Early on the Path to Ukraine and Russia
1950’s through 2004
As a child I was always fascinated with life in the Soviet Union, so vastly different from life in the US of A. I watched news and documentaries and heard my parents discuss the issues of how hard life was there and the extreme limits they had under communism. In one story, I heard that Russians did not even have plastic bags, or they were very hard to come by. This was a very odd thought to me. I thought, my goodness we throw them away like used tissues, and they don’t have any! And I will never forget one night while watching one of these documentaries, a Russian woman was interviewed and said she never “dreams” about a better life. In other words, there’s no hope.
As a Catholic growing up, my mother and church leaders would encourage us to pray for peace in that region and for an end to communism. We certainly did pray. In fact, I’m sure much of Christendom was praying, unceasingly! And oh, what an awesome thing it was so many years later in the early 90’s to see the landscape of propaganda and oppression yield to the emergence of a freer, democratic society and people.
And perhaps because my uncle married a woman from Romania there was another connection I had to this part of the world. I learned of her difficulties, even though freely living in the USA with an American husband, she was still harassed with threats probably coming from an anti-American communist element over there. And their son, who ended up living with my family as an older child for over 2 years, became like a brother to me.
Fast forwarding to 2003, a friend told about a professional online dating service that promoted women from the former Soviet Union who were looking for Western husbands. The women there, although now about 12 years post-Soviet era, along with most of society, were suffering the fallout of unchecked inflation with little to no wage increases and many lost jobs. Unfortunately, these economic and social stresses resulted in higher divorce rates, people worse off financially than they were under Communist rule, petty crime, drug and alcohol abuse and overall societal decline. Many of these divorced, widowed or abandoned women just wanted (and still do) out. Could you blame them? My friend suggested that I “check out” the website. I told him I thought it was a crazy idea. He persisted somewhat and I finally told him I would pray about it.
Can you guess what happened?.jpg)
Well, I need to skip ahead here and I promise to fill in the blanks in my upcoming book about how God answered that brief but sincere prayer I prayed. But now, it will just suffice to say that God did lead me to Ukraine. And He used this somewhat non-orthodox notion of Americans trying to find someone to marry from a former USSR country (now called CIS countries). In the process of going there and trying to work all this relationship stuff out, I developed a deep love for this nation, the people and the Russian language. (And I might add, the women are not so bad either.)
As a child I was always fascinated with life in the Soviet Union, so vastly different from life in the US of A. I watched news and documentaries and heard my parents discuss the issues of how hard life was there and the extreme limits they had under communism. In one story, I heard that Russians did not even have plastic bags, or they were very hard to come by. This was a very odd thought to me. I thought, my goodness we throw them away like used tissues, and they don’t have any! And I will never forget one night while watching one of these documentaries, a Russian woman was interviewed and said she never “dreams” about a better life. In other words, there’s no hope.
As a Catholic growing up, my mother and church leaders would encourage us to pray for peace in that region and for an end to communism. We certainly did pray. In fact, I’m sure much of Christendom was praying, unceasingly! And oh, what an awesome thing it was so many years later in the early 90’s to see the landscape of propaganda and oppression yield to the emergence of a freer, democratic society and people.
And perhaps because my uncle married a woman from Romania there was another connection I had to this part of the world. I learned of her difficulties, even though freely living in the USA with an American husband, she was still harassed with threats probably coming from an anti-American communist element over there. And their son, who ended up living with my family as an older child for over 2 years, became like a brother to me.
Fast forwarding to 2003, a friend told about a professional online dating service that promoted women from the former Soviet Union who were looking for Western husbands. The women there, although now about 12 years post-Soviet era, along with most of society, were suffering the fallout of unchecked inflation with little to no wage increases and many lost jobs. Unfortunately, these economic and social stresses resulted in higher divorce rates, people worse off financially than they were under Communist rule, petty crime, drug and alcohol abuse and overall societal decline. Many of these divorced, widowed or abandoned women just wanted (and still do) out. Could you blame them? My friend suggested that I “check out” the website. I told him I thought it was a crazy idea. He persisted somewhat and I finally told him I would pray about it.
Can you guess what happened?
.jpg)
Well, I need to skip ahead here and I promise to fill in the blanks in my upcoming book about how God answered that brief but sincere prayer I prayed. But now, it will just suffice to say that God did lead me to Ukraine. And He used this somewhat non-orthodox notion of Americans trying to find someone to marry from a former USSR country (now called CIS countries). In the process of going there and trying to work all this relationship stuff out, I developed a deep love for this nation, the people and the Russian language. (And I might add, the women are not so bad either.)
posted by Alfred from Plymouth | 6:39 PM
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