In February of 1992 five of us took an exploratory trip to Ukraine. The Soviet block had just collapsed and we believed it might be a strategic time to spread the gospel there. When we crossed the border from Hungary to Ukraine we were detained at the border because we did not have a visa. When we flew into Austria we went to the Soviet Embassy and although the sign on the door said Soviet Embassy, they told us there was no Soviet Embassy any longer, that all the embassies were now Russian Embassies. When we arrived at the border, the guards there said we had to get a visa from the Ukrainian embassy. We ask where one is, they said 'we don't have any embassies'. We asked him to allow us in the country for 10 days so he did write a note (in Cyrillic characters which none of us knew what they were). He said we had to come back out this same border, so we took it on faith that he was actually writing that we had permission to come into the country. We drove into a town named Uzhgorod and saw what was clearly a church building. We saw a young man and asked him if he spoke English. He said no but motioned for us to follow him. After a few minutes a priest came into the courtyard area where we were standing. I had a small English/Russian dictionary that I opened and pointed in the dictionary to word opposite 'priest' and sort of shrugged my shoulders as if to ask a question. He said 'da' (yes). I then turned to the page in the dictionary that said 'missionary' in Russian. He had sort of a scowl on his face, he then abruptly turned and walked away... and never came back! After about ten minutes we figured he was not thrilled with us being there so we left the building. We spotted a college age kid and ask him if he spoke English. He said (in English) 'no, but I will take you to my professor who does speak English'. He hopped in our van and we drove to the middle of town where he jumped out and said he would go ask his professor to help us. After a little while he came back down and said the professor had fallen on the ice and was not able to walk but said that a colleague would meet us on a corner a few blocks away. We were a little skeptical to meet someone on a corner since we were not actually in the country with a legal document. I suppose they were also a little suspicious of five American men in a motor home. After all, we were the first Americans they had seen at the border and were very curious why were there (another story). The people that met us on the corner was a mother and daughter. Mariya Zeikan, the head of the English department, and her 16 year old daughter, Marichka. Now we understood why they wanted to meet us on the street, not in their home. We exchanged a few greetings and then invited them into the motor home to get out of the freezing cold, which they accepted gladly. Ralph Bethea and I sat in the front and shared with Mariya why we were there. Like I had told the border agent, we believed now was an ideal time to share the good news of Jesus while there was chaos in their country. We wanted to give them a spiritual foundation to build on. In the meantime, Jim Davis was sharing his testimony with Marichka and telling the gospel story to her. That very morning she prayed then and there to invite Christ into her life. Two days later her mom also received Christ. She brought us to meet the president of the university and obtained permission to allow us to come into the classrooms in the university with the purpose of sharing the good news with the students. The reception was phenomenal among the students. Mariya even felt more and more comfortable prefacing our talks with a testimony of her own, telling them to listen carefully and this story will change your life. That endorsement made sharing the gospel very productive. Through the ten years of working in the Ukraine, she was always a tremendous advocate opening doors that would have been difficult to to access without her. She had lost her husband to cancer before we met her and she met one of our board members, Ken Guy, on an early mission trip. Ken had also lost his spouse to cancer an they struck up a friendship that turned into more. They eventually fell in love and were married. Through a lengthy process he was able to get her to the USA and they have live happily in Douglasville for a quarter of a century. The Lord clearly brought them together. Praise the Lord that He guided us to her on that first trip long ago!