Call of faith: The story of American Orthodox Christian priest that moved to Russia

my family's conversion to orthodox christianity we've left our home in america we're trying to learn this very difficult language our first week here it drops down to minus 35 celsius coldest christmas in russia in 120 years we didn't know yet how we were even going to immigrate we just came as tourists and just that we're going to figure it out i think it started out not as you know researching some place to move or even knowing a lot about russia it started with really a couple things one was our conversion my family's conversion to orthodox christianity the other half is just you know the sadness with which i've seen the decay you know the moral decay in america over the past you know decade plus in many different ways you know many different things i've not been happy with but one of the biggest that just really in a negative way struck a chord with me was this whole idea of you know homosexual marriage they were determined to redefine what marriage actually means we just started looking and i considered you know some countries in south america i looked at various countries in europe a couple things that were really important to my wife and to me was that you know wherever we move needs to have legal homeschooling now people want to send their kids to public school or a private school that's fine but we've already always homeschooled our children that's the way we want to go so we wanted to keep doing that that really narrowed things down because there's not a lot of countries where homosexual marriage is not recognized you know civil unions are not recognized and at the same time homeschooling is legal and so that you know brought us down to a short list [Music] i came here i came here again the third time i flew here um i my wife and i decided we're moving we're going and came to the rostov the leaky area not rostov on dawn but rostov the leaky which is about a three hour drive north of moscow fell in love with the place it's a it's a city that is more than 1100 years old which is just mind-boggling to me in america if you can find a 200 year old building it's like this ancient artifact and you know they have they have pubs and doctors here that are far older than that there's literally five orthodox christian monasteries just in the city limits of rostov now there's more outside it but just in the city limits of this little city of 30 000 people uh there's five orthodox christian monasteries that's more than there are in texas you know you know texas you know which is where i lived 24 years of my life which i love has four orthodox monasteries in the whole state and it's a state that's huge it's the size of france i've always been not the city mouse but the country mouse i like to be out where there's trees and land and and so i needed a place they had civilization grocery stores gas stations but was far away from the big city if i need to hop in a car and drive down the interstate down to moscow i can do it no big deal i can drive one hour up to yaris level more than a half million people any stores i need they're there but just for my day-to-day life i like the slope like the slow pace i like you know living on an acre of land having a tractor planting a garden and just just being able to live our lives quietly and at peace we're in america we had several acres of land and about a 2000 square foot house now we have one acre of land and a 1700 square foot house so it's not bad [Music] so yeah you don't see a lot of uh two-car garages in rural russia yeah but i'm a spoiled american i wanted to have the real thing well now here's the deal here's the deal we actually tried it the other way uh you know we owned two cars yeah there's 10 of us in the family a car didn't hold 10 people so we have two cars yeah and you know we've spent the last few russian winters realizing that in russia winter is not something that happens for a couple of weeks and you deal with it yeah it's uh months they do they do winter professionally here yeah and so you know literally months of scraping ice uh brushing speaking of professional i just wanted to say yeah this is a it's a real deal not not too useful in illinois or texas that's for sure that's the real deal wow [Music] proof that we're in rural russia but that we're here in the 21st century yeah you know you look and it just looks like this normal russian dacha and stuff but then you see this two-car garage with electric garage doors well here is this old building they started building with logs finished out with some you know some older wood sliding it's been sitting here for years yeah and then here's this giant like a satellite dish and that's because instead of turning this into a banya sauna i turn this into my office this is where i teach a lot of my english lessons online via zoom yeah and so i have a separate high-speed internet connection to my office yeah wow it is like working in a banya that is great yeah so just this wonderful little wood room i've got a couch out here a small library a little fridge with some cokes in it printer i set up my laptop over here on this big old homemade desk we've got the high-speed internet coming in and i just you know sit here in this easy chair chill teaching kids english and uh i really enjoy it it's peaceful out here oh and here's the greenhouse as you can see i have three over here and you know they're pretty big uh green houses and it's just a really great place to were those here before did you we had that we added those and so it's just great you know here this you know spring gets going late you know we're in america maybe you're planting stuff in march or april here you don't really want to plant stuff from may yeah but with this it warms everything up a little earlier and it goes a little later so you can actually start growing stuff there in april you can keep it growing past september october and again talking about russian stereotypes wow it's a belarus track yeah that's great oh did you put the racing huh that's how it came but believe it or not yeah it's got the big lights on and that's my souped-up racing tractor so in america we had really low taxes you know we were out in the country yeah i had a country house several acres of land and it was still you know we were still paying like over a thousand dollars a year taxes but that's low you know like uh my sister other people i know they're paying five six seven eight thousand american dollars every year just on real estate yes i mean on uh property taxes well here it's amazing every year i've got this house i've got an acre of land and uh every year i pay less than fifty dollars yeah for the whole year for the property taxes yeah i paid i paid eight bucks this year yeah it's just it's like it's almost nothing yeah it's just mind-blowing so technically yes there's property taxes here but yeah it's very phenomenal exactly that first year was was very tough it was made even tougher because i don't know a month two months after we got here i was diagnosed with a certain form of cancer and so you know throw everything together you know we've left our home in america we've come to a new place we're trying to learn this very difficult language our first week here it drops down to minus 35 celsius which is very unusual it usually does not get that cold here it did the first week we were here coldest christmas in russia in 120 years and you know a lot of frustrations a lot of difficulties we didn't know yet how we were even going to immigrate we just came as tourists and just that we're going to figure it out you know you're already carrying this massive load you're already just barely able to walk and then oh let's throw cancer on top of that so instead of doing what i was planning on doing that first summer i was hoping to drive my family all over russia and show them the beauties of st petersburg and the beauties of moscow these amazing cathedrals and monasteries and just you know the beautiful landscapes across russia and the trees and the ponds and the rivers instead my wife not speaking russian uh and our eight children not speaking russian had to be stuck in that apartment in rostov while i was three hours away in moscow throwing my guts up on chemotherapy uh you know that that stink it was really it was it was it was bad thankfully now that we are you know permanent residents of russia um most medical care that we get is free we don't have to pay for it but you know even if for a short period of time if you do have to pay for it and even if you get hit with something major you know like cancer and surgery and chemotherapy um you know it would break your back in america versus here it's just a pain but it's doable for the surgery and the three week hospital stay i paid a total of i'd say less than fifteen hundred dollars out of pocket 100 percent while in america i was a computer engineer for 20 years you know close to 20 years and so our income came from the computer work that i did and then i basically was a priest for free um that you know the bishop did ordain me as a deacon and then as a priest and i served as a priest in america but i was not getting paid for this most of what i do now is teach english that's how we feed our family and you know so the church you know the russian orthodox church hasn't sent me any money you know even to this day they've warmly accepted me but you know even in russia if you want to make money as a priest you're going to have to find a big enough congregation that's going to be able to support you you can't go out in the middle of nowhere a small church of maybe 15 or 20 people and expect them to be able to support you know a family of ten and so you know perhaps if i lived in moscow then they could put me in a church where it would be feasible for that to be my only job but out here we're basically doing the same thing that we did in america you know i have a source of income there's work that i do but as a priest you know i'm not doing it for the money i'm doing it because i have faith in christ and this is how this is how i want to serve god i've got a bunch of students i have dozens i don't know maybe around 40 students currently that i teach just online via zoom and then there's nearly 100 kids in the 10th and 11th grade boarding school at barnetsky monastery where i teach them sometimes online and sometimes i go there and i teach them face to face well like i said the rostov aliki population about 30 000 people there are five incredible orthodox christian monasteries and this is one of them this is varnitsky monastery and this is surprising to a lot of people it's actually the birthplace of saint sergius of broad niche oh i see that's our patron saint of this podcast and patriots state of much more huh i didn't even know he was born here yeah yeah he when he was a little older his family moved to rodney but he was actually born right here um in fact his parents uh the icons on each side of the archway right there so saints carol and maria are his parents uh and so anyway uh on the right here you see this big red cathedral here yeah that big red church that's approximately where their house was 700 years ago so i don't know how they keep track of that but i'm impressed they have an incredible orthodox christian school here so here in rostov you can go to public school you can homeschool or you can send your kids to the orthodox school here which is free of charge they don't charge for it and the the final two grades of high school 10th grade and 11th grade is a world-class boarding school for boys yeah it's unbelievable they send boys here from all over the country they test you know the best one's gonna stay here and it's it's almost like a prep school a lot of the boys that complete their studies here end up going straight into seminary and going through flying colors a number of them are already clergy in the church now and so for those two grades 10th grade in 11th grade for the boarding school i come here and i teach english nearly 100 students [Music] we have this interview we're going to talk and talk about however many hours we talk and you piece it together it's still just going to be a fraction of what we've got to experience over the past several years just soaking in russia just realizing what a gym this really is what what a is it perfect absolutely not you know if you want to find some negative things here you'll find them of course you know friends uh relatives people back home were just terrified they just thought you're crazy you're nuts don't you know that russia is terrifying that is scary i'm afraid you know something's bad gonna happen so i started taking photos i just you know go to a gas station i'd go through a grocery store and take pictures and just simple normal everyday things and i would get this amazing response from people online people would write back to me and say oh my goodness the grocery stores are full of food you know you know that's what they're for you know they're full of food but people have this idea that it's still the 70s or the 80s but that's where i decided um you know the website that i that i an editor on russian faith a lot of what we try to do there just tell the people truth about simple things in russia it doesn't have to be out of this world just showing people church and showing people community gatherings showing people russian food things that are just mundane and every day are still amazing to americans because they start to realize hey russia there's like normal people in russia there's husbands and wives and children and they have schools and playgrounds and good tasting food and really good music and beautiful dresses for the women and folk singing and so to me it's kind of been my own little tiny you know i don't want to say missionary project because that has too many kind of connotations but i really just want to show people um that rush is a good place yeah we like tripled the population of the village when we moved in oh yeah i guess you did wow i didn't think about that

Channel: RUSSIA BEYOND

Views: 216,254

Rating: 4.8288202 out of 5

Keywords: orthodox priest, orthodox priests, orthodoxy, russian orthodox, russian orthodox church, american orthodox church, orthodox, american orthodox, life in russia, my life in russia, real russia, priest, christian faith, christianity, russia beyond, orthodox christianity, christian, christian orthodox, religion in russia, move to russia, expats in russia, religious life, faith, russian village, orthodox monastery, faith in christ, american in russia, tolerance in russia

Id: 2x-ZXow0RUo

Length: 15min 50sec (950 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 06 2021