From prisoner to prison ministryBy Stein Mydske, BS Fundraising Consultant for the Europe-Middle East Region On a visit to Ukraine
earlier this year, Stein Mydske met a man who serves on his church’s
prison ministry team, taking Bibles from the Ukrainian
Bible Society into prison. Not so long ago, he said, he was inside
himself...
LVIV, Ukraine — Two years ago
on a Friday afternoon Vladimir Sadovij walked out of prison in Lviv.
He was 33 and he had been behind bars for 13 years. Just a short period
of freedom had come between a seven-year term and another of six years. While serving his final weeks inside he had done a postal Bible study course run by a local Seventh-day Adventist Church, and on being released his overriding desire was to find the church and start attending. Since Seventh-day Adventists hold their main weekly gathering on Saturdays, there was a service there the following morning – and he found to his delight that it was a baptismal service. The elders present invited anyone who wanted to be baptised to come forward. Vladimir went forward – but despite his having done the church’s Bible study course, nobody present that day knew him or anything about him. He was baptised – but not until the church elders had established who he was, why he wanted baptism and that he was adequately prepared. When I met him, he told me the story of his crimes and how he had found salvation through reading the Bible, just as he told the church elders on that Saturday two years ago. Respect“Back in the early 1980s I wanted to do something that would gain me the respect of other teenagers. I wanted to show them how different and important I was. I was even prepared to risk prison if it would increase my standing, and at 18 years old I was sentenced to seven years for theft and fighting. “I was in for a disappointment. All my dreams about gaining respect and becoming somebody important by being in prison burst like a bubble of soap. Life inside was just degrading. The system is not designed to improve lives but to break men down. Prisoners lose their future; prison fills them with hate and makes them thirst for revenge. What I learned there was to make myself tough just to survive. Special ‘Alpha Police’ trained for duty as riot forces by beating up the others. To them the rest of us were not human beings at all. Worse condition“When I came out at the end of that seven years, I was in a worse condition than when I went in. “During the seven years I had got married, but outside the walls my old ‘friends’ were waiting. They invited me to join their small-time mafia gang. I soon learned that they were not interested in me, only in the money I could help them ‘earn’. Although I didn’t stay with them, I had no other friends to turn to. My marriage broke up and as I lost all hope of starting a new life I turned instead to partying, fighting and stealing – just as I used to before. The result was another sentence – this time six years. “By now glasnost and perestroika were bringing prisoners the chance of an early release on probation – provided the prison commission approved their behaviour record. I really tried hard to behave myself and started to plan my new life as a free – and wealthy – man: I was going to make my old ‘friends’ pay for betraying me. But the commission did not grant me my parole. Very bitter“I lost all faith in justice and became very bitter. Building a tough shell around myself, I started to concentrate on learning ways to intimidate people. I even turned to prayer, although I treated it as a psychological technique for manipulating people. I knew prayer could be very powerful – my grandmother had taught me that as a child – and now it made me feel strong. Later I realised that the devil was trying to catch me. “Once more I remembered the stories my grandmother had told me. As a child I believed what she said, but that was a long time ago. Now I felt almost mad, wanting release from prison but at the same time fearful of what would happen when I got out. “As I talked to a friend one day, he showed me a book he had been given. It was a Bible from the Ukrainian Bible Society. New life‘Can I borrow it?’ I asked. ‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘It may just be what you need.’ “I started reading it on September 1
and that day marked the start of a new life for me. I began with Genesis
and read on through the whole book in one month; I just could not stop
and in prison you have plenty of time. Much of what I read I didn’t
understand. I was also quite sceptical to begin with but I remembered
what Josef Stalin once said: ‘We must trust – but also always test.’
“After finishing the New Testament, I understood that Christ was the only one who could show me the way to a better life. During that time I was badly ill and grew seriously afraid of dying. I saw my whole life in review – and there was little reason for joy. Like Jacob, I wrestled with God and finally I asked him for forgiveness. “That was the turning point. I heard a voice say, ‘You are forgiven and have been cleansed.’ I cried and sweated the whole night, but in the morning I felt like a new person. All my burdens had been taken away. My friends thought I had gone mad; they could sense the change but did not understand it. I read the Bible – right through – several more times. I also took the one-year Bible study course run by a local church for inmates. “After I was released on that Friday afternoon, the first thing I did was to look up the address of the local church that had offered me the Bible study course. That is how I ended up in the Seventh-day Adventist Church next door to the offices of the Bible Society in Lviv and, when the elders asked for baptismal candidates, I stepped forward.” (WR 368/2 - 6.02) [PHOTOS] |
