Alexey and Marianna faced the tragic loss of their high school son, Andrew, in a car accident two years ago. Since then, as they've worked through their grief, they've become deeply committed to their faith, now passionately living for God.
I am Jewish and I grew up in Russia, and my mom instructed me specifically not to tell people I was Jewish because people did not like Jews very much. So at three years old I knew to say that. So I met my neighbors. We had the summerhouse or dacha where we spent our summers. So we had some new neighbors.
I walked across the street and introduced myself as, "Hi, I'm Mariana, and I'm not Jewish", and my neighbors just so happened to be Pentecostal Christians. And they said, "Well, why are you embarrassed? You know, the Christ was Jewish, right? You know who Christ is. You know who Jesus is?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I think so. Like the guy on the cross."
And so they started telling me about Jesus, and I, like, really fell in love with, like, the prayer. And they prayed before each meal and it was just so fun for me. And so I started coming around. They had like a home church kind of where we did the studies of the Bible. And so like my mom started coming around and like a lot of my family became Christians and even my grandpa, who was like really Jewish, he got baptized before he died.
So I wasn't walking for many years because literally in my church, I was youth, like it was me...That's it. And they taught the works. Some Pentecostal churches teach the works. And so when we moved to the States, I'm like, I am not making this happen. I'm there's still too much sin going on. There's no way that I can I can do this, so I'll just pray, but I'm probably going to go to hell.
And that's kind of the mindset that I that I had. I kind of try to walk a little bit in Miami, which is not the easiest place, obviously.
Well, I grew up in Soviet Union and in a family that was mixed in the sense that my dad is... well was and still is an atheist.
And my mom was a Christian. So at 13 they offered me a choice to get baptized. Like my mom really wanted me to go and get baptized. My dad said it was a terrible idea. So the consensus was like, you're a 13 year old teenager, go figure this out. And decide this for yourself. Like there was no education of any kind or here's why one way or the other.
So, but I felt like it was an important decision that was an important choice and decided to go do it, basically. And that's why I got baptized into Russian Orthodox religion. But that was basically my foray into Christianity.
It was an on and off thing. Basically, the Bible was really difficult to get in Soviet Union. So when we finally got one, I was very curious, like I wanted to check it out and read it. And then we got the kids version of the Bible. And in the nineties, basically the floodgates broke and there was so much more open and accessible.
So I can't say I was really interested to pursue it back then. It was more like a dabble into something that's interesting that might be there, but there wasn't anything really consistent in, in Russian Orthodox religion, basically, at least the way that the my perception of it and the way that I was raised. And if you just go to the church, you put the candles, you pray to the icons or pray in general, it's a very quiet place.
There's a lot of like spirit of reverence there. At least that was my perception. I'm giving you my two cents. I could be completely way off from the actual doctrine, but basically that was my perception. And this is why I would go occasionally. And you do that. It's very private and we just don't talk about it afterwards.
we didn't pick Dwell, Dwell picked us. We had both of our kids heavily involved in Dwell before. We were like, "let's check it out." And to me, like Andrew got baptized. My son Andrew got baptized because, you know, he wanted to please me, but I, I didn't know how to have him on fire for God.
I didn't know because I couldn't be that example. And I didn't have enough Bible knowledge. I wasn't equipped. So I just prayed. I prayed for him to get a community. I prayed for him to get the youth around him that loved Jesus. And it was literally an answered prayer. So when I saw my son changing before my eyes and my steps on ministering to Alexi, we wanted to come check it out.
And of course, God sends us the Foxes. And, you know, just from there, you know, God loved us through the foxes. And when the accident happened with Andrew, I felt God's love through this church. People that didn't even know me and the Foxes specifically, I literally was like, If they come and stay with me in the house, like if Todd just comes and like holds my hand, I'll be okay, you know.
So through them I felt God's love and, you know, I never wanted to not walk with God and Julie was the one that explained to me that not by your works, you're saved by. It's a free gift. You don't have to be perfect. All your sins have been paid for. And that makes it so much easier when you don't have that pressure.
Like, Yeah, I'm going to mess up, but it's okay. And so now I'm like, I'm walking with God. It's so much easier than not walking, especially in the midst of tragedy when you're grieving. Like when you're only thinking that this is this, this earth and this world is all you have. What's the purpose? You know? So that's kind of my story.
And I the worst possible thing would be to walk away from God. I don't ever see that happening because, you know, I have an in now in heaven. I kind of tasted eternity through Andrew being there now. And so I want him to be proud of me. And, you know, when I'm up there, I want him to say, "mom, good job...You know, you did...You did Well, after I left." you know?
You have to know that we're going to meet them in not so distant future. And that was my encouragement to Marianna. It's like, look, if we know, if we truly believe, then what is there to be sad about his not going to deal with a whole bunch of crap growing up?
He's not going to experience a whole bunch of stuff that we need to deal with on a day to day basis. He is in a much better place and it's wonderful, right? It's basically like if you truly know that, then it's something to look forward to.
It still sucks...because I miss him, but at least we know that we can't be sad for him because he's where we all are going to end up. And it's a much better place than here. So that kind of gets me through the day because it's obviously pretty recent.
It's going to be two years in December, but that's how I'm able to still experience joy and there's no other way to do it but say to say yes to God, to try to serve other people and left thinking about Marianna and how sad she feels without Andrew, and more thinking about how I can bring more people and how I can be a better servant for God and this time of the harvest.
Yeah. We were on men's retreat with Tom Barnum and Todd Fox, and I saw them reading a book, "Living Life Backwards" by David Gibson, which unpacks the book of Ecclesiastes. And the point in the book I picked out that I basically read through it while on that retreat. And there's a really interesting point that stuck with me, that we have it backwards.
We should be sad at birth and celebrating death if we truly believe that people are going, you know, the souls are going up there as opposed to somebody who's born into all the madness of this world. So, that also helps put things into perspective.
but yeah, it's a summary on this point. It's an awesome experience. It's great to learn more.
I think it's a continuous learning journey. I don't believe that we can stand still. There's no status quo. So either declining or we're progressing. So we're going to move in one direction or another and might as well move in the right direction.
And then cell group is really important to me, even though it's every other Friday night, it keeps me out of trouble, at least every other Friday.
No, but jokes aside, it just it's just an awesome experience. And the the leadership quality and the depth of leadership and the knowledge that people are sharing is just mind blowing. You know, after being in the States for 30 years of bounced across different churches from Russian Baptist to various American flavors and denominations, and this is hands down the most profound and the most deep teaching and learning that can be done.
I would say that walking away from God would be really silly thing to do. I would get more involved because I look at my life when I wasn't walking with God. I've been through the drugs, the parties, I've lived like I really have lived, and my life is so much more joyful now, even though I've lost, you know, the best thing I've ever had, my child.
He's not here, but I'm experiencing so much more joy now than I did in all those years that I've partied. And I have like really good quality people around me and like, our home church is empty nesters. We're not only just studying the Bible and I'll be like, all godly, you know, we're all human.
We play poker together, we do fun stuff. I mean, it's a living. We're doing life together. And these are the people that I'm going to be in heaven with, too. And like, I'm really looking forward to that. So I just I don't know, like, why would I walk away from that?