(Wednesday, Sept. 22)
Thoughts on the flight from Kyiv to Tbilisi...somewhere over the Black Sea.
Yesterday we drove west of Kyiv about 290 kilometers to Vinitsya, and beyond to a nearby village. We stopped by the beautiful church in Vinitsya for a quick tour, and then headed on to the House of James (Google it! “Like them” on facebook.) where Vitalik and Natasha are the house parents for 11 children, including two of their own. The others are orphans or children of parents who cannot care for them. Here we enjoyed wonderful hospitality and conversation with two new friends... make that thirteen.
Vitalik grew up in Kyiv, the son of an alcoholic. His parents divorced when he was still a young boy. Vitalik followed in the addictive footsteps of his father and became an alcoholic at an early age. He and his friends would steal and sell their treasures in order to buy their next binge.
Shelly and I were often robbed while living in Kyiv, and so we knew of their sort…and had truly feared them—and the failures of our seven front door locks to keep them from our apartment. Once we even had to make a decision as to whether or not to call in the Ukrainian law, which would have meant deep and lasting trouble for these young thugs. In conversations with our Ukrainian friends, we decided not to.
Back to Vitalik. His friend’s mother would make black market vodka, and the two of them would steal it and drink it. As he spoke across the table, his story went from one dark chapter to another. Alcohol had staked claim to his young soul.
Another of his boyhood friends, Kolya, had begun attending the Church of the Nazarene where we were missionaries and I was the pastor. He would invite Vitalik to our church, and tried to explain to him that Shelly and I were not a part of some U.S. diplomatic corps, but that we worked for a church…for Jesus. This made no sense to Vitalik at the time. He did say he noticed how kindly our family treated one another and our common Ukrainian neighbors.
Long after our return to the United States, Vitalik’s disease progressed to the classic end stages. He described violent seizures that would overtake him when he failed to keep vodka in his system. Kolya finally convinced Vitalik to visit the church where our first pastor, Vova, encouraged him. Although he would attend each Sunday, nothing changed in the way he lived.
One evening, Vitalik saw that his mother had very little food. For dinner, she had eaten what was left of a small cucumber and a little bit of dried up rice. Moved to pity, he took his money to the store and bought her food—being sure to hold onto enough to buy some vodka. However, after saying a prayer, he purchased coffee instead. Then he returned home to wait for the anticipated seizures to begin. But there were no seizures that night, or the next.
He began to desire to be made well. The next Sunday, he attended church again and at the end of the service he confessed his sins and asked God to forgive him. Vitalik was saved! But then, he went home and got drunk as his way to celebrate. Soon, he went to a Nazarene rehabilitation center near Vinitsya. Even though he fought with a rebellious spirit the entire time he was there, when his time was finished, he found that he was free!
Since that time he has directed the alcohol rehabilitation center (we visited later yesterday) and witnessed the liberation of dozens of young men. He has married a beautiful wife Natasha who was introduced to the clinic when her brother was saved and transformed there. The two of them care for their two children and nine others as foster parents. And he is the pastor of the village Church of the Nazarene where they live.
The Church of the Nazarene now has eight rehab centers in Ukraine, and the stories of miracles are absolutely overwhelming! Most of our pastors and leaders in the Vinitsya region have been delivered from alcoholism, and their mighty faith in our mighty God is changing their world.
To end his story, Vitalik said he had one more confession to make. You see, when we lived in Kyiv, there was one day darker than all of the rest. Shelly had just been paid more than one thousand dollars for teaching at the International School that year. (This money could only be used for the mission and not ourselves.) We could not use banks at that time and had hidden the money very, very carefully in our bedroom. The next day, after we returned from being out, we discovered that the money was gone. We were horrified.
Yesterday, Vitalik told us that he was the one who had come into our home and taken our money. He was so very sorry. What had impressed him most was that we had shown mercy by not using the law. And recently he has done the same with someone who was caught stealing their church’s sound system. The Militsia wanted for him to tell them whom they had caught. He had mercy on them because of our mercy, and Christ’s.
After his confession, I told him that our loss of money and peace was nothing compared to what God is doing through him now. I called him "brother" and his wife "sister," and we embraced and celebrated the amazing grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Snow capped mountains of Georgia are peaking above the clouds on the left side of our plane. Another adventure is about to unfold.
For MUCH more information about our trip and to see pictures of Vitalik and Natasha, see Shelly's blog.
