Alexander Korsakov
"As a school kid & student I was taught that God does not exist, but seeing the beautiful churches & things attached to religion made me think that God is too beautiful to be denied. Anyway I didn't think God was somebody for me. I thought he was for some people who deserve his love & to be saved by him. I worked also as an interpreter for the CoMission & that is when I became a Christian. I understood things which I couldn't understand by myself & only my brothers & sisters in Christ pointed me the way to the Lord as my savior and my friend...
"We now have an opportunity to lay a whole new foundation for our culture through the Gospel. With a reformed approach to life, we can change the everyday problems Ukrainians face."
Alexander is one of the pastors of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Odessa.
Dima & Natasha
Dima & Natasha joined the church last year, transferring from the Reformed church in St. Petersburg, Russia. Their story has been a long pilgrimmage — and they've found that God is faithful — from East to West!
Dima is from a town near Vladivostok, Russia's eastern port near Japan, where he was a businessman. Dima was desperate to find meaning in life, and almost despaired of life itself. The Operation Mobilization ship Logos II visited Vladivostok in 1991, evangelized and left him a Gospel of John. Dima read it thoroughly and became a seeker after God, seeking in every religion he could find — mysticism, JWs, Hare Krishna, Islam, Orthodoxy, Boston Church of Christ, etc. But what he seemed to like best was to be alone with God. He read some of the church fathers and was impressed with their active faith.
One day in 1997 as he was working in the market, he felt a voice inside telling him, "Buy a Bible" — and there in front of him was a complete Bible, so he did. He voraciously read it from cover to cover — twice over a period of three months. He sought after the Christ of the Bible and realized he must quit his dishonest work and find him. His religious quest made his wife and family uneasy, but it made Dima miserable until he found Christ through his study of the Scriptures. When he committed his life to Christ, he did so wholeheartedly, determining not to be passive, but to spend his life serving Christ. At the same time, Natasha read the New Testament through, but only came to Christ when Dima helped her fill in the "Prayer of Repentance" page. She had known she was a sinner, but now she knew she was saved from it.
Dima finally decided to go to the ends of the earth if necessary to find people who believed as he did. What better place to go than Israel, the land of the Bible? Dima and his wife Natasha lived near the train station, right at the end of the Trans-Siberian Railway, so they boarded it for Moscow to apply for visas to Israel. But they were refused visas. They knew no one in Moscow but felt that God would lead them. So they opened up the yellow pages and started visiting churches. They finally found a reformed church, where they received the Westminster standards and reformed literature. They felt the reformed faith was the faith of the Bible, and a faith which seeks to bring REFORM to society — they’d found what they were looking for.
Since they couldn’t get residence papers in Moscow, they moved on to St. Petersburg and joined the new Reformed Church there. Dima studied in the seminary there for one year. When they heard about the work in Odessa, they felt led to move there. As Abraham and Sarah, they set out for the unknown and found God to be faithful — with their last paycheck they found the last tickets for the 2-day train to Odessa, and unknowingly got housing in the same building where the Odessa church meets! Natasha adds: "I’ve found by experience that it’s only hard if you aren’t trusting God fully. God has shown his faithfulness again and again."
Dima & Natasha joined the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Odessa in spring, 2000. "This is the kind of church we've been looking for." He was accepted into the first class of the Evangelical Reformed Seminary of Ukraine in May, 2000. He is doing his practical work in northern Odessa where they now live (Kotovskovo).