The Prophet Comes to Moscow
by Maurine Jensen Proctor
Photos by Scot Facer Proctor

Editors' Note: The Prophet Comes to Moscow is a three part series which will run in the next three days. It will include today's series of mini-portraits of those who came to the conference; tomorrow an extensive photo essay that captures the spirit of the Russian Saints and finally a copy of President Hinckley's message to them.

"When we were told he was coming, we could not believe he would be in this country and we would see him. Even if he came to Siberia to visit, we would still go there to see him."
---Tatiana Turitian

Never before in the history of the Church has a prophet come to Moscow. Apostles have visited, but not the prophet, so it was an historic moment when Gordon B. Hinckley set foot on Russian soil yesterday, Tuesday, September 10, 2002. This was planned as a quiet visit with no press, no public agendas and no advanced announcements. Only the local members in Russia were told that their prophet was coming—but amongst them was nearly inexpressible joy and excitement.

The Church in Russia is still young. Those who have been members longest can only count twelve years since their baptism. It is a vast land of branches with no wards, districts and no stakes. Chapels built by the Church in all of the Eastern European area are still few. Some branches meet in space rented just for them in an office complex. Some meet in buildings remodeled to become chapels, others meet in members’ homes.

The Eastern European area of the Church is so vast, it covers 11 time zones and well over 300 million people and the work is only beginning.

Members live in a country that is no longer hostile toward the Church, but is still plenty wary. Unlike places like the United States, which has a completely free exercise of religion, religions in Russia must be registered with the state, and how welcome a religion is varies widely from region to region and town to town, depending on the disposition of the local magistrates.

Still, the members here are confident that the Church has passed out of its infancy into a sturdy organization that is here to stay and flourish, and the throngs of members who crowded to a conference room in Moscow’s Cosmos Hotel to hear the prophet speak to them are evidence. Two thousand Saints thronged into the auditorium, and two over-flow rooms, and more were draped over railings trying to hear and see. President Hinckley told them he loved them and was thrilled to see the numbers of Saints in Russia who had gathered. Just the night before he addressed 3,200 Latter-day Saints in Kiev, Ukraine, the largest gathering of Saints in this area in the history of the Church.

Members took all-night trains to come to the conference with their children sleeping on their laps. They carried bread and fruit in sacks to eat. They took days off work. They saved up for their transportation costs and promised to tell those, who couldn’t find the way to come, that they would give a full report in sacrament meeting when they were home again. In their branches they hold multiple callings and their life is the Church. Here are some mini-portraits of conference attendees.

Some of them spoke to us in halting English, most spoke through a Russian interpreter, Ivan Makarov of the Severo- Zamoskvoretsky Branch in Moscow. All of them spoke to us with their eyes and their hearts and their spirits. Meet your Russian brothers and sisters.

Andrey Kovalyov

Andrey Kovalyov is a branch president from Minsk who traveled twelve hours by bus to come to hear the prophet. With 45 other people, he left at midnight and arrived in Moscow a few hours before the conference. He joined the Church because he and a good friend always got into conversations about God and the meaning of life, and his friend saw a notice in the newspaper that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were meeting together. As the missionaries taught him, he said, “I felt like I already knew that what they were saying was true,” and then he got a confirmation as he started to pray.

Since missionaries are not allowed to proselyte in Minsk, they come on humanitarian missions and only teach referrals. Still, just last Sunday they had two confirmations in their branch, and one of the new members, 18, had come to hear the prophet.

“We’ve seen the prophet on the video, but it is very special to us to see him live.”

Valentiana Nedeleva and Tatiana Turutian

Tatiana Turutian (on right in picture) was, according to her own account, the first Relief Society president in Russia and attends the first chapel built in Russia in Vyborg near St. Petersburg. She only had to change trains once and travel 12 hours to see the prophet she said. It wasn’t that far. She says she knows she will be telling her children about it in years to come. She feels particularly close to President Hinckley because she always prays for his health.

In her ‘small city’ of 100,000, as she refers to it, there are only 300 members of the Church “but they are striving very hard to be Saints.” The Church will grow here because each of us is continually speaking about the Church as much as we can. Even now, people are more interested in hearing about the Church than they used to be because they have heard so much good about it. There is a saying in our town that if you want to find a good bride, go to the Mormons because they know how to bring up daughters with good standards.

Valentiana Nedeleva (on left in picture) is the Young Women’s president in her ward. Sometimes, she says, it is hard for the girls because they live in a world where everyone has such different standards than they do. The Church helps them because they set goals and are striving to live them. She says, “There’s a great difference in living when you know the purpose of life and when you don’t.”

Irina Mikiforova

Irina has a large family—the biggest in her branch with five children. She traveled 12 hours with the Vyborg group to come to the conference. She sounds like someone who has had the Church in her life for generations, “I couldn’t imagine my life without the church. As soon as I learned it, it became my life. All our friends are members and all the friends of our children are members. We have leisure time together, we study together. I don’t know any other life. Long before I joined, somewhere deep inside I had the feeling that there is a God.”

Tanya Lohanova

Tanya is a high school girl from Minsk, whose family joined the Church in 1992. She was baptized at the age of eight a year later. Even as a little girl she liked it when the missionaries came over because there was such a good feeling. She traveled 12 hours to hear the prophet speak, with a group that was filled with anticipation.

Though she lives in a city without proselyting missionaries, she has talked so much about the gospel that several of her friends at chool are interested in the gospel. She thinks some of them will join when they are 18 and do not have to have their parents’ permission.

Lydmila Kuznetsova

Lydmila Kuznetsova is from the Abto branch in St. Petersburg, and she came to hear the prophet speak "because it is a turning point in my life. I feel that my faith will be strengthened and that I will receive some confirmations regarding some concerns I have about my family." Though her grown children are members of the Church, she was the only one who could afford to come and hear the prophet just now. Things seemed just to fall together for it to happen. In August, she found a job babysitting the children of a very wealthy family which gave her the funds to afford the travel. The mother is a woman of very high standards and had interviewed 15 people for the job before she chose Lydmila. The clincher was when the woman learned that Lydmila was a Latter-day Saint because the women trusted she would do a good job.

Lydmila's husband died four years ago of cancer. They had planned to be sealed in the temple in Stockholm in January, but had to cancel the trip, and then in February her husband died. The first thing she wanted to do was to seal the family together, and because her husband had just been given a recommend, they didn't have to wait a year for the sealing. The first of May of that same year they went to the Swedish temple. "I was so grateful for the sealing blessings to get me through that difficult time. Because of the support and love of the branch, I never felt alone. They are closer to me than my own relatives, and they helped me keep my family together."

Indrey Semenov

Indrey Semenov is a medical doctor living in the St. Petersburg mission up near the border of Finland. He believes he was the seventh member of the Church in Russia, motivated to join because he saw the fruits of the gospel in Finland. When he saw a meetinghouse there he told himself, “It doesn’t look like a real chapel with a sports hall and a kitchen, but I want my children some day to look like theirs. They behave well. They don’t smoke. They can count on their sons and daughters to be chaste until marriage.”

He was also given to deep thought because of his profession which led him to ask if there wasn’t more to life than this one on earth. When his mother died, he had to know what happened to her—and would happen to all of his loved ones. Could it be possible that they just perished?

He had deep questions and he searched everywhere for the answers. “I couldn’t find the answer to my questions in the churches. I couldn’t find it in Judaism. Then one of the brilliant missionaries answered all of the difficult questions for which I had never before been able to find answers.

Every person reaches a point in life when he starts to thing about the big questions.”

Indrey’s family was the first one sealed in Russia, and that had special meaning for him when his daughter was born. When he was in the delivery room, it struck me how deeply happy we were that she would be with us forever. We felt out covenants so strong.

Evgeni Kharin

Evgeni Kharin is from Voronezh and has been a branch president for four years. Though his wife is not yet a member of the Church, her conversion is his dearest desire. He has saved the money and been to the temple in Stockholm 11 times, so he understands the importance of temple marriage. He said, “I pray so much and the Holy Ghost helps me so much. I want to understand everything I can about the Church.” And for that reason, he came to hear Gordon B. Hinckley in Moscow.

As members arrived from their far-flung homes ready to hear the prophet speak in Moscow, they brought concerns and hopes, a sense that they wanted to hear what a living prophet would say personally to them. They found surprising strength in their numbers. Many fell on each other with hugs and kisses, and as the prophet spoke, they listened with tears.

Tomorrow: A Photo Essay of the Prophet and Saints in Moscow

Come every day to Meridian so that you too can follow the Prophet through Europe. And please…spread the word about Meridian to your friends and family around the world.