“The best preaching is not done with your mouth. Through your actions. No question about it.”
I was a young guy in Belarus, maybe eighteen, when I started construction. I was working with twelve guys much older than me on a government job. And I have a skill, you know? My father was a carpenter, and I started working with him early. He was really good, and he taught me. And I would beat those guys on quality and quantity, like no tomorrow. That’s how I became a superintendent. I was trusted because most of my guys were drunk. I wasn’t, and that’s a good plus for the government. They need a guy they can rely on.
We got paid once a month. And right after payday, these guys would drink all week. They don’t show up for work. They just drink until they run out money, and then they come back to work. Then for another week they work less because they’re hung over. They don’t want to do anything. And two weeks later, they start working again. Next payday? Same thing. And we weren’t paid by the hour; we were paid by the job. So I kept working even when they weren’t.
Nothing you can do about it. If you want to be really pushy, then you have to send them to the hospital for treatment. But who wants to do that? You live together, you work together. You’re neighbors. I’m not going to turn anyone in to the government.
Christians were persecuted all the time in the Soviet Union. They tried to build a country without God. So my family, we were looking for a better place to live. More freedom. More religious freedom. And God called us here. We didn’t know anything about the United States. We’d heard bad things, but we obeyed. If God says, “Move,” we move, you know? We prepared for the worst. And the Russian government only let us take so much—just what you can carry. But God promised us we will be okay.
We have to first go to Austria. We spent like a couple months up there and then we took the train to Italy. Then we wait for six months in Italy until we get all the paperwork done. My sister, she left the year before us, and she was in Fort Worth, Texas. And the rule was we had to have a sponsor to come to the United States. So we came to Fort Worth. It was March 6, 1990.
And then, like six or eight months after, the Soviet Union collapsed. Everything fell apart.
My English was never good. Today, there are interpreters everywhere. But not then. I just had to figure it out. Like if you go to the store, and you need something, you try to explain to the cashier what you need. You try to show him. And if he figures it out, and he says it, you never forget it. That’s how we learned. We have no choice. Same thing on the job. You have to cut something, they say the numbers, but you don’t know what they say. So you watch the tape. You learn.
But if I couldn’t preach because of my English, I thought maybe I can show. Be a nice guy, be a Christian, do my job honestly, and do my best. Work hard—every day. I try, you know? The best preaching is not done with your mouth. Through your actions. No question about it. I don’t know how to explain it even right, but what I did, I’m proud of it. Today I drive with my kids and I tell them, “Hey, I work here, I work there, I work there, I work there.” I’m blessed. And I’m happy.
