Soaring

by Richard M. Romney

Since the gospel entered their lives, young women in Ukraine are really spreading their wings.

Commuters hardly notice the statue, isolated at the back of a train station in Kiev, Ukraine. It depicts a woman releasing three doves who then fly free. Built years ago under a repressive regime, today the statue seems symbolic of Ukraine’s newfound liberty. It could also serve as a symbol of young LDS women in this land. They, like the doves, are testing their wings, praying that the breeze of freedom will sustain them as the restored gospel spreads throughout their land.

Stepping up

“Put your foot inside this shoe,” seminary teacher Tatyana Mutilina said, holding out a boot nearly large enough for Goliath. Her student, Anzhelika Kovalova, placed her foot timidly inside.

“Now,” the teacher said, “put it here on the table where everyone can see.”

That got the class’s attention.

“Don’t go on a journey wearing shoes that don’t fit,” Sister Mutilina said. Then she taught the Kharkovsky Branch youth a powerful lesson from the seminary manual, reading scriptures, discussing questions, and bearing her testimony about how important it is to be prepared when the Lord calls upon you. The point?

“That the future of the Church in Ukraine will require youth like us to step forward,” Anzhelika says. “We need to be ready for the challenge.” She is not the only young LDS woman here with such an understanding. Others share similar views.

“It makes a big difference to be a member of the Church,” says Galina Trohemenko of the Syvatoshino Branch. “It means living standards that others don’t. That’s what attracted me to the Church in the first place. I have a friend who is a member, and she and her family have such high standards that I wanted to find out more. Now that I’m a member, I need to set that same kind of example for those around me.”

Then and there

But all of this might never have been, had earlier sisters surrendered to their fears. Consider Kira Gulko’s story:

“I was 14,” she explains. “We weren’t practicing Jews, but we were of Jewish origin. For many years in our family, talking about Jesus Christ was forbidden. But when perestroika began, allowing greater freedom to look at new ideas, my parents started to explore different religions and philosophies. My mother was president of the international friendship club at the school where she teaches English. She found a letter from a teacher in Riverton, Utah, who was looking for pen pals. My mother’s class responded, and in return they got a big box of maybe 100 letters. Many of the students mentioned they were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but my mother didn’t know what that was.

“Then we were passing by the bridge near our house, and we saw a notice inviting people to attend The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! My parents decided to go, first so Mom could answer her students’ questions, but also because they were looking for another religion themselves.

“That was in October 1991. After that, the missionaries started coming to our apartment. Soon my parents understood that Jesus Christ is their Savior. They also loved the doctrine of eternal families. We have a wonderful family, and I think that was an important principle to us. They also went to a baptism and felt the Spirit. In December they decided to be baptized themselves.

“I listened to all of the discussions, but I couldn’t understand why my parents decided to join this church. I was afraid they were crazy, that something had happened to their minds. But as I read the Book of Mormon, my testimony of its truthfulness grew stronger and stronger. The key to my conversion was when I realized I am truly loved by my Heavenly Father. I could feel this big love that’s around me and see it in my parents and in the members of the Church. That’s why I was baptized in February 1992. I knew it was right.”

Since then, Kira has helped to bring her friend Lena into the Church and has watched three of her four grandparents embrace the gospel. She has seen her mother help with the translation of the Book of Mormon into Ukrainian and seen her father called as a district president. She has spent several semesters at Brigham Young University, where she served as a student ward Relief Society president. Now attending a university in Kiev, she is watching what were once small branches grow into large ones.

Here and now

And then there’s Natalia Yereskovska. As a 15-year-old exchange student, she left Cherkassy, Ukraine (south of Kiev), for Sleepy Hollow, Illinois (northwest of Chicago). She gave her LDS hosts quite a shock when, on the way home from the airport, she said, “I know God sent me to you.”

She had been praying to be placed with a religious family, “so I could find my spiritual life.” When she read the profile sheet of the Bruce B. and Jean Bingham family, she saw that they didn’t smoke and that they attended church regularly. But she also felt something, a witness that she should listen to the Binghams and follow their example. Natalia spent the next year participating in family prayer, home evening, Young Women, sacrament meetings, and Sunday School.

Her sensitivity to the Spirit grew. She found answers she’d been seeking for years. She took the missionary discussions. She fasted and prayed and received an answer that she should join the Church. Fearful that her parents would never approve, she gathered her courage, made her request, and received permission. She was baptized on January 7, 1996. But soon she faced concern of another kind. She must return to Cherkassy, a town of 350,000, where she would be the only Latter-day Saint.

“I was scared,” she says. “I couldn’t imagine going where there is no church, where I wouldn’t be able to go to meetings or take the sacrament. But on the flight home I remembered what Brother Bingham told me: ‘No matter where you are, you can be a light.’ That gave me some comfort.”

After spending two Sundays studying scriptures, praying, and singing hymns by herself, Natalia heard of an LDS youth conference in Kiev. She went, and there she met President Wilfried M. Voge of the Ukraine Kiev Mission. Together they mapped out the required steps for the Church to be recognized in Cherkassy. The process started with getting signatures on a petition inviting missionaries to come. But the request had to come from adults.

Natalia made friends with a university professor who once stayed with an LDS family in Wisconsin. He agreed to help, prepared an official letter of invitation, got a group of business students to agree to listen to the missionaries, and even arranged a meeting with the mayor of a small town nearby. After Natalia explained about Church standards, the head counselor of her school also signed the petition and requested that missionaries speak to the entire school!

In September 1996, the first missionaries came. In October, Church meetings were held. In January, the first convert was baptized. Then another in February. Then families. Additional missionaries were assigned. Young Women, Relief Society, Sunday School, and Primary were organized. Picnics and service projects were held. Men were ordained to the priesthood. A branch president was called. Natalia led one of her lifelong friends to the Church, and even the professor’s wife was baptized! In short, the branch kept growing and growing. Today, if you visit the Cherkassy Branch and ask for Natalia, five members will turn and say, “Yes?”

When Natalia first thought about establishing the gospel in her hometown, she was nervous. But President Voge said, “Heavenly Father will support you.” That kind of faith has paved the way for others.

Growing together

Two trees growing side by side. It’s a symbol for Ukraine that is more than 1,000 years old. It’s stamped on the back of each coin minted by the government. It’s incorporated in the national coat of arms. And it’s also a symbol of the lives of young LDS women in Ukraine today.

As they walk through the Kiev Botanical Gardens, Lilia Velbivets and Aliona Papilenkova explain. “Youth in the Church are a lot like those trees,” Lilia says. “We shelter each other, we protect each other, and together we grow straight and true.”

Aliona, for example, has grown by studying seminary. She is now one of the first four-year graduates in Ukraine. Lilia is following that example by studying seminary herself.

“In seminary we get away from the world,” Aliona says. “We learn to trust the truth contained in the scriptures and to use it in our lives.”

Lilia talks about her family’s growth in the gospel. “My mother and I met the sister missionaries, and we were excited to learn about another testament of Jesus Christ (the Book of Mormon). But my father was an atheist and slower to convert.” As the family took the discussions regularly, however, her father’s heart was touched. All three were baptized on the same day.

“The next year was wonderful as we prepared to go to the temple (in Freiberg, Germany) to be sealed as a family,” Lilia continues. “When we arrived I felt like I was at home, because the temple is the house of God and we are His children.”

Aliona remembers a big ray of sunshine coming through the window when she was baptized at age 15. Hope filled her heart. Soon, however, she found that she lost friends at school “because they didn’t understand what I had done, and they started to see a big difference in me. But I will never compare my God to my friends. Heavenly Father always holds first place with me.”

She has since found many new friends in the Church, she says. “And now I can’t imagine my life without it. It’s like the air I breathe.”

The evening sun is fading as Lilia and Aliona walk toward the exit from the park. By the side of the path two trees stand, growing tall together.

Legend says Kiev was founded by three fierce brothers, Kiy, Shchek, and Khoriv. But in the statue that memorializes them, their sister Lybed stands at the bow of the boat, arms outstretched and expression earnest. In this ancient place, her image could also represent the young Latter-day Saint women of Ukraine. Eager to soar, they are already flying toward the future.

Photography by Richard M. Romney

(Left to right) Galina Trohemenko with her mother and brothers; Lilia Velbivets and Aliona Papilenkova with the city Kiev in the background.

(Above right) Kira Gulko has gone from being a skeptic to being a missionary to family and friends. (Opposite page) The Kharkovska Branch seminary class (top) and Natalia Yereskovska with Bruce B. Bingham.

(Page 32) Lilia and Aliona pose in front of the trees that symbolize Ukraine. (Left) Natalia Yereskovska (front row, second from left) at a youth conference in Kiev. (Above) The statue of the legendary founders of Kiev.