So that I can find You in my heart!”
(Song by Sergei Sulima “Open to me the mansions of heaven”)
I managed, in April 1977, to visit him in Shevchenko. Petya told me something about the difficult life in the army. Some officers treated him very badly and turned other colleagues against him and against other believing brothers. After all, Petya was sent to serve in a construction battalion because already at the military registration and enlistment office he declared that he would not take the oath. The company commander, motivated by wild hatred for believers, in every possible way incited the soldiers against their Christian brothers, slandering them that they were American spies, although at that time not one of them had ever seen a living American. But then there was such an ideology. The commander was under pressure from above, and he took out his anger on the believing soldiers. Petya and his friend Valentin Vlasenko suffered the most. They were placed in the most difficult areas of work involving harmful chemicals. For example, it was often necessary to unload entire wagons of glass wool.
But the Lord kept him. Petya was even allowed to go on vacation in 1978. In May of that year, our youngest brother Venya died, at the age of 3 months, and in June the authorities of the military unit released Petya on leave to visit his parents. He came to see me in Nevinnomyssk, and we had good communication, visited my mother’s cousins and their children.
Petya was demobilized from the army in December 1978, but he came home to Kherson in January. He visited me in Nevinnomyssk, then visited friends in Dnepropetrovsk, and with a group of sisters from Dnepropetrovsk went to visit churches from Rostov-on-Don to Astrakhan.
In Kherson, in 1979, he was actively involved in church and youth life. Plus, dad decided to remodel the temporary building into housing and build himself a workshop. I also returned from Nevinnomyssk, and together we helped dad. Petya still found time to practice with a mixed orchestra. In August, our Lilya, Vitya Buzhikov and others were baptized, and I remember at the morning meeting Petya led the orchestra, they sang the psalm “Our Lord entered the garden of Gethsemane for the last time” and others. And Peter gave a speech-instruction to those who had been baptized, that they must be prepared for trials, that the enemy of human souls will not leave in peace those who have entered into a covenant with the Lord. The next day they brought him a summons to appear at the police station (it seemed that he was either being followed, or someone had reported him). At the police station, a young investigator, Lieutenant Shevchenko, demanded that Petya sign a signature stating that he would not engage in religious activities. Petya, of course, refused to give such a subscription, but at home he told us about it, and the whole family sang the psalm “The sea of life is terribly raging.”
At that time, Petya was in Kyiv, participated in services, and brother Vladimir Yakovlevich Kunets suggested that he move to Kyiv. The minister brothers and parents advised Petya that it was better for the young leader to get married earlier so as not to be a temptation for his sisters.
And Petya decided to get married. After talking with his parents, he, with their consent, went to Dnepropetrovsk and proposed to Nina Ponomar. She suggested praying about it. Petya spent many days in Kherson fasting and praying, and then, when he received a positive answer from Nina, he went with his dad to talk to the bride’s parents. Their wedding took place in October 1979. My dad and I couldn’t be at their wedding because of the breakdown of the Bobik car (I wrote about this in “Memories of Father” in the “Transport” section), and only got to the wedding feast in the village of Novaya Aleksandrovka, where Nina’s parents lived. At their wedding celebration, the Dnepropetrovsk orchestra-group “Maran-afa” played; the host of the feast was Petya’s friend Pavlik Ostapenko. Of the Kherson youth there were only Zavgorodniy Sergei and Siny Zhenya. There was also our brother, Pavlik. He served in the army, not far away, and was released.
After the wedding, Petya moved to Dnepropetrovsk and served in the Amur-Nizhnedneprovsk Church, where Evgeniy Alekseevich Komarov was the presbyter. He and Nina bought a small house on Podvetrennaya Street, 78. In June 1981, their daughter Elizaveta was born, in April 1984, daughter Elvira, and in September 1986, daughter Evgenia. In March 1993, their son Daniel was born.
In Dnepropetrovsk, Petya was busy at various jobs. I remember he even studied to become a turner and showed me a circular saw that he had designed himself. But still, God had a different plan for him, which was that Petya, having three young children with Nina, without much special preparation, could enter Dnepropetrovsk State University in 1988 at the Romance-Germanic Faculty, majoring in English Language and Literature, from which he graduated in June 1994. With God's help, he was able to visit England twice in 1991 and 1993, during the summer holidays, which was very good for practicing his English. At this time, groups of religious students, professors, engineers, farmers and other foreign specialists began to come to Dnepropetrovsk, which had previously been closed to foreigners, who needed help in conducting evangelistic and professional conversations with city leaders. Ample opportunities opened up for Petya to help spread the good news among students in higher education institutions. In the summer of 1991, a large group of students came to Dnepropetrovsk, organized by the mission “Campus Crusade for Christ”. Petya and Nina got involved in working with students and were among the first to help Christians from Canada tell students about Christ. This work of God’s grace attracted many students to Christ, and through the feasible contribution of many sincere Christians, under the wise leadership of brother from Canada Rolland Saenz and brother minister from Dnepropetrovsk Mikhail Zhovnir, grew into the “Alpha and Omega” ministry, which helped to come to Christ and change the lives of many students and their parents.
Petya, Nina and friends were eager to witness wherever God sent them, and from 1985 to August 1991 they visited most of Russia for missionary purposes: from Murmansk to Yakutsk. The group usually consisted of 6-8 people. They carefully prepared for the trip, and the Lord used them in those places where it was not easy to reach due to the remoteness and harsh climate.
It so happened that during one of these trips to Yakutia they were caught by a coup d’etat by the State Emergency Committee against M. Gorbachev.
Somewhere in November 1994, Petya, Nina and their children came to us in Druzhkovka, Donetsk region. They arrived in an Opel car. And in February 1995, they emigrated to America, to the state of California, the city of Sacramento, where Nina’s sister Lilya Dyachenko already lived with her husband Pavel and children. I went to see Petya off with his family: first to Dnepropetrovsk, then to Moscow. We stopped by the House of Prayer on Malovuzovsky Lane and met some Moscow brothers we knew who did not approve of Petya’s decision to leave his country.
Then Petya called his parents, Pyotr Vlasovich and Taisa Alexandrovna, to the USA, as well as the Kalinins, Pyotr and Lilya, with their children Alina and Roma. They moved to Sacramento in early January 1998. In February, the Tarasovs arrived - Anya with her husband Zhenya and children: Pasha, Marina and Angelina. In July 1998, the Lugovskys - Lyuda, Sasha and their children: Larisa, Alla, Nelya and Kostya - arrived in Sacramento. Well, in November of the same year, I (Yuri) with Tanya and nine children arrived (the 10th child, Evelina, was born in America, in 2001). Our sister Tanya Sinaya and her six children were able to come to Sacramento only in April 1999.
Petya and Nina became members of the First Slavic Evangelical Baptist Church, where the blessed man of God Fyodor Petrovich Karpets was the pastor at that time. They were actively involved in the life of the church, singing in the choir, which was led by Sergei Yanovsky, and later by Vladimir Mysin. They read poetry, Petya preached, Nina actively worked in the field of sisterhood. At first, Petya was asked to lead the teenage choir. When we arrived, he took some of our children to rehearsals: Sergei, Masha, Tima.
In Sacramento, Petya also worked in different jobs: as a teacher’s assistant in a public school, as a social worker in a welfare office, and in the employment service for emigrants. Many Russian-speaking emigrants, including me, were able to find employment with his help.
In March 2009, he was hired at the Institute of Foreign Languages in Monterey, California. This small but very beautiful town is located on the Pacific Ocean, 200 miles south of Sacramento. Petya teaches Russian there.
He did not abandon spiritual work in Sacramento either. I remember when the Christian poetess Vera Sergeevna Kushnir was still alive, he had a conversation with her (brother Alexander Vivsik recorded the video). Petya greatly appreciates Vera Sergeevna’s poetry and recorded 30 poems by Vera Kushnir on an audio CD in 2011. Recorded by Valentin Burlaka, in the FEBC studio. He is also well acquainted with the Christian poetess from Dnepropetrovsk Marina Belovol and has recorded 34 of her poems (also on audio CD, the recording was made by brother Vladimir Taryanik at the “Word to Russia” studio).
In Monterey, Petya recorded four DVDs, where he collected most of the poems that he learned and read throughout his life, starting in early childhood. The first collection of DVD-1 includes the following poems: “Healthy vocabulary”, “And then what”, “The shore washed up by the sea”, “What is our life? – Falls and ups”, “Among the vanity of vanities of sin and evil, oh, you who follow the eternal God”, “Yesterday is gone, only memory remains”, “Prayer is not always a lengthy monologue”, “Grand Canyon”, “Bartimaeus” and others.
And in DVD-2 and DVD-3 he recorded poems by Russian classical poets as a keepsake. I will list just a few names: A.S. Pushkin, M.Yu. Lermontov, I.S. Nikitin, A.K. Tolstoy, A.F. Annensky, G.R. Derzhavin, F.I. Tyutchev and others. These poems are in the book “Poetry of Heaven” (2006).
The DVD-4 collection is entirely dedicated to the poetry of the great contemporary Evgeniy Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko. The collection includes deep philosophical reflections of the contemporary poet about the meaning of life, about death, about love, about God, about Russia...
Peter and his wife Nina spend family and literary evenings, participate in the choir and prayer ministry of the First Slavic Evangelical Baptist Church. For many relatives and friends, close and distant, they find time, strength, and the opportunity to share what they can. Their lives show the principle followed by the Apostle Paul: “I have become all things to all, that I might save at least some.” (1 Corinthians 9:22)