My name is Viacheslav. I am 55 years old, as I write this and I have a wonderful, loving and beloved person next to me — Natasha. She is my wife. She gave birth to five wonderful children. Now I am a Christian and so is my partner. We serve the Lord. Two of our children also entered into covenant with Christ. But at one time everything was completely different.

I grew up in a simple ordinary family. My mother was an engineer in a transport company. Dad worked at a meat factory, in a refrigeration shop. All of our neighbors lived amicably on our street of 26 houses. It was a neighborhood of workers. They built houses together, helped one another. Any joint work ended with a tableful of people gathered. Everyone drank and sang songs. Such gatherings did not always end peacefully. We, children, saw this as an image of the right life. We understood that we needed to be in the team. And the team spent all their free time either helping friends or drinking. Of our 26 homes, 14 people died prematurely of the demon of alcoholism, 7 people served different terms in prison. My mother scolded my father because of drinking. He sometimes beat her in return. Looking at all this, I, a teenager at the time, decided that I did not want to be like them. I went to study at an engineering college, went in for sports. Joined the army. I served as a submariner in the Navy. When I returned home after military service, I found myself all alone in life.

I did not have friends anymore. Some got married, some had left, some went to prison. I couldn’t find any decent well-paid job. It was 1988. I got a job at a factory and started living like everyone else. Since I was an athlete, there were people who offered me to earn more than in the factory. The guys and I helped repay debts that the debtors did not want to repay. After each successful business we started drinking and little by little I became exactly what I didn’t want to be.

One day on my way home from work I met Natasha. It turned out that we worked at the same plant. We liked each other and started dating. In 1989, we got married. Oleksii and Nastenka, our older children, were born. I stopped my ‘deeds of Robin Hood’.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union – the early 90’s, for almost six months they did not pay wages. There was nothing to feed our children. My ‘friends’ and I fell back into our old ways, and I started drinking. Natasha cried. My mother cried. Life became unbearable. And one day I decided to end this life. I decided to hang myself. Maybe it would have worked for me, but my grandmother had been praying for me. She was a believer and often told me about God, but in response I just laughed. The moment came when it occurred to me that someone was pushing me into a noose. But I was a stubborn person and came down from the attic with the words ‘you lie, you will not win’. I washed, shaved, changed clothes and left the house. I told my mother and wife that they would never see me again.

I did not know where to go, but my feet carried me to a neighbor who lived two houses away. Behind his back, I called him ‘devout’. When I arrived, Zhora, Mira, and their five children were also at home. I have never been so excited as at that moment. He met me, invited me to come in, and I reeked of alcohol. I don’t know how, but I told him: ‘I want to join your group’, and that was all. He invited me to pray. In the past, I would have just politely ignored him. Someone else would have gotten severely punished for such words. But then we went into their living room and got on our knees. What I said? How he pray? I do not remember. But I remember very well that a different man, not me, rose from his knees. A few months later, my mother and Natasha and I were baptized in Hydropark, on the Dnieper River.

Now I am 55 years old, I am a minister in the church and in life. I have a wonderful family and church congregation. I have a friend and assistant – my wife and my mother is already with the Lord.