BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

The Language of Love by Melanie Hemry It was an overcast day, with gray clouds mirroring gray streets, gray buildings and the gray that everyone wore. Everything looked the same as 18-year-old Sergei Finayev walked through the streets of Minsk, Belarus. No one smiled. The oppressive life under communism offered little space for the expression of joy. Like all other children, Sergei had been indoctrinated into communism as a child. As a youngster in first form, he’d worn with pride a red star bearing the image of Lenin. In second form, he’d graduated to wearing red scarves. The compulsory education had been good. They’d been taught English, and that God did not exist. That wasn’t anything that Sergei questioned. He’d been born into an atheist family and raised in an atheistic country. God didn’t exist. That wasn’t an issue. Sergei paused on a corner, waiting for traffic to pass. A stinging wind chilled his face. The problem was that Sergei had a deep sense that something in the spirit realm did exist. He had touched it through hours of listening to heavy metal music. He had bumped up against it through the occult. He was going to experience it again today by watching a horror movie. To Sergei, horror movies felt like a door into the spirit realm. The average person in Minsk couldn’t afford a VCR, but a local businessman had bought one and started a movie café. Sergei stepped into the warmth of the café and settled into a seat where he watched "Nightmare on Elm Street." Leaving the café later that evening, he almost tried to talk to some spiritual force. Spiritual Hunger “Looking back, I know now that what I’d experienced for four years, from age 14 to 18, was spiritual hunger,” Sergei explains. “If there had been a church where the Spirit of the Lord was present, I probably would have gotten saved. During those years, I spent hours in my room listening to heavy metal music. I skirted the edges of the occult. When I watched horror movies, I encountered the spirit of fear and felt goose bumps. “I was the only child born into a loving family. My father, Yuri, was an engineer. My mother, Rita, a kindergarten teacher. My parents worked hard to give me a good life. The only Christian I’d ever known was my great-grandmother. My grandmother’s mother had survived World War II. She was a Russian Orthodox, but didn’t live in Belarus. She lived in the country outside of Moscow where we visited her each summer. I remember her as a very warm and kind person. I believe she prayed for us. “Looking back, I realize that the red scarves we wore in school were like those we see in North Korea today. In school, we sang songs—what I would call worship songs—to Vladimir Lenin.” While Sergei had been tiptoeing around spiritual darkness, the Soviet Union had been rocked by glasnost. That new openness allowed the media more freedom. Editorials described the ongoing financial crisis as well as the government’s inability to repair the problems. * * * * * article continues on p. 14 * * * * 12 : BVOV

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