a ministry of visiting the prison hospital and sharing with the sick inmates about Christ, as we gave them tracts and sanitary items.  We were even allowed to visit the new prisoners in the quarantine area and witness to them. 

In September of 2000, a visiting pastor baptized me and some other Christian converts in a bathtub in the prison hospital.  I continued to grow in the Lord and enjoy fellowship with other Christian inmates and with the church groups that would come to minister to us. 

In 2001 I submitted an appeal for parole along with a letter for forgiveness.  The pastor of the church that visited me also submitted a letter of appeal for me.  President Kuchma signed an order taking one year off my sentence.  About this same time a new law was passed that provided for more leniency with convicts who had committed crimes similar to mine.  I was soon put on a path toward a speedier release, so long as my good behavior continued. 

The months, however, went by, and still I was not released.  I continued to make appeals and write letters of apology, asking for forgiveness and leniency.  Finally the regional prosecutor came to the prison and looked through my case.  After reviewing my papers and seeing the reports of my good conduct, he ordered that I be released.  It was September of 2002.

After 5 1/2 years, I was finally a free man.  As I walked out of the prison, I could hardly believe what was happening to me!  Another inmate, who had visited our prayer meetings, was released with me. Together we immediately went to the local Baptist Church, to the people and to the pastor who had visited us in prison.  We wanted to express our gratitude to them, and most of all, to give thanks to God!  As I opened the gates of the church, the first person I saw was a lady named Margarita.  She fed us and then called the pastor to come and pray with us. We all fell on our knees in the church and gave thanks to God. 

After that time of joy and thanksgiving, my mind was suddenly drawn to another matter. I had recently received a letter from my mother telling me to hurry home when I was released from prison because she was very ill.  I showed the letter to the men of the church, and they urged me to head home right away. 

My mother lived in another region of the country, and after traveling I arrived at my mother’s home on the 27th of September on a warm sunny day.  I walked into her house and saw my mother laying sick on the bed.  I said, “Mama!  It’s me!  How are you?”  She looked up at me, not recognizing who I was.  “Who are you?” she asked, in a weak sick voice.  I was brokenhearted.  After introducing myself to her, I bought a few groceries and began to clean up the house.  It was dirty and unkempt due my mother’s illness. 

The neighbors saw that I had come home, so they urged me to come over for a cup of tea.  I went over and was talking with them when the dog began barking.  My mother was crying out, “Help!  I need help!”  We called the ambulance, and they came, but they only gave her some medication and then left. 

I sat with my mother and we talked.  I shared with her the message of Jesus Christ and urged her to cry out to God, to repent, and receive His salvation.  She listened carefully and then began to cry and pray.  She repented of her sins and asked God to forgive her.  I left her for a few minutes, and when I returned, she was sitting with an expression of deep peace on her face.  She spoke to me boldly.  “My son, listen to me!”  I was amazed to her the strength in her voice.  She continued, “My son, I’m going to die.”  I began to protest, but she interrupted me and told me she was prepared.

Later I went into another room in the house.  Glancing back into her room, I saw that my mother was sliding off the bed, so I ran over and caught her in my arms.  I called for the neighbors to get the ambulance.  By the time help arrived, my mother was gone. 

I sought out Pastor Fyodr of the local church, a man I had only met through letters.  He was an enormous help to me through the difficult time of the funeral.  I could see God’s hand of mercy manifested through him and throughout the whole situation.  His church held a beautiful service and dinner in memory of my mother. 

After my mother’s death, I began working for a fellow believer from the church who was kind enough to take me on as worker.  I knew however that my income was not sufficient, and I began looking for other work.  I worked for some time as a security guard at a coal mine and later as a supervisor at a sanitation dump.  I worked and earned money at other odd jobs as well.  In time, I was offered a job working as a manager for a plastic trash recycling company some distance away.   In time I opened my own plastic recycling business as a franchise under the original company. 

In June of 2003, I married Margarita, the lady that had first met me at the church when I was released from prison. God has blessed me with a wonderful wife and many other earthly blessings.  Above all I am blessed with freedom from former sin!  I am most grateful that Jesus Christ has brought me such wonderful peace and joy.  Today I am involved in ministry in my local church.  I participate in village evangelism and visit prisons where I preach and counsel inmates.  I even minister in the very prison where I once was incarcerated!  What a joy to share with others about the change that God has made in my life.

 

 

Vitaly Yakubets

Chernigov, Ukraine

 

I was born in 1973 into a large family of ten children.  There were five boys and five girls.  I was the eighth child and I had several older brothers with whom I spent most my time.  I remember how my mother used to take me to the Baptist church when I was just a little boy.  But when I was about six years of age, I quit going to church and chose to stay with my brothers and their friends.  Even though I was still just a little boy, I followed in their “older” ways, and my parents were so busy with my nine brothers and sisters that I was mostly free to do what I wanted.  At six years old, I could already smoke an entire pack of cigarettes.  By third grade, I had started drinking, and by fifth grade I was smoking marijuana.

Somehow, though, perhaps from my earliest experience with church, I always had a sense of right and wrong that my older friends didn’t seem to have.  And even as I took part in the sin that was all around me, I knew in my heart that there must come a moment in my life when I would turn from sin.  I always remembered what I had heard as a child in church that the Bible said “a tree that doesn’t bear good fruit will be cut down, cast into the fire and burned.”  I knew that someday, if I didn’t repent of my evil, I would be punished eternally.

But for the time, I continued to live a wicked life.  I watched as many of my friends and acquaintances ended up in prison or even died as a result of their wild lifestyle, but I always managed to stay one step away from such an end.

            After finishing high school I went away to college in Kiev and continued my lifestyle there for three years.  Drugs, drinking, and fighting were a normal part of life.  One day, as I was exiting my dorm room, I saw the body of a fellow student lying on the ground outside my door.  There had been an argument over a girl, combined with drinking, and a young man had been stabbed to death.  Seeing this kind of violence caused me to consider how quickly my own life could end.

About that time I became very involved in rock music and the culture that it promotes. It became a strong influence of evil in my life, and my college years were filled with concerts and partying.  Nearly every morning, I would go out and buy beer for my friends and myself, and we would only go to classes after we had drunk enough to “enjoy” the day.  One entire closet in our dorm room was piled high with beer bottles, and one day I found my passport buried under the enormous pile of them.  I remember being struck with the thought that this was a good picture of my life:  I was buried under the influence of alcohol and sin.

After finishing college some work opportunities opened up, and I had to make a choice of where to go.  By profession I was a geologist, and my work was to find places where coal could be mined.  In 1993 I ended up in Siberia, working initially out in the field, cutting paths through the forest for our geological measurements. 

One day as I was using an ax to cut through the forest for a measurement, I had to cross a stream and noticed afterward that my foot was wet.  Upon closer examination, I saw that as I had been cutting through the woods, I had inadvertently cut open my boot and had even cut through my sock!  I was stunned to realize that if I had cut open my leg, I would have easily bled to death, being very far from any town or hospital.

On another occasion, our brigade needed matches to light fire for a camp, and I went to look for someone in our area who might have the needed matches.  For some strange reason, I prayed that God would have mercy on us and help us to find a way to light our fire, knowing how much we needed a fire for the night.  As I came upon a rock, I was shocked to see a matchbox full of matches just lying there!  In fact, one match was sticking out of the box ready to be lit, and it was as if this incident was a quiet message from God, once again, inviting me to come to Him and find salvation.

Later when we came to the nearest town there in Siberia, a homeless bum met us and we were able to get information about this new place from him.  He told us who was who, where to find things, and how to conduct ourselves to be accepted by the other men of the town. The rule of this northern land was simple; it was drinking with others and drinking a lot.  The ones who came to work in this place all had one thing in common – they were unhappy depressed men with broken lives and families.  They had come to earn money and find happiness, but after being there for some years, they were still poor and unfulfilled.  They were consuming their money and health on alcohol.

Yet there was something about that wild, beautiful country that drew a person to it.  It was a land of uncertainty, of hope and of hard work.  But those of us that lived there also lived a hard, sinful life that reflected the wildness and hardness of the land.  And as always, I loved the risk and uncertainty!

            I continued living in Siberia for some time, working with teams that drilled in various places searching for coal.  One day we traveled home on a large all-terrain vehicle and stopped in a village to drink to celebrate our boss’s birthday.  When the driver got drunk, he asked if I would drive, but I thought he was joking, so I refused. 

In his intoxicated state, he left the road and tried to take a shortcut by driving through a shallow river, although at that time of the year, due to heavy rains, the river was no longer shallow.  Because one of the doors was broken, the vehicle began to fill up with water!  After a few moments, the water reached up to my waste. In the next instance, the windows were covered with water, and I felt water in my face. Then we were under water.  With a sense of panic sweeping over me, I recognized that this could be the final moments of my life.  I struggled to get through the exit door, but the driver was blocking the door.  I was running out of oxygen when I finally managed, through great effort, to push him to the side, and swim to the surface.  The current was strong and nearly swept me away, but I found the roof of the all-terrain vehicle which was completely submerged and clung to it, somehow keeping myself from being carried downstream.

Local villagers saved us from the top of our sunken vehicle, and as we warmed ourselves and spent the night with those kind villagers, I thought again about how easily and quickly my life could have ended.  I thought of the many times that God had spared my life and knew that the day would come when I would use up all my chances.  I knew that I needed to repent, but I still wasn’t willing to take that step.

In time, I was transferred to another village to work, and I was horrified to see the level of cruelty and lack of value for life.  There was little or no respect for God or for people. Religion of any kind hardly existed.  Few people died of natural causes as there were regular suicides, murders, and other crimes and accidents resulting form the horrible alcoholism that plagued the village.  As we walked into the room that we were to rent, we noticed that the ceiling was riddled with bullet holes.

One night, as I was out late, one of my friends (who would later be shot and killed) noticed a young lady walking by, and said, “Hey, Vitaly, that girl’s name is Masha!  She’s one of the few good girls in this town!”  I got acquainted with Masha and soon we began dating. 

About this same time, my liver began to suffer as a result of my drinking, and I was warned by the doctor that I must stop drinking.  I quit for a while but on our wedding day, as was the tradition, I gave a toast with vodka, and sadly, that started my drinking again.

            After getting married, I began working as a builder, and again, I encountered many experiences that showed me the love and care of God in my life.  I had more narrow escapes from death.  For example, one day on the job, I heard a sound behind me and jumped to the side just in time to avoid being crushed by a huge block and chains that had torn loose from an old crane.  Again God, in His mercy, spared my life.

            All during these years in Siberia, I had with me a Bible that my older brother had given me.  After he had become a believer, he presented this Bible to me, and finally one day, I opened it for the first time and began reading.  I was amazed because it made sense to me!  It all seemed so clear! 

Unfortunately, I put it away and kept drinking for another week.  Then I opened the Bible again.  And from that moment forward, no matter how often I read it or prayed during times of difficulty or crisis, God’s Word never seemed clear to me again.  But during this time, I never forgot that moment when God had opened my eyes to see that He could make His Word clear to me. 

             One day when I was traveling to my wife’s village, I decided to hitch a ride on a cargo train, since I didn’t have any money for the passenger train.  I was completely drunk, but I crawled on board, and so as not to be seen, I began jumping from car to car to make my way to the back car so that I would be able to get off at the stop where I needed to get off.  As I did this, I felt a sudden sobriety come over me.  I realized how dangerous this would be in a sober condition much more a drunken state.  As we neared the place where I needed to jump off, I was amazed to find that the train briefly stopped even though it normally never stopped there.  I was able to get off safely, and I recognized that God had once again shown me His mercy.  In spite of all these mercies, I plunged on recklessly in a godless lifestyle going from party to party, far from God and deep in sin.

In 1997, I took my wife and our two sons back to Ukraine.  We went for my sister’s wedding, who was a believer.  Upon arriving they urged us to move back to Ukraine.  I left my wife and sons there and went back to Siberia to resign from my work.

When I returned to Ukraine, I was shocked to find out that my wife had repented and become a believer!  She now wanted to be baptized.  I knew that her lifestyle would have to change if she chose to be a serious Christian.  I was not yet ready for such a big change in our home, and so I selfishly hindered her from pursuing God by encouraging her to continue in our sinful lifestyle. 

In spite of my opposition, we still would occasionally visit church as a family, for I still had in my mind the verse from the Bible that speaks of the “unfruitful tree being cut down and cast into the fire”.  I knew that my time was limited, because time and time again, I had been spared disaster and had been offered mercy. 

In 1998, some family members invited us to an evangelistic service at a theater in our town.  As I heard the gospel clearly, for the first time I felt something in my heart that truly wanted to step out, go to the front, and repent of my sins.  But my feet seemed frozen, and I just couldn’t take that step.  The meeting however produced a spiritual awakening in me, and I began to make changes in my life.  I possessed a new awareness of what God expected of me.  I was still drinking heavily at that time, but my drug use and smoking stopped. 

            Because of the drinking my liver disease continued to worsen, and I knew that I was only living by God’s mercy.  One night I dreamed a frightful dream in which I was to be executed, and in my dream I cried out to God. This dream shook me deeply but my drinking and sin continued to an even greater extent, to the point that I could barely walk or control myself.  God was allowing me to come to the end of myself.

            Things were so bad at this time that I actually spent two weeks in an alcohol rehab center.  I prayed, promising God that I would go to church and repent if He would deliver me.  I was able to give up alcohol for a time, but I did not keep my promise and fully turn to the Lord.

This process repeated several times, and occasionally my health would be so awful that I would literally fall into a state of hallucination.  Other times, I would wake up and find myself in a bar.  Another time I literally stopped breathing and was rushed to the hospital.  But I was so bound by the power of sin that I continued to destroy myself with alcohol.  Feeling hopeless, I even seriously considered hanging myself to end this horrible existence.  Although I was able to hide my wickedness from most of my neighbors and coworkers, my family could see what I was doing to myself and to them.  While my sin could be hidden from many of my acquaintances, I could not hide who I was and what I was doing from God. 

One day, in May of 2002, I had come to such a state of physical and psychological breakdown that I knew I must have help immediately.  I called the ambulance, but when they came, to my horror, they informed me that there was nothing more that could be done for me.  With those words, they left. 

This caused me to panic.  We were living with my parents and my brother at that time, and I turned to rush out the door.  But I knew, as I stared at that door, that if I left I would die.  I glanced over and saw my brother’s door.  I knew that he could pray with me, and I could find God.  For a moment I wavered between those two doors and then, my decision being made, I threw open my brother’s door and said, “Pray with me!  I’m dying!  I need God!” 

It was such a hard decision!  After all the times I had rejected God, my heart was full of pride, and taking that step to humble myself and ask my brother to pray for me was a huge turning point.  After we had prayed together, my brother called the church prayer group and as they prayed, the rest of my family gathered around me and began to pray with me.  I was in such a state that I couldn’t stay in one place even for a moment.  But I cried out to God and said, “God, help me to stay here and pray, at least until morning!”  I felt an evil power urging me to get away, but I stayed there, crying out to God.  Each time I would stop praying, I felt like I was falling into a bottomless pit.  Little by little hope began to dawn in my heart!

My wife had been in a neighboring room during this time, and as I was crying out to God, I heard my mother ask her, “Masha, have you been praying for Vitaly with us?”  To my shock and surprise, I thought I heard her say emphatically, “No!”  For a moment I was tempted to give up seeking God when I heard this.  Would my decision to give my life to Christ cause our relationship to be destroyed?  Could it be that she now didn’t want me to serve God and would hinder me as I had hindered her earlier?  But I persevered and continued to pray.  Later when I asked my wife about this, she said in amazement, “I never said, ‘no!’ in fact I said, ‘Yes, I’ve been praying this whole time!’”  My mother also confirmed the truth of this, and I realized that Satan had been trying already to pull me back into his kingdom by playing tricks with my mind.

Spiritually, I felt a release as I prayed in repentance, but physically I was in a terrible condition.  I alternated between feeling a burning hot sensation and then suddenly feeling icy cold.  Finally, I was able to fall asleep.

            When I awoke, I stared out the window into a beautiful, clear, clean blue sky, and my heart was overwhelmed with a sense of the deepest peace and joy!  I was afraid to move, afraid that I would interrupt that precious moment of peace.  Finally I stepped outside and, as if for the first time, I saw the flowers and the trees and the beauty around me.  At that moment, it was as if I saw a picture of myself standing on a bridge, and that bridge was leading to heaven.  All around me were the sinful things of this world, but I knew that this new way leading to heaven would be my new way of life!  I called my wife, and with joy, exclaimed, “Masha, I can live now!” 

I washed and put on new clothes because I truly felt that I was starting a new life. 

As I walked outside, I met one of the men that I had been drinking with the day before.  I immediately began to witness to him of the change that God had wrought in my life. 

Two days later at work, I found a Bible that my cousin had brought to my workplace three years earlier.  I opened it and read the words of John 15:16, “You have not chosen me but I have chosen you to bear fruit…”  I felt the immediate impression that God wanted me to be a witness for Him to others.  I closed the Bible quickly, and said, “No!  I’m not ready for that!”  But then I opened the Bible again, and read the story of the man who cleaned his house of evil, but because he left his house empty, the spirit of evil later returned with seven more evil spirits. 

I suddenly understood that I had to go to church and obey God or there would be no more chances.  I knew that an even worse evil would overcome me.  I thought back over my life and realized that I couldn’t count the innumerable times when I should have perished, and yet God spared me.  I knew at that moment that God had saved me so that I might be a witness for Him and bear fruit for Him.  It was as if the entire puzzle of my life came together in that moment!  My eyes were opened!  How could I have failed to see this big picture of God’s grace before?

As I thought on these things, my heart was so moved upon that I couldn’t stay at work any longer.  I signed out, left my job, and rushed home to tell my wife.  When I arrived, my face was so different that my wife was alarmed.  She asked, “What’s wrong with you, have you been drinking again?”  I began to pour out to her everything that God had been revealing to me.  I confessed everything that I had always kept from her.  She then began to open up and share with me in a deep and beautiful way, and together we knelt before God, forgave one another, and prayed together for the first time. The next Sunday we both walked to the front of the church and publicly committed our lives to Jesus Christ.  Four months later, July 28, 2002, my wife Masha and I were baptized. 

One of the first things that we did after our conversion was to go to the cemetery.  One of my brothers had died when he was just four years old, and I knew that he was in heaven.  Because of my own spiritual transformation, I now had the assurance that I would see him someday.  I wanted to go to his grave and be reminded of this fact. 

Also after my repentance, I understood that it was not enough to just accept Christ as my Lord and Savior.  It was important that I come to a place, as a new Christian, that I serve the Lord with all my heart and dedicate my life completely to Him and to His service.  

            With conversion came a new attitude about children.  Even though circumstances are difficult in our country, we have had two more children, knowing that God will never forsake us and will always meet our needs.  Prior to this, we were concerned that we would not have enough resources to provide for a larger family, but praise God, we are now free from such anxieties.

The Lord has also touched my health.  I went to a new doctor and had him do an analysis of my blood and conduct a physical examination.  I did not tell him of my previous health problems.  After the exam, the doctor came back to me and gave a glowing report.  I said, “How can this be?”  Then I shared with the doctor about my previous health problems, and he was amazed!  God truly has renewed my health through His grace and power! 

My whole life has changed and been filled with new meaning!  Immediately after my conversion to Christ, I had a passionate concern for others.  Before I was only concerned about myself, but now I have a deep desire to see others have the hope and purpose in life that I have received from the Lord.  I have been able to share the gospel with those with whom I used to party.  Recently I was able to introduce one of my friends to Christ, a man who had used drugs and alcohol with me!  What a joy to see the change in him that Jesus Christ has made.

One day some months after my conversion, I received a panicked call at work.  It was my son telling me that our daughter had stopped breathing.  I rushed home and found that the ambulance was already there.  I entered the house not knowing whether my little girl would be dead or alive.  Praise God, although in serious condition, she was alive and recovering.  It may seem strange, but through this experience, I felt God confirmed to me that He wanted me to serve Him in the ministry.  He, who has all power in heaven and earth, and holds our life and breath in His hands, would lead us, watch over us and protect us.  

Within six months I started preaching at our church, and in two years I was ordained as a deacon.  In 2006, I became an assistant pastor.  Soon after that, our senior pastor was selected as the regional pastor or superintendent of our state, and I became the senior pastor of our church.  What a miracle of God’s grace!  Just a few years ago I was hopelessly addicted to alcohol and was a prisoner in the jailhouse of sin.  Today I lead our local congregation in worship to the God who has delivered me and given me a life worth living.

One of our long term plans is to go back to the north land of Siberia and take the good news of the gospel to the people among whom we once lived and who so desperately need the hope that is found in Christ.  We recognize that it’s not enough to just know about God, to have religious relatives, or to occasionally attend church.  Jesus said, “If any man will come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.”  To find salvation, we must be willing to leave our own life, follow Christ and commit our life entirely to Him!  Only then can we truly find the salvation that He died on the cross to give us!  

 

 

 Peter

Sarata, Ukraine

 

I was born in 1960 to a family that had divided religious loyalties.  My father attended a Baptist church while my mother claimed to be an Orthodox Christian.  My father however was the one who took the greatest interest in my spiritual welfare.  He possessed a great desire that I would come to faith in Christ, and thus he often took me to church.  There I learned Christian songs, Bible verses, and Christian teaching.

My attention to these matters soon dissipated however when I started attending school.  By the time I was seven years of age, I was attracted to the Soviet life and system of which my friends were all a part.  School was exciting to me with its young communist pioneer programs.  

As I grew older, I further rejected the Christian influence of home as I went to dance halls and partied with my friends.  I began to live by the philosophy “eat, drink, and be merry.”  I was a very good student in school, and I gave myself to the study of atheistic literature, so that I could win the arguments I had with my father and other believers about religion.  I viewed Christians as uneducated and weak.  I felt that if only people would get an education and study science, they would see the foolishness of religion.  In fact, I truly felt that Christianity would someday be completely destroyed by science and reason.  I also did all that I could to tear down the faith of my classmates who were believers. 

            My antagonism toward religion deeply grieved my father, and hence he was always praying for me.  I responded to his spiritual concerns in a spiteful way by trying to hurt him.  For example, I proudly wore my red communist pioneer scarf and made sure to carefully adjust it before the mirror while he was near enough to observe me. On Sundays as my father was leaving for services at the church, I would stand on the street and embarrass him by shouting, “My father is a Baptist, and I, his son, am a communist activist!”  In spite of my disrespectful behavior, my father never attacked me either physically or verbally.  When my disrespect reached an intolerable limit, he would quietly leave the room. 

One day during a discussion with my father, he said to me, “Son, you have a sharp mind.  You would make a great preacher.”  I laughed scornfully, never dreaming that his words would some day come true.

By age seventeen I moved to the city of Izmail to study in the Izmail State Pedogical Institute.  I wanted to become a teacher of the Russian language.  There I continued my atheistic activism as a leader in the Komsomol Communist Youth Organization.  However as I studied classic Russian literature such as the writings of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and others, I noticed that many details and facts about their lives had been omitted from the Soviet history books, and most of these facts were relating to these authors’ deeply held religious beliefs.  This troubled me.  I wondered why the Soviet government wasn’t being truthful with the facts.

I was married during my third year of study, and when I graduated with high grades from the institute in 1981, I was sent as a teacher to the village of Vedinka in the Sarata region of Ukraine.  I was a teacher of Russian while my wife was an English teacher. 

Sometime after the birth of our first child, our family received a great blow.  We discovered that our son had been born with severe cerebral palsy.  He was badly paralyzed by this disease.  We began traveling to various hospitals trying to get help for him, but to no avail.  Prior to this I possessed a strong faith in the power of man to accomplish just about anything, but now my faith was shaken.  I had believed that knowledge itself could liberate man, fix his problems, and bring him meaning and purpose in life.  As I wrestled with this grief in our family, slowly my ideology began to crumble. 

To drown my grief, I threw myself into my work with renewed energy and made it the focus of my life.  I became known as an excellent teacher.  Eventually I won coveted educational awards, even in Kiev and Moscow.  I won the prized “Evrika” teaching award for educators throughout the Soviet Union and became a member of the elite Soviet teachers’ club, “Creative Pedagogues.” 

In 1988 I was invited back to the Institute where I had graduated to be the chairman of the teachers of the institute.  I was also asked to teach a class on literature covering the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.  My focus was to examine the works of Tolstoy, Chekov and Dostoevsky. 

Accepting this position, I moved away from my village and lived in an apartment in the city by myself in order to focus on my work.  In the meantime, I persisted in my battle against faith.  I continued to reject belief in God, and I allowed the illness of my son to fuel my unbelief.  If a God of love truly existed, how could He allow such evil and suffering in this world?  All the while my father continued his prayers for me, never losing hope that I would someday come to faith in Christ.

As my teaching career continued, I became deeply troubled as I saw that the content of the education we were teaching our students contained a great degree of propaganda.  The material was often censored.  We were not allowed to present the true story behind the lives and deeply held religious beliefs of the classical authors.  In fact, many of the teachers were not aware of these facts; I only became cognizant of this as I looked deeper into the materials that we were allowed to access at special libraries for teachers.  I compared the actual works of the classical Russian authors with the words of the Soviet literature critics, and I knew that there was a huge discrepancy.  The reluctant realization dawned upon me that these authors truly were sincere believers in Jesus Christ, despite all that I had been taught and was expected to teach.  I also had to read the Bible during this time, since there were so many citations from the scriptures in the writings of the classical authors.  I was especially touched by the story of the prodigal son. 

            All of this created a desire in me to more fully understand the psychology of man.  I reasoned that the problems of humanity must be rooted in the wrong behavior of man, and according to my humanist reasoning, the cause of wrong behavior must be a lack of knowledge. 

As my fascination and study of psychology continued, my life was dealt yet another serious blow.  I received word that my father had died suddenly.  I would need to travel from Izmail to Odessa to attend the funeral, but there was a problem.  It was winter, and we were experiencing a terrible snowstorm.  Bus service was suspended between Odessa and Izmaila.  I tried unsuccessfully for several hours in the cold to hitch a ride from passing cars.  All at once I found myself praying to God, “Lord, if you still remember me, help me!”  Finally late that night, a man stopped to pick me up.  Interestingly he was a Christian and a Baptist minister.

As I began talking with this man, my heart  grew heavy.  I thought back to the story of the prodigal son and realized that I was like that son, with this difference. I no longer could return home to a living father and receive his forgiveness.   I began asking myself why had I caused so much pain to the father who had so greatly loved me.  I even repeated these words out loud and the driver heard me.  He reminded me that people had treated Jesus the same way.  He then quoted the Scripture that says “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”  His words gripped my heart as he shared the gospel of Christ with me through the long hours as we drove that snowy night to Odessa.

            Sometime in the night he suggested that we pray the Lord’s Prayer, and I agreed to pray with him.  It was a meaningful moment for me, one that I would never forget, but still it was not true conversion, for I had not allowed God to transform my heart and life. After the funeral, I went back to my old ways of unbelief.

In 1993 I graduated from the Odessa Institute of Psychology with specialization in practical educational psychology.  I soon took a new job as a school psychologist, but now my own sinfulness began to take a darker turn.  It soon became apparent that I was the one in need of psychological help.  I was trying to help others, but in my sin, I desperately needed help.  I would drink heavily on the weekends and my treatment of my wife and children was shameful.  I could sense the alienation that I was creating in our relationships.  I managed however to keep my professional life looking good.  I had a book of poetry published and was the head of a writer’s guild.  But I had no self-control and brought grief to those close to me. I was deeply disappointed with my life and even battled suicidal thoughts. The only thing that kept me going was my concern for my ill son. 

Then during the Christmas season of 2000, a terrifying thing happened to me. I dreamed the same dream three nights in a row.  I could see my father standing between two white pillars, while he spoke to me in our native Bulgarian language.  He was saying “Come to me”. I was gripped with fear. 

I told my family, “I must go to church—to the church that my father attended.”  My children thought that I was crazy, but my wife, who had lost all hope for me, said, “Go ahead.  Maybe there you’ll become more like a human being.” 

So for the next two weeks, I went to church every day, even when there was no service.  When there was a service, I would listen attentively and think about my soul. When there was no service, I would sit and talk with a deacon from the church, and he would tell me more about the way of God and righteousness. 

I found my father’s Bible and read it constantly.  On January 21, 2000, it was Sunday, and I knew that my moment had come.  I clutched the Bible of my father and walked to the front of the church.  There I knelt and repented, praying, and asking God to forgive me, save me, and make me His child. 

Almost immediately my family began noticing the difference in my life and before long my wife and daughter also repented and received salvation.  My son soon followed them.  In time other extended family members and friends began turning to the Lord as we prayed.  What a change God brought to our family through His love and grace!  Everything was different!  I can’t imagine where we might be today had God not shown us His marvelous mercy.

Now since 2003, I have been a deacon in our church in Sarata, Ukraine.  My family and I live on the church grounds, and we are joyfully serving the Lord in ministry through our church.  After 25 years of teaching, I retired and this has enabled me to devote my time fully to ministry for the Lord.  I am happy and feel like I have found purpose in life, but I do regret that I wasted so many years.

I am convinced that my father’s prayers have been answered and if he were here he would be so happy to see me living a Christian life.  I still remember that day when I was scornfully laughing at my father when he turned to me and said that someday I would make a good preacher of the gospel.  I guess he got the last laugh.

 

 

Vladimir

Kherson, Ukraine 

The first man to experience space travel was the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.  He made his famous flight on April 12, 1961.  While he was orbiting the earth for the very first time he gushed about its beauty. “The earth is blue. … How wonderful. It is amazing.”

Back on earth, I was being born on the same day in a well-known pediatric hospital, and things were not looking so beautiful. The events in the sky would negatively affect my life forever.  During my delivery, my mother began to experience serious complications.  The doctors and nurses, instead of staying by her side, left the room to listen and watch the news of Gagarin’s flight into space.  They left my mother in a room alone and unattended where she was crying for help.  A dentist, who happened to be in the hospital, heard my mother’s screams and came to her rescue.  I was born breach—feet first, and when I was pulled out of my mother’s womb, I was pulled so hard, that serious damage was done to my neck.  I would be an invalid for the rest of my life.

As I began to grow, the rest of my body tried to adjust to the awkward position of my neck; I developed problems walking and standing straight.  As a child I became despondent because I knew that my handicap caused my parents to suffer.  I used to dream of what it would be like to be healthy and for our family to be normal and unaffected by my physical problems. 

My father, who served in the Soviet navy and later became a police officer, loved soccer, and was a big fan of the Moscow Dinamo team.  He spent lots of time talking to me about soccer, never dreaming how much I wanted to play.  One day he gave me a soccer ball.  He did not realize that this would provide me the inspiration I needed to make the effort to walk.  I spent hours playing with my ball, struggling to walk, run, and kick the ball.  Eventually, to some degree, I succeeded.

Although I loved soccer, the boys of my neighborhood would not invite me to play—at least not at first.  Instead they would mock and laugh at me. I was tormented by their ridicule. However, I continued to watch them play, despite their taunting, and one day I was given the opportunity to play; the boys were amazed that I could actually play quite well.

Over time I was given the opportunity to play more often, and through soccer I developed some important relationships.  One of my physical education trainers at school had had been the trainer of Valery Barzov, a well-known athlete and fellow student of my school.  This instructor was very kind to me and allowed me to exercise and practice with the other boys.  He never looked down on me because of my handicap, and as I think back on my childhood, I am so grateful to this man for giving me the chance to do what I had often dreamed of doing.  

One day, when I was in the sixth grade, my parents and I were traveling home from a small vacation.  Instead of stopping in our hometown of Nova Kahovka, my father just kept driving right through the town.  I asked my parents why we weren’t going home, and they informed me that our new home was in Kherson.  They had been afraid to tell me earlier, because they knew how upset I would be to leave my friends in Nova Kahovka and endure the adjustment of moving to a new place.

Our move to Kherson went better than I initially expected.  Yes, I was again mocked and taunted because of my handicap, but before long I became involved in soccer and other sporting activities.  By the time I was fourteen, I was a serious fan of the Kherson soccer team, Crystal.  I had a group of friends with whom I would regularly attend the soccer matches, enthusiastically cheering for our home team.

These friends and I organized our own team, but it was hard to find players and good fields.  So we “invented” the game of mini-soccer or “foot-zal,” which we later found out was a well-known game in other countries.  After we organized our team and determined the rules, we decided on the name “Sputnik” (Satellite). 

Some time later there was a large celebration in our city to honor the Komsomol, the communist youth organization.  Soccer matches were organized for this event, and we too wanted to play, but the city officials did not approve of us since we were not an officially government sponsored team.  So we decided to organize our own Kherson mini-soccer federation, and I became the coach and manager of our team.  We were eventually invited to Zaporozhye where we found out about other mini-soccer teams in the Soviet Union, and we also learned the proper rules for the game.  We played in a tournament there, and notwithstanding our new understanding of the different rules for the game, we came in third place.  Many people were amazed to see the new Kherson team, led by a handicapped man, ranked so high.  In time I became the head administrator of our mini-soccer league, bringing to pass a long time dream of mine. 

            As I grew older, I had dreams of another kind; I wanted a family. I became friends with a young lady in my neighborhood.  We shared a lot in common and would frequently take walks together as we talked about life; eventually we started dating.  Her parents were not happy with her spending time with me however, so we continued our relationship secretly.  We even talked about getting married, but she knew that her parents were opposed, and she was afraid to go against their wishes.

She was also deeply bothered by people’s response to my handicap, encouraging me to consider surgery.  I had been through some medical procedures before in an attempt to at least partially correct my problem, but the results had not been positive.  At the city clinic, I was told about a new surgical procedure that would be offered free to me through a new neuro-surgical organization. 

In 1988 I went to Kiev and underwent a complex surgery.  After the surgery, my girlfriend stayed with me until I was feeling better, but it became apparent that the surgery had not had its desired effect. Even though the doctor had said I would have a much more normal appearance, nothing really changed.  My girlfriend, devastated and unable to continue having romantic feelings for me, broke my heart by breaking our relationship.  It was not long before she began dating another boy. 

This was a terrible blow to me, and, as if to add insult to injury, my father died soon after, creating more pain and sorrow in my life.  I had always been upbeat and positive, but now I fell into a state of depression, and even lost my desire and interest in soccer. Joy, hope and meaning disappeared from my life.  I wondered around feeling lost and confused, a shadow of my former self.  

One evening, as I was riding the bus home, I met some very interesting people.  I watched them as they spoke happily with one another, and I could see in their eyes a joy and kindness that I had never seen in people before.  They were loving and polite to others, and as I began to speak with them, I was amazed at their politeness to me.  They did not act disgusted with me or ask questions.  They treated me as a valuable person.  Before we parted, they invited me to their Baptist church service the next day.

I couldn’t wait to go and meet these people again, and when the next day dawned, bright and beautiful, I somehow knew that it was going to be a special day. While not able to explain why, I was gripped with a feeling of great anticipation.

When I arrived at the church, right from the beginning it was as if I sensed a new hope opening before me.  These people treated me like they had known me all their lives.  The showed respect for me and offered me a seat.  As I child, I had visited the Russian Orthodox Church with my grandmother, but I could never understand the words because everything was spoken in the Old Slavic language.  It was different here; I could hear and understand the words that these believers sang!  They were beautiful words, speaking of hope and the love of God! I had always believed that God existed, but this day, I knew that the time had come to commit my life to Jesus Christ and receive eternal life.  At the end of the sermon, the pastor gave an invitation to repent and put faith in Christ.  I went forward and prayed, asking God to forgive and save me.  That very day my life was transformed by the grace of God. I found eternal hope and salvation! Two months later, I was baptized.

Soon after I began my new relationship with God, I talked with my pastor about my love for soccer and asked him whether or not I should continue my involvement with this sport.  With his wise words of counsel, I came to the realization that God could use any activity that is not sinful to bring glory to Himself, so I continued my involvement in mini-soccer.  Initially, I worked through a ministry that taught children the sport, but later I became an organizer, sponsor, and trainer of an adult mini-soccer team called “Hosanna.”  Today I also own a sports clothing store in Kherson. I love to tell my clients about Christ and encourage them to be involved in sports for the glory of God.

As I reflect on my life, I can see that if only I had begun following Jesus Christ sooner, I could have avoided much of the pain and emptiness that marked my early days.  But I am grateful today that the emptiness inside of me has been filled with the joy of the Lord. I feel assurance that God knows me and has a purpose for me even though I am an invalid.  The Bible says in Psalm 139, “You saw me when I was formed in my mother’s womb…”  I know that God saw me developing in my mother’s womb and knew about my birth before I was born.  He allowed the events to happen that made me an invalid and He has his reasons for it. 

The disciples of Christ once asked Jesus about a blind man (John 9:1-3):  Was he born blind because he sinned or did his parents sin?  Jesus said that neither had sinned.  The affliction was allowed so that God would receive glory, and when Jesus healed the man, God was glorified.     

            All my previous life, I looked for an answer to why my life had turned out like this.  Today I absolutely believe that God allowed these events, and even my disability, to happen in order to bring more glory to His name through my life!  If God could change my life and make me joyful and positive even though I am an invalid, then He most certainly can change your perspective on life and give you meaning and joy in living for Him.

 

 

Vita  

Novomoskovsk, Ukraine

 

I was born in the city of Novomoskovsk in the Dnepropetrovsk region of Ukraine.

After I had finished school, I decided to study drama in a theatrical institute.  In my first year, I became deeply troubled by the immoral lives of the students who studied with me.  I was a modest girl and knew that I would have to either become like them or leave that environment.  I tried for a time to fit in with them, but in the end, I didn’t want to sacrifice all my moral standards to art, which was what those around me were doing. 

In our dormitory, we were sometimes visited by a man who was an actor and had become rather famous.  He was a practitioner of hypnosis and would often demonstrate his powers.  I was fascinated with this and began to develop my own powers. 

Even after I had left the theatrical school, I pursued this.  Once when I was in the hospital to have my tonsils removed, I tried to hypnotize the other patients in my room.  I was amazed at how well it worked for me. 

            After I was married and had children, my daughter, who was 4 years old developed a speech impediment: she began to stutter.  I went to a psychotherapist and asked him to treat my daughter with hypnosis.  He refused saying his treatment would only help those at least 15 years old. 

I went home disappointed, but my neighbor told me about an elderly lady, a sort of witch doctor, who was able to help people.  I quickly found this lady, and, in just three sessions, my daughter had completely stopped stuttering and additionally she had lost her fear of heights.  I was amazed that this old, uneducated lady could do such amazing miracles of which even doctors were incapable.  With her potions and strange utterances, she had healed my daughter!

I thought that my problems were at an end, but in reality, they had just begun.  I was living in Dnepropetrovsk during this time, and I received a message from my hometown of Novomoskovsk that my mother had fallen ill and was paralyzed.  So I moved to her home to help her for several months. When I returned home, I sensed a coldness in my relationship with my husband and discovered that he had been committing adultery. I filed for divorce. 

For help, I turned to a fortune teller.  When she found out that my mother-in-law had been involved in black magic, she informed me that it would be useless to try and reestablish my marriage.  Supposedly, the black magic of my husband’s family had put a curse upon us destroying any possibility of a happy future together. 

After my divorce, I wondered how I could protect myself in the future from such curses.  I watched the television programs of psychic, Vladimir Kashpirovsky, and observed how he promoted the concept of extra sensory perception.  I was fascinated with this and especially was interested when Kashpirovsky informed his listeners that there would be classes offered in the psychic field throughout Ukraine.

When instructional courses were offered in Dnepropetrovsk, I talked with a doctor friend who had been trained in this field.  He asked me more about my interest, and then encouraged me to wait and see what I dreamed that night and act upon this prompting.  Sure enough, that night, I dreamed that I was participating in these courses, and so I enrolled. 

The course was two weeks long.  We had many lectures and practical experiments in meditation, yoga, auras of power around the human body, and drawing power from nature.  We were instructed in how to develop extra sensory perception and psychic powers, and at home, I actively involved myself in these practices.  It was interesting to me that during the courses we were told that “God” does exist, and that we had been chosen by Him to use our powers.  So, I began to believe in God and actually was convinced that what I did, I did through God’s power.  I considered myself a Russian Orthodox believer, as do many folk healers who are actually practicing occultism. 

I also began to practice “white magic” in healing others.  I used mantras and psychic powers to treat those who had physical and psychological problems.  I studied under an old lady who was a folk healer, and she helped me continue to develop my extra-sensory abilities. 

I however began to enter a dark, confused period of life.  I began to notice that, although I had success at relieving people of their problems, yet these same people often ended up returning to me for relief from other problems.  I recognized that many of them were suffering the results of their sins, and yet they seemed powerless, despite my best efforts, to gain victory over their bad habits.  I tried to help them forsake their sins that were bringing these consequences, but I was frustrated to see that the powers that worked through me had serious limitations.  People would become almost addicted to their need for my powers and would return and return again. 

By this time I was married to my second husband.  One day, my former mother-in-law came to visit and brought a large amount of very expensive, quality food for our family.  She had always wanted to harm me, and I immediately knew that these things were cursed by her black magic, but I was so confident in my powers that I spoke my mantras over those products and kept them for our family.  We were not rich, and it seemed to me to be unthinkable to throw them away.

            That evening, my husband tore the house apart in a terrible rage. Some time later he began to have an adulterous affair ; other complications in my life developed.  One day it dawned on me that my powers to block my former mother-in-law’s curse had not worked!  This realization terrified me; I felt so vulnerable and I even contemplated suicide.  I started feeling strange urgings to throw myself from a building or cast myself in front of a train.  Something always seemed to restrain me from following these urgings.  Today I believe that this was God’s grace, but at the time, I turned to an acquaintance of mine who was a psychic.  As I spoke with this lady, her eyes seemed to be staring through the wall beside me while she described to me the whole situation with my mother-in-law.  I began to think how wonderful it would be if I had this kind of power.

I talked with my husband and told him about the curse.  Together we went to the home of an old lady, a folk healer, who could “deliver” us from the curse of my mother-in-law.  There was an understanding among those of us who were involved in folk healing that we could heal others, but that our practices would have no effect on ourselves or our own families. 

            After this old lady had met with us for several sessions and supposedly delivered us from the curse, my husband started his sinful lifestyle again.  I was amazed!  How could this be that he could again continue his wicked lifestyle even after the curse had been lifted?  Why was it that these powers could not give lasting deliverance? 

In my despair and confusion, I continued to search for answers.  I heard about Yevgeny Dubitski, an extra-sensory psychic authority who had become quite famous.  I went to a nearby city to meet with him, discuss my questions with him, and seek his counsel.  He listened to my concerns and encouraged me to come to his mass seances, but after attending five of these seances, I received no relief. 

I had heard Dubitski speak about his spirit guide and alter-ego of himself, and I thought that this must be some sort of “angel” that would come, heal, and do good. 

At home I carried out my own seance and called for this spirit to come.  When I saw a spirit in the form of a silhouette, I told it that I wanted to be a psychic.  I felt a voice speak to me telepathically, “You will see, but not all at once.” 

            About a year went by and one night I closed my eyes on my bed to sleep.  Suddenly it was as if I was seeing a movie!  The vision was very vivid; I began to think that perhaps I was starting to receive the gift of psychic perception. The next morning I went to my psychic acquaintance, and he confirmed to me that this was how it worked.  As I entered this new psychic world, I began to see visions regularly: sometimes when I expected them and sometimes when I didn’t. 

People that would come to me who did not know about my new realm of occultic practices, would be amazed at how I could describe their plans, their thoughts, and the details of their lives.  It was as if I was tuned to a radio channel that would feed me information, and I was sure that it was correct information. 

After I saw that I had these abilities, I decided to divorce my husband.  I did this because I used a chain with a talisman that would move, and I used this method to make my decisions.  When I had asked the question, “Should I stay with my husband?” the talisman had directed me to leave him.    I placed my faith in these things, and I sincerely believed that a new day of success and joy would dawn in my life; that moment never seemed to happen, as my loneliness and emptiness increased 

            I continue my efforts to help people through my folk remedies and extra-sensory methods.  People would come to me for various needs.  For example, one day I received a call for help by the parents of a little boy who had swallowed a chemical (marganets).  His throat was burned and inflamed.  He was in intensive care, facing drastic surgery, and it was feared that he would be an invalid for life.  I was given a vision that this had happened to the child because of the sins of his father, so I sent the father the message that his sins must stop if I would be effective in helping his son.  I then held a series of five seances, and the boy was healed!  He was released from the hospital. 

As I reflect on situations like this, I realize that Satan uses these types of healings and helps to hinder people from truly turning to God in repentance.  People get the instant help that they desire, and then they continue living their old sinful life as before.  People don’t understand that when they get supernatural help from occultic methods, their sicknesses and problems go from their bodies to their souls.  They often feel better in their bodies but develop great problems in their souls.  The difficulties that they face later are far worse than anything that they experienced prior.  They pay the price for turning to folk healing and occultic practices with psychological disturbances, family problems, and other tragic consequences. 

I lived in constant fear during these years of practicing my folk medicine and spiritism.  I would constantly be quoting mantras to protect my house from evil and on one occasion when I forgot to do it, I literally felt a spirit choking me.  Fear and superstition were a continual part of my life.  Despite these fears, I continued my practice and was even certified in Kiev and given a license by the Health Department officially approving me to treat people.  I was now allowed to advertise my services even on television.

One day a man heard about me through an advertisement.  He was a believer from the Orthodox Church.  He came to see me and tried to convince me that my powers were not from God as I thought they were.  He didn’t base his accusation on any authority, and I argued with him, attempting to justify myself by saying that I didn’t use black magic but only tried to help people with my abilities.  But as I spoke I realized that my life contradicted my words.  I had been married twice unsuccessfully.  I couldn’t protect myself from curses, or my children from the problems they had.  The people that would come to me for help would have to return again and again and couldn’t manage their own lives without my help and counsel.  I could see that something was very wrong. 

            I began to concede that perhaps my powers and abilities weren’t from God.  I had been told this before, but when this man spoke to me, I was finally ready to hear.  Even though he didn’t tell me where in the Bible it was written that occultism was wrong, I still believed him, for he too, had been connected to occultism in his past. 

I took my license and burned it.  Then I went to the Orthodox Church and confessed my sin and stopped my occultic practices.  The priest told me that I should plead with God for five years if I would ever hope for forgiveness.  He told me that I was allowed to step over the threshold and pray, but I could not come any further into the church.  Upon the advice of the Orthodox believer who had helped me leave my occultism, I visited a monastery and would pray there for hours at a time.  I went there often during the space of one year, yet I felt no peace.

Some people told me, “You just need to get an Orthodox priest who will bless you in your folk healing and then you can continue with happiness and peace.”  I turned to many priests but often heard different opinions.  One even told me, “Go and help people with my blessing.”  But I didn’t trust him, and although Satan would bring along many temptations to go back to my occultic practices, I resisted. 

Finally I met a friend of mine who had become an evangelical Christian believer just one week prior to our meeting.  She told me about a woman who had been a folk healer and had treated children, and asked me if I would like to meet that lady and talk with her.  I was always interested in meeting new people who had a similar background to mine. 

She came to my house, and we began to talk.  We spoke for six hours, and I noted with interest that she did not just tell me what her private opinions were; instead she shared with me from the Word of God, and told me what God himself had revealed about occultism.  I listened with amazement to many passages from the Bible that warned about the evil of sorcery and spiritism.

At first I tried to defend myself, saying that I never used black magic, and that I only did good and helped people;  surely there was no sin in that  But she asked me, “Are you looking for truth or not?  Truth is in Jesus Christ!”  She told me, “You do indeed have a curse on your family, a curse from God because of your evil doings and disobedience to God’s Word!” 

Suddenly a great fear swept over me.  I thought of my children and the evil I had brought on my family.  I was terrified with what I had done; guilt lay heavy on my heart.  Feeling a strong compulsion to pray, I bowed on my knees, confessing my sins and asking God to forgive me for Christ’s sake.  I placed my faith in Jesus Christ and trusted in Him alone for salvation.  I took the bold step of renouncing Satan as my lord and declared before God that Christ Jesus was now the Lord of my life!  I immediately felt relief and joy.  As the burden of sin lifted from my heart, I knew that I had made the right decision to part with my old ways and begin a new life.    

Soon afterward I attended a service at a Baptist Church where I met with the pastor after the service.  He spent many hours answering my questions and encouraging me.  I was touched and blessed by the love of this pastor and the members of his church.  I came to realize that the love that they had for one another and for me represented the true Christianity of God’s Word.

In another week I went forward and openly confessed before those who were present that Christ Jesus was my Lord and Savior.  Again I felt great joy and a sense of liberation as I publicly renounced my former life and committed my life to Christ! 

Two months after this experience, I discovered that I was given some new talents, unlike the old occultic abilities I had possessed.  I found myself able to write songs of praise and thanksgiving to God, and I even began to sing these songs in church. 

The change in my life was dramatic!  I felt an enormous transformation had taken place in my heart.  In place of the old bitterness, I now felt only forgiveness.  Where before I had felt such unrest and lack of purpose, now I felt a true peace and meaning in life! 

Following my conversion, I met a man who was a practitioner of folk healing.  When I shared with him about my new life in Christ, he said, “Don’t become a fanatic!  I’m a believer, too, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t practice our spiritism.”  A few days later he called me and with great surprise told me what had happened the day we had talked.  He had tried to “look through me” in the way that we psychics would do, but he said that that it was as if he had run into a wall!  He asked for more information about my church and my faith and even visited church several times.  Through this and other circumstances I saw the power and grace of God, and how He gives the protection and peace for which I had always longed!

Over time God began to lay on my heart a burden to help people who were caught in the net of occultism.  When I received an invitation to a local conference of folk healers, I fasted for three days, and asked my Christian friends and church leadership to pray for me.  When I attended the conference, I was able to communicate with a man who was a folk healer.  After sharing with him, I gave him some material and wrote him a letter.  A few months later I called him and told him who I was.  He was amazed and said, “I was just thinking about you!”  The Holy Spirit had been preparing his heart.  He told me that his wife and he had been working on repairs at his wife’s grandmother’s house.  This grandmother had been involved in witchcraft, and while working on the house, they encountered many occultic articles.  The negative consequences on his family had been terrible.  In fact he was still not feeling well. 

I invited him to visit the church with me and he responded.  But he couldn’t understand the idea of repentance.  He felt like he had lived a good life and repentance was not necessary for him.  The pastor spoke to him and shared with him that all men are sinners and that we all need to repent of the sin of not allowing Christ to be Lord and Savior of our lives. In time God was merciful, and he and his family repented and were saved.  Now I am praying for many others, like myself and this man, who have been beguiled by Satan, that they too would come out of darkness and bondage into the light and freedom that Christ offers.  

 

 

 

 Svetlana

Slovyansk, Ukraine

            I was born in Russia in 1977 in the town of Azov near the Azov Sea.  I was an only child, and my father died of alcoholism when I was only eleven years old.  Life was hard for my mother and me, but we were very close.  I was a very good pupil in school, had lots of friends, and always seemed to be a leader.

            Our country was governed by atheistic philosophy at the time, and our family was not at all religious.  I do remember that my grandfather was a Russian Orthodox believer and made an important impression on me as a child with his kind and gentle lifestyle.  I believe that he prayed for his children and grandchildren. 

            As I entered my teenage years, I had to decide on what path I would take in life.  I was looking for something different than the old-fashioned soviet ways of my parents.  I loved to study and was interested in philosophy.  I read a lot of different literature including new age books.  I was fascinated with anything new, wild and different.  Although I was a good student, I felt a great drawing toward an unrestrained lifestyle.

            I remember that fatal day in my life, when for the very first time, I watched my friends using drugs.  I wanted to be a part of what was happening, and so I asked them for some of their drugs.  This was the beginning of the downward direction of my life.

As I built friendships with people who were involved in all manner of godless activities, I too became heavily entangled in the web of alcohol, drugs and free love that made up that culture.  My friends and I experimented with various types of drugs.  By this time, I was living in a dormitory and studying away from my home town at the university. 

In spite of my wild living, I still managed to continue my education and graduate from the Rostov On the Don University with a degree in economics. 

            After graduation I took a job as an economist in a large tobacco company in Rostov.  I was making good money and seemed to have a successful career before me, except for the fact that I continued to experiment more and more with heavier drugs. Soon it became obvious that I had a serious addiction.  My mother and other decent people in my life began to see the changes in me that were becoming more and more evident.  They tried to warn me, but my drug dependence made me deaf to their warnings.  I actually began to steal money from my coworkers to feed my drug habit and every effort of my employers to talk with me failed.  Finally I was told to either resign or I would be fired.

            After loosing my job, I began selling drugs on the streets. I even resorted to stealing in my desperation to obtain drug money.   All sense of morality and conscience were lost as the drug addiction wrapped its oppressive tentacles around my life.  There were times that I felt so overwhelmed that I would decide to seek help.  I enrolled in a drug rehabilitation center but soon returned to my drugs. On another occasion I tried a private clinic but to no avail.  I tried various medications but none of them brought the deliverance I needed. 

            I had various problems with the law and could have ended up in prison many times, but I somehow always managed to escape from such a fate.  When I had moved back to my hometown of Azov, I discovered that a new Christian drug rehabilitation center had been built there.  The workers from the center were involved in street evangelism as well as house to house visitation.  These Christians spoke with me periodically on the streets and even visited my home. 

            I was very skeptical at first and didn’t believe that my life could be changed by the message that they shared, but I listened because there was no where else to turn.  My health and life were destroyed, I couldn’t eat, I had lost weight dramatically, and my nervous system was shattered.  I had sold almost every possession that I owned. 

            My mother was suffering greatly as she saw my life deteriorating.  When she met people from the Christian drug rehabilitation center, she began to hope that I could get help through them.  She became involved with a small group from the center and was very open to what they shared. She made many endeavors to get me involved with them.  Sometimes I would agree with what she had to tell me, but at other times, we would get into an argument and I would continue on in my destructive lifestyle.

            One day I did attend a small group and talked with the leader of this drug rehab center.  I heard the testimony of how God changed his life as well as the stories of others.  He tried to convince me that there was hope in Christ.  He said, “Aren’t you tired of this lifestyle?”  I said, “Of course.”  He told me, “Let’s try something.  In my hometown of Slavyonsk, Ukraine, there is already a well-established ministry among drug addicts.”  Why don’t you agree to go there, get away from your old life here, and become involved with a church and a rehab ministry in that city.” 

            Surprising even myself, I agreed and in April of 2003, I moved to the rehab center in Slovyansk.  I immediately felt better in such a wonderful atmosphere.  The withdrawal period is often very difficult for drug addicts, and when I previously I had tried to quit on my own, I had always experienced horrible withdrawal symptoms.  But I was amazed to find that when I moved to the Slovyansk rehab center, I didn’t suffer these terrible withdrawal symptoms.  The believers there had told me that God was almighty and could deliver me not only from the drug addiction but also from the terrible effects of withdrawal! 

            I went to a small evangelical church for the first time.  I had already been told much about the grace of God and so I understood my need to repent and receive salvation. At the end of the service I went forward to pray, knowing that I needed God and seeing through the power of God already demonstrated in my life, that I could trust Him. That day I surrendered my life to Him.

            Immediately after my prayer of repentance and acceptance of Christ as my Savior, I felt a wonderful joy and peace in my heart along with a sense of true deliverance and freedom!  I suddenly felt like a little child again, like there was Someone who would always take care of me!  I truly knew that I was born-again!

            I soon became involved in a Baptist church and within a few months, in August of 2003, I was baptized.  During this time I met Sergei, the man who would become my husband. We were married in May of 2004, and although he was also originally from Russia, we decided to stay and raise our family in the land of our spiritual rebirth. 

            The changes in my life have been evident.  I have been delivered from all addictions.  I have recovered my health, and even though I had been told that my substance abuse would mean that I would never be able to have children, God has overruled that and today we have a beautiful family.

            Our first child, Gabriel, was a special gift from God.  And then, because my husband worked in a children’s shelter and saw many needy children, the Lord gave us a special desire to help a child who did not have a mother or father. When Gabriel had to be hospitalized with a illness, we met a little orphan girl at the hospital named Vika, the same age as Gabriel.  We began to help her and eventually adopted her.  We later had another beautiful son, Nikita.  God had truly blessed our lives!

            I have found that my primary ministry is to my family: my husband and our three children.  But I also have a good job as an economist, and I participate in the ladies ministry in our church. 

            It is truly wonderful what God can do!  He can change the hardest person and transform the worst life.  He can solve what appears to be unsolvable problems while giving hope and assurance both for this life and for the next. 

            When I was young, I had heard the phrase that “a wise man learns from the mistakes of others.”  I hope that people will see my life and my wasted years and learn from my mistakes so that they can find salvation and purpose in life before they make the blunders that I did. 

 

 

This page has the following sub pages.

• Anatoli Pnomarev