We saw Ukraine churches reborn after communist oppression in this 2001 bike trip – South Bend Tribune

Republished: Tribune writer's story still an true to Ukrainian people's thirst for religious freedom

EDITORS NOTE:In 2001, South Bend Tribune reporter Joseph Dits joined a Niles bike builder on a bicycle tour of Seventh-day Adventists churches in Ukraine. They heard stories of religious oppression under communism and saw churches reborn after they gained freedom in 1991.

Here is that story again, republished as it ran on July 9, 2001. It is a snapshot in time. Since then, religious freedom has shifted to some degree, especially in certain parts of Ukraine. But this story is still true to what Ukrainians suffered under communism, plus the religious rebirth they started to experience in their first decade of freedom. It's also true to the enduring generosity of the people.

In 2001, news media spelled the capital Kiev. Today, of course, it is known as Kyiv.

KIEV, Ukraine We rolled out of inky black croplands that look like the Midwest. On the edge of the nation's capital, Kiev, our bikes began to swish and dance around countless puddles on a muddy road into the town of Borispol.

Ukrainians navigated their way on foot and in boxy Ladas, the four-door jalopies made in neighboring Russia.

Rain-soaked foliage almost hid the small homes of concrete, but not the boring, Soviet-era apartment high-rises that flood the nation and that badly need new concrete, new tile, new everything.

Our tires nudged into the garden gate of a Seventh-day Adventist church. It was lunch, and the church folk had been expecting us for a couple of months.

Five cyclists from South Bend, Niles and Buchanan and six other Americans had just begun a weeklong tour of Adventist churches in this former Soviet nation. The generosity of the people humbled us. But so did the price they've paid for their faith. It was easy to find people who've spent years in jail for practicing Christianity. Neither the growth of churches we witnessed nor the tour itself was possible 10 years ago, when communism held its final grip.

The beaming pastor in Borispol showed us his unfinished church building. Exposed bricks held up a roof over a dusty floor cluttered with boards. He's struggling to raise $10,000 to finish the $35,000 project.

The fee for our tour brought a few hundred dollars to that cause. It was time to thank us. Cloth-covered tables were plastered with red borscht, bread, potatoes, salad, sweet rolls and fruit drinks in colorful mugs and plates. We snapped pictures. This surpassed our simple expectations. Then church women brought more goodies cabbage rolls, cabbage pancakes, strawberries and sweet, doughy desserts filled with fruit and cheese.

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Our tummies packed, they led us into the lower-level room that they used for worship and seated us on one side. Church members glowed at us from their seats. More than 5,000 miles and a mountain of riches divided our cultures, and all of that had been reduced to a few feet. As one Ukrainian woman said, "We are brothers and sisters."

They gave each of us a hand-painted wooden container or candlestick.

Such feasts and gifts repeated themselves throughout the tour breakfast, lunch, dinner. We all wished we had something small to give back. In fact, we often laughed while trying to get our translators to explain: "We are not worthy!"

We could have expected divine care on this fund-raising trip. We were ambassadors from the land of milk and honey on a first-ever tour. But, as I found traveling to people's homes after the tour, Ukrainians love having visitors, and they express this by cooking.

Doug Fattic assembled the mid-June trip when he wasn't building or painting bikes out of his Niles home or serving on the finance committee of the Adventist church in Niles.

He worked with Adventist church leaders in Ukraine.

The fee helped to raise money for the churches and for a project to give bikes to pastors. Many of the nation's 500-plus Adventist clergy can't afford cars, yet they have to minister to small communities that are 3 to 15 miles from where they live. So far, the project has gathered 350 bikes, 250 of which were bought from a bike factory in Ukraine, Fattic said. Much of his financial help $30,000 recently comes from his camping buddy, Debbie McKee of the "Little Debbie" snack cakes.

I was among two non-Adventists in the group. I'm Catholic. I came because I love to cycle and see out-of-the-way countries. I knew Fattic from years of cycling with him in a club.

Even the American Adventists were touched by the Ukrainians' devout faith and penchant for prayer throughout the day. Maybe it's the old truth about converts being the most fervent Christians; new religious freedom has drawn thousands of newcomers to the faith.

Or maybe it's because the Ukrainians' faith has endured bloodshed and anguish. Nazis murdered an estimated 700,000 Jews here in World War II, almost half of the Jewish population, and Soviet leaders killed, tortured or imprisoned thousands more for religious reasons.

About 140 years ago, a Catholic priest wrote the melody to fit a poem, "Ukraine Has Not Perished," which the Parliament chose as the national anthem in 1992. It begins:

"Ukraine has not perished, neither her glory, nor her freedom,

Upon us, fellow Ukrainians, fate shall smile once more.

Our enemies will vanish, like dew in the morning sun,

And we, too, shall dwell, brothers, in a free land of our own."

Growing up, the Rev. Michael Skrypkar used to climb into the mountains with other youths so they could escape the eyes and ears of the KGB and learn about their faith. When he turned 19, the army called, and, like all men his age, he was required to enlist. It was 1978. He refused to work on Saturdays, the Sabbath, which Adventists reserve for worship and rest. The army quickly found out and sent him to prison for three years.

The food was terrible, but Skrypkar prayed with many other men who were behind bars for their faith. He said he became a "good friend" to, and converted, a man who'd spent 15 years in prison for killing 31 allegedly corrupt policemen.

Now Skrypkar serves as pastor for the church in Belaya Tserkov, which means "White Church."

In a general sense, his heritage reminds me of the dual life Ukraine had to live under communist atheism. Skrypkar's brown hair and brown eyes, his rounded cheeks and jaw line reveal a Romanian ancestry. He speaks Romanian and enjoys the native food and music at home. But his passport says he's Ukrainian because he's from Chernivtsi, a Ukrainian town on the southwest border, which originally was a part of Romania.

He doesn't seem to mind. Many residents of western Ukraine have a split or mixed heritage because various parts of the area had belonged to neighboring countries.

It's more painfully ironic how communism tried to force atheism on a country that, in fact, had such a rich religious history.

Ukrainian churches go back to the 10th century. Ukraine was the first Eastern region to receive the Christian rites from Constantinople that shaped the Orthodox churches, the most prevalent of the Christian denominations in Ukraine and Russia today.

Kiev's medieval Pecherska Lavra, the "Monastery of the Caves," is a color- and gold-splashed assortment of Orthodox churches and buildings that was the site of many cultural firsts, among them the printing of the first Ukrainian dictionary. The western city of Lviv holds more medieval churches than you can see in one day, including Roman Catholic, Byzantine Catholic, Ukrainian Orthodox and Russian Orthodox.

Communists took direct control of the Russian Orthodox church during their reign and outlawed all other faiths.

Adventists recall how they'd knock out the wall between two apartments to hold Sabbath in secret, and how KGB members would appear at the services. Officials tolerated services but cracked down when the faithful began to teach their children.

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One of our translators, Svitlana Kryshtalska, recalls what happened to children who were found going to church: "Teachers would …gather the whole school and would start shaming you before the whole school audience that you believe in God and are visiting churches," she said. "God was a myth, and the communists were doing everything in order to make people consider it as something ridiculous. …Such things happened a lot of times. But, thank God, it never happened to me."

Kryshtalska, now in her 20s, said her father used to paint icons in Orthodox churches, but he never told her what he did for a living until she was 13 or 14 old enough to keep it a secret. She knows of another man who went to prison for 10 years for doing the same. Yet another was jailed for baptizing too many people.

Every typewriter had to be registered with the government so that, if religious material or counter-propaganda arose, officials could track down the author. Many Christians typed church papers inside closets, where they could muffle the clicking of their keys.

Youths used to go to a wooded camp and building called Bucha on the outskirts of Kiev to learn about communism. Adventists have turned it into an institute of higher education. Our group joined 300 or more young Adventist adults who gathered there in Sabbath suits and dresses for a conference of music, Bible school discussions and talk of church trips and evangelism.

Church buildings are still coming out of their shackles. The government had turned many of them into warehouses and, in one case, a museum to atheism.

There aren't enough old churches to meet the demands of growing denominations. Adventist numbers have tripled from about 20,000 over the past decade. Now there are more than 800 Adventist congregations throughout Ukraine, plus about 375 prayer groups that aren't large enough to be considered congregations, said the Rev. Vladimir Krupsky, president of the Adventist church in Ukraine.

The Adventists are erecting 15 to 18 church buildings in each of the eight conferences in the country, Krupsky said. Four out of the eight churches we visited were still being built. Tour organizers, no doubt, wanted us to see this for fund-raising purposes. But I saw many churches of other denominations being built, too.

Not all of this is for evangelizing. Adventists also talked about meals and clothing they provide for the needy.

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Ukrainians can build a church for the price of a high-end sport utility vehicle in the United States.

The pastor in Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky sold his car to raise money for his church building. It couldn't have been a fancy car; pastors typically make less than $50 a month. Church members bought an unfinished house, and, little by little, they have installed what they can as collections trickle in from the members' also-meager incomes.

Their unfinished building is made of a white, concrete brick. Brick is cheaper and easier to come by than wood. The floor is still dirt, walls and ceiling are missing, but the garden outside is full. The side building has a garage, a small gathering room and a second story for storage that you reach by ladder.

The congregations we met borrowed money from relatively wealthy neighbors. Many people don't trust banks, one young pastor told me, because they have been known to close unexpectedly.

The churches tend to hire a handful of men with versatile building skills who are the ones who slap the cement, pound the nails, run the wiring and do everything else.

The Rev. Krupsky relaxed at his home with Doug Fattic and me to reflect on the tour we'd finished and the prospects for another tour next year. As Adventist president, Krupsky told Fattic that the bike tour would have been unimaginable seven years ago, at least for Krupsky. He and others were still shaking off years of thinking in the old Soviet way. Had Fattic come then, Krupsky said, he would have returned to the United States and warned others, "Never go there, never do business with those people."

The Ukrainians on our trip delighted in our 300-mile adventure, whether they were following in our three support vehicles or riding alongside us on their own bikes. Touring dozens of kilometers a day on a bike was common to us, totally new to them.

They and the pastors we visited took their cues from the Rev. Yuri Kusmenko, the fussy and clever man who masterminded our course. A lean man with raw Ukrainian cheekbones, Kusmenko oversees all of the Adventist pastors in Ukraine. He drove one of the two vans and watched the cyclists like a worried shepherd.

His intensity paid off. Rarely were we off schedule, and when we were, it wasn't by much. Pastors at several churches asked us to forgive their imperfections, whatever those were.

The Ukrainians overcame limitations with ingenuity.

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Take the bad water pressure that plagues the entire nation. Hot water is pumped to some homes, although it often fails or stops at a certain hour. One family's water stopped completely after 10 p.m. Water is expensive, so if you don't live in a high-rise, chances are that you have a pit toilet.

But our hosts built showers just for us. These consisted of two wood-frame stalls wrapped in wood or black plastic. Volunteers climbed a ladder to dump buckets of heated water into a barrel, from which the water flowed into shower heads. In Kaniv, youth group volunteers ran water from the heat of a fire up to the church's second floor, where it flowed from a tank down a long tube to the showers.

Ingenious or hospitable? We had brought sleeping mats and sleeping bags but never got to use them as the faithful cleared room in their churches for beds or mattresses, sent us to a hotel or to members' homes.

Not all is broken. City markets thrive without long lines for food. All of the highways and country roads we rode were paved. City streets are free of litter. Kiev is building a new, modern train station. The city's subways are not only full of art; they help many of the 5 million citizens get around with great efficiency.

Dignity lives in Ukraine, too. Village houses may be small, but they are immaculate and brightly painted. Many live in Soviet-built high-rise apartment buildings, hundreds of which fill Kiev's skyline. From the outside, they shock the eye like old public housing in Chicago. Front steps have holes big enough to catch a child's foot. Poorly lit hallways look like dungeons. Elevators chug along like old cars.

But open the door to someone's home and you find tidiness and warm-colored paint, wallpaper, carpets, lacy curtains and perhaps a book of worship.

Like stepping from hell into heaven.

Follow Outdoor Adventures columnist Joseph Dits on Facebook at SBTOutdoorAdventures. Contact him at 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.

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We saw Ukraine churches reborn after communist oppression in this 2001 bike trip - South Bend Tribune