Bethel Baptist reaches to Ukraine Relationship is developing between churches and nations By Paige Funkhouser For The News-Chronicle In the Soviet-controlled years prior to 1991, the Ukrainian city of Lebedin was not on the map. It was the top secret home of a Soviet missile base and air strip, which forced the people in the area to live in isolation. Now that the Soviet Union has dissolved and Ukraine is an independent state, its citizens are making contact with other nations and are the subject of visits from religious missionaries. One of those visits led to a "sister church" relationship with Bethel Baptist Church of Ellison Bay, which last week hosted Vladimir Savchenko, the first presbyter (a regional director for the Ukrainian Baptist church) of the region of Sumy. Facing years of opposition under the Soviet regime, Ukrainian Baptists are just now legally able to practice in public. Baptist churches in the Ukraine have been visited in recent years by American missionaries, with goals of sharing and connecting the two religious cultures. In April 2001, the Rev. Gordon Wood, pastor of Bethel Baptist, and deacons Tom Sawyer and Lyle Hill visited the Ukrainian town of Lebedin in the province of Sumy, to make contact with Baptist churches in the area. The Bethel trio worked with Savchenko to find a church interested in setting up a sister relationship. Savchenko and wife, Luba, came to the United States Dec. 26 to visit Bethel Baptist Church and speak at its Dec. 28 service. Through a translator, Savchenko explained his interest in forming a sister church relationship with Bethel and others in America, and how he hopes his region could benefit. "We found out we had a lot in common after they (Wood, Sawyer, and Hill) visited," Savchenko said. "We wanted a friendly relationship, especially since we have similar beliefs. I hope this will only be the beginning of a relationship, not only with this church, but maybe with others." Last June, a team of five Bethel members went to Lebedin to organize and conduct a one-week camp for children of all ages, similar to vacation Bible schools held at American churches. This camp impressed not only the attending children but the older members of the church who had grown up under Soviet rule, who had been taught that Americans were the enemy. The mayor of Lebedin, after giving his permission to hold the camp, was impressed by the numerous ways the children benefited from the camp's hands-on, physically stimulating activities. He went so far as to offer to allow the church to host camps this year for all of the children in Lebedin, not just the children of the Baptist church. "Our team met with the mayor of the town for three hours," Wood said. "He gave us permission to do whatever we could and wanted to do. The government sees us as a group willing to spend time educating and teaching, so that's what we're going to do." The camp, which Wood describes as a team effort between the five Bethel members and a large number of citizens in Lebedin, was held at one of the public schools. A hot meal was provided each day of the camp for the children, to keep up their energy as they learned American sports - such as baseball and volleyball - and were taught religious lessons through puppet shows, arts and crafts, and plays. "Never before have we had anything like that," Savchenko said. "Since the circumstances between the Americans and Soviets have become peaceful, the government is now open to showing hospitality. We were all taught that Americans were bad people, but now we're seeing it differently." Wood invited Savchenko to visit the United States, to further encourage the American-Ukrainian link. After struggles to obtain visas for Savchenko and his wife, Wood was able to welcome them to Wisconsin. Savchenko explained the excitement and anticipation the people of Lebedin felt before the camp was held. "During the year after Gordon's (Wood) first visit, the church members were preparing themselves for the camp," Savchenko said. "They were mobilized. The American teams were expected, but it was something new and foreign. However, when the camp was almost over and the team members were about to depart, I saw people crying, hugging each other. They (people of Lebidin) didn't want them to leave." This summer's camps will be designed for the students of all seven of Lebedin's schools. "We've been given an endorsement to have as many as five camps," said Wood. "Now the question is, how many people we can get over there to conduct them." The Lebedin government has studied the teaching methods of the Bethel team to see if they could help the young adults in the teaching college there, Wood said. "They want us to do what we did for the children for the young adults," he said. "They have very little experience in the kinds of activities we taught them. Until 1991, children were banned from activities like camp and church. Now the government's looking at their young adults, who have never been out in the bush camping, and they want us to help them." As Bethel Baptist works on organizing educational camps for the Ukrainians, Savchenko is thinking beyond church relations and into bringing his region's technologies into the 21st century. "We want to develop relations between the nations," he said. "We want to develop a relationship between schools, doctors, nurses - not just churches. We would like to be able to exchange information, technologies, the American's know-how. Under the Soviets, private business didn't develop at all. We want to develop a relationship between our farmers and American farmers, we don't even have the tractors like you do."