SPOTLIGHT: Yuri Mezenko SMS Webmaster!

SMS is blessed to have a renowned, talented journalist and designer working with us to provide a website which is not only attractive, informative and innovative, but an invaluable resource for spiritual growth, especially for Russian speaking people. Yuri not only brings his technical talents as webmaster, but he is a gifted writer with God given spiritual insights. He has already, and will continue to post "Meditiations" on the website. Here's a small snapshot of the life of Yuri Mezenko! Yuri's father was a Soviet Air Force colonel who fought all four years of WWII, did not talk much of God, but tried to do his best to raise Yuri as a man of honor. Raised with out religion, Yuri learned that his grandmother had graduated from the Orthodox Christian College for Girls.

A gifted young man, Yuri quickly became a very successful journalist and at amped up speeds found himself working next to writ- ers at the top level of government in Moscow. Yet just as quickly as his success grew, he realized that he was being brainwashed by Soviet propaganda. Yuri states: "I discovered, the very gifted, but cynical men didn't believe in what they were writing about and the values they promoted to the common people. Their Holy Grail was money and vodka. In one day, I lost all my illusions of truth at the top of the Soviet pyramid. I was asking myself, if there is no truth here, then where is it? I felt it had to be somewhere." Disillusioned, Yuri left his position and returned home to Kiev.

When he returned to Kiev, he miraculously found a brochure, The Four Spiritual Lawsin the Russian language, by Dr. Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ. Shortly after that he met the president of the Ukrainian Evangelical Union, Pastor Duhonchenko, who gave him a New Testament, the first in Yuri's life. "I started to read it and quickly understood that I was a blind man, a sinner, and the only way to fix it was to repent of my sins and accept Jesus as my Savior."Shortly after this, Yuri participated in a meeting with a delegation of American Christians that came to Kiev from Chicago. Two of them, Dr. Alex Leonovich and Peter Deyneka Jr., became Yuri's spiritual mentors.

In 1986 the Chernobyl disaster took place. Yuri was one of the first journalists who printed the detailed story about what he saw when he went undercover as a technician in the "closed for journalists" 30-mile diameter zone of disaster. The power of deadly radiation touched his family. His wife was pregnant at the time. The Ministry of Health strongly recommended that all pregnant women in that area have an abortion. Yuri's wife rejected this idea. On the snowy and windy day of January 7th, 1987, little Anastassia was born. At five months, she was the same weight since her birth. "She will not live," the Russian doctors told Yuri and his wife. "You can only pray.". For Yuri's family, prayer was their only hope. Soon they received God's answer. Yuri's family was filmed by a Christian American documentalist and then received an invitation to the US from Christian sponsors in Seattle. Alex Leonovich met them at the airport in New York and helped them change airlines for a connecting flight to the west coast. In half a year, Anastassia's health was restored by American physicians. They were told their daughter needed permanent medical treatment, which was impossible to get in the Soviet Union. With the help of a few American friends, Yuri continued to work as an editor and publisher of Christian literature, but now on American soil.

From that point on, the list of his accomplishments have been many, and now, SMS is honored to have him serve with us. We strongly believe that the internet is the way of the future, and are committed to developing a state of the art website. Visit us at smsinternational.org!

(Adapted from an article By Richard C. Shumaker.)

In this photo: Alex Leonovich & Yuri Mezenko during Evangelical Christian Conference in Ashford, CT.