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So I began to reach out to the alcoholic, because that was a national problem at that point. And we began to have some results. And I think the reason for that might be because the people who are alcoholic are already down and out, and they're already blind to any color.

But God helped me with the rehabilitation of these people. In the process, their relatives and parents would see that these people are becoming normal, and they don't smoke, they don't drink, they are tidy, and they wear clean clothes. They began to have their parents come and they now began to see me as their savior. And the parents, who never used to regard or have any respect for a black man, they began to rejoice and say, "Thank you for my son." They began to say, "We have spent all the money possible; we've taken them to the best doctors and couldn't really have any positive results. If this kind of ministry will have such an effect on my son or daughter, we will begin to come to your church." That's how our church began to grow rapidly, because we intensified our walk with the down and out people. The relatives began to come, and then other people began to come.

The church has grown considerably since then.

Today, our church is probably the largest church in all of Europe. Because of our influence, we have many politicians in our church. We have businessmen. One of the other presidential candidates is from our church. And God has blessed us. Right now we just need the help of the world so that the Russian government and the Russian president would not dictate the past, which is communistic, which is atheistic. That is what they're trying to impose on the Ukraine now. But the Ukrainian people have experienced this liberty. Thousands of people just from our church alone, and from all the churches in this area and the country—and not just Protestants but even the Orthodox and Catholics—everybody is fighting for freedom and for a free and fair election in our country.

When the Wall [in East Germany] came down, there were only 250,000 evangelicals, Protestants, in [Ukraine]. But right now, we are at 3 million. That's the official statistic of the Ministry of Religion. Of course, in Russia the growth is not as good. And Putin has said, "You Ukrainians don't have authority, because this 'sect' and these 'cult groups' are mushrooming in your country." The candidate, the [current] prime minister, who has been supported by Putin, Viktor Yanukovych, said that one of the first things he's going to deal with if he becomes the president is these "cult" and "sectarian" groups. So this actually is a threat, not just to democracy, [but] to everything we've gained during all the years of independence.

We think that the world must hear firsthand that this is not just an election that was violated, but this is an attempt to keep the country in bondage and take the country back to the days … under Communism. There's a group of people that are calling themselves democrats, but really they're from the past. They're still the same old people, the old Communist people. We are afraid of all the mafia groups, and I'm afraid to say that, to be honest. It's a fact in the Ukraine that the prime minister, who wants to become the president, has been in prison a number of times. How could such a person become the president of the nation?

The most important thing is that 80 percent of the nation is supporting Victor Yuschenko, who is an opposition candidate, and is a godly man. He shares God, and he respects all the churches, all the pastors. This is the time God has given to the [people of] Ukraine to have a free choice of where they want to go. The people want to go democratic. And these [other] people think they could still do things the way they used to do.

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December (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48