Last week we learned how André grew up in a home where he, his mother, and sister were constantly having to run away from his stepfather who drank alcohol and would often beat them. One day a friend gave them a Bible and told them to read Psalm 91. God helped them to return to their home country, but then the mean stepfather found them again. We now continue reading Andre’s story in his own words.

One day our stepfather told my sister and me that there was a rule in the Bible saying that we should not work on the Sabbath. He told us that if we didn’t work on the Sabbath day we would see the angels. We were happy about that, so we tried not to work on that day in order to see the angels. But after a while we forgot about it because we didn’t see any angels!

After another situation with my stepfather we moved to another city, but he found us yet again! He began reading the Bible to us again. He read that we must not eat pork, so we decided to follow this rule and not eat any pork.

One day our landlord offered to bring some pork to our apartment and sell it to us. We decided not to have him bring it because the Bible said that we shouldn’t even touch this meat.

Special Visitors

Sometime after this my little brother was born. My mother thought that this would stop her husband from beating us, but it didn’t happen that way. After we left him again, some people came to our apartment and told us about God and the Bible. My mother wasn’t interested in that information, but my sister and I listened.

When we discovered that these people kept the Sabbath and didn’t eat pork, we became very interested because we didn’t know that such people even existed. From that moment, my sister and I decided to go to their church. That family took us to church every week, and one year later we were baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church. After three years, our mother was also baptized. The family who visited us and took us to church had nine children. They had come to the village in which we were living because there were no Adventist churches there. They were Adventist missionaries, and they brought us and another family to Christ.

An Answer to Prayer

After becoming Adventist Christians, my sister and I earnestly prayed that our abusive stepfather would never come back. By this time I was 13 and my sister was 15. During the next four years, we did not see this man. We thought that maybe he had died. Then one day he showed up again. He was homeless, but this time our mother told him that he could no longer live with us. God answered our prayers, and we never saw him again.

Serving Jesus

Our church wasn’t big, and after being baptized, I became a Sabbath School teacher when I was 13. After finishing high school I studied how to become a medical missionary. Then I moved to Uman, Ukraine, where I went to college and became a nurse.

I taught Sabbath School again in Uman, and then became head deacon of our large church and district. After a year, I became a lay preacher and was given my own district where I could be a missionary. After our church there grew, the conference invited me to become a pastor.

André is now a student at the Adventist university in Bucha, Ukraine, where he is studying theology. He is thankful that God can take even very bad situations and bring good out of them.