Legacy

Iwan Alexseyevich Karpenko. (Иван Алексей Карпенко)

Spell check is telling me that name is a typo, but it's actually the real name of the coolest Russian man I know. My Dedushka. My grandfather.


He was born in 1921 the Former Soviet Union near Moscow. From what we guess and hear, he had at least 5 or so brothers and sisters, all of whom were well off and educated. He was a brilliant man. 


He was a pilot in the Soviet Air Fleet during WWII. It was during the time when Russia was invading Germany, and he was shot down over Austria. Of the group of planes that were shot down, he was one of a few that survived.

Tradition mandated that if you were shot down and lived to tell about it, it was a matter of honor to take your own life. Kind of like how the captain of a ship would kill himself instead of see his ship go down. Well, my grandpa wouldn't take the cyanide pill. He wouldn't shoot the gun, or whatever it was they wanted him to do. 
He was taken as a prisoner in a POW camp in Austria - he lived through terrible things, including being tortured and starved and who knows what else. He lost all contact with his family when this happened - and never saw them or heard from them again.

Meanwhile, meet my Bobushka. My grandmother, Valentina Savastekjo. She came from a family of farmers in the Former Soviet Union - I'm told she was Ukranian or Yugoslavian, I'm not really sure. They were poor..my grandma's father worked on railroads and they grew just enough food to feed their family. Then, as Stalin's regime began taking land from their own people, they were literally chased off their own property by the Soviets - they were shooting and dropping bombs right behind them as the family ran for their lives! Imagine that...the sheer terror must have been maddening. Willing your legs to carry you faster, just waiting for the explosion to make everything go black. 


As they ran, there was a rail car that everyone was scrambling toward that would take them away to relative safety. This would've been their ollie-ollie-oxen-free, their refuge...and they didn't make it. They got caught. They were brought to an Austrian concentration camp and exposed to who knows what for I honestly don't know how long. 


Iwan and Valentina would never have met each other had they stayed safely in their respective parts of Russia. A wealthy, educated family would have no dealings with peasants. My dad always made the comment that our name was "a good Russian name" - I always just thought it was one of his dad jokes, but he was right. Karpenkos in Russia were almost aristocratic. But the Lord knew what he wanted to do with them.


Iwan was released from the POW camp in 1947. Somehow, the Lord worked it out, and he met Valentina, the beautiful young woman that was just released from her camp as well. And Iwan knew love when he saw it.


He wanted to marry her right away, but my grandma wouldn't marry him unless he believed in Jesus and was baptized. Beautiful women have a way of motivating men sometimes, and Iwan was baptized in the Rhine River in Austria. He talked Valentina's father into letting her marry him - he promised to take her far away from Europe, far away from the horrors they had gone through, and make sure she remained safe. He let her go, and Iwan and Valentina, whose wedding picture is above, fled to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Did I mention my grandfather commandeered a plane to do this? Yeah. He was awesome. 


They settled in a new place with a new language with a new culture and new people group with no money.Now Russians, to the best of my understanding, are typically a quiet people - the older, conservative ones are plain, to the point, and to themselves. Argentina? The opposite. But they were vivacious and ambitious and learned Spanish, had 4 children, and began a life there. My dad was one of the children raised in Argentina, mastering Russian and Spanish as a kid (my dad inherited the brilliant gene from his parents).

They relocated to San Francisco, California, in 1960 - my grandfather was the editor of a Russian newspaper there. In 1965, he helped relocate this paper to West Sacramento, where they settled and had their last child. He maintained the use of the Linotype printing press for the paper - he could read and write in many languages, I'm told. He was also a baker for a major grocery store chain, and did that for many years until he retired. 


One of the coolest things I remember of him was the wood shop he built in his backyard - I remember following him around sweeping wood chips while he worked. I would put his screwdrivers away and open his drawers and explore everything. It made me feel special when he showed me how to work his machines. I spent hours in that shop, and to this day, the smell of wood reminds me of him. 


My grandpa taught me how to tie my shoes. He also gave me and my brother haircuts until we were 12. Mostly they worked out. I only cried once because he cut it really short. Every Saturday, we were always going to Bobushka and Dedushka's house for lunch - oh, the LUNCH! Russian food holds a special place in my heart (more accurately, my stomach?). My grandma would make dough and make these huge rectangular pizzas (which were always our favorite), piroshki, borscht, pilmeni, and so much more. I miss it. My grandma kept up a garden - beautiful flowers, vegetables (in her accented English, she always 
pronounced it "koo-cumbers" instead of cucumbers), and fruit trees. I loved following her around while she told me about her flowers. Even when I knew the story of what each flower was, I still wanted her to tell me one more time what it was and when it bloomed.

Even up until the last years of my grandpa's life, he talked about going back to San Francisco and seeing the street he lived on and the church he attended. My grandma took care of him until she died in 2006. They are some legendary people who lived through tragedy to create a legacy. They had 5 children and 10 grandchildren.


I'm proud of my heritage. I'm proud of my name. My good, strong Russian name. 

March of Crosses

It’s been said that worship is not a style of music, but a style of living. I agree. Wholeheartedly. To understand that better, we should define what a lifestyle is. This is the definition the dictionary gives: “the habits, attitudes, tastes, moral standards, economic level, etc., that together constitute the mode of living of an individual or group.” So, to worship as a lifestyle in the context of a church community means that our habits, attitudes, tastes, morals, finances and social interactions with each other need to be done in an attitude of worship.

I’m currently learning how a community of spiritually minded people can really develop this lifestyle of worship much more effectively than any church service ever could. I’m reading a book by Dr. Larry Crabb called “Becoming a True Spiritual Community: A Profound Vision of What the Church Can Be”.

So far, Dr. Crabb has talked about how the life of a Christian is more often than not disappointing and confusing. Jesus warned us of the cost of following Him. He said in Luke 9:23-24, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up His cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” I’ve heard this described as the ministry of suffering. What is taking up your cross daily? What is my “cross” supposed to be? How do I lose my life, but also save it?

Dr. Crabb says this, which I think is extremely profound. “The path to the joy of God’s presence always leads through joyless isolation, when the part of us that most longs for connection is left painfully alone. When that happens, and when we cry out in pain, the nature of our spiritual community is revealed.”

I’ve personally been working my way through that path of joyless isolation with my small spiritual community. The challenge with it is to remember God’s goodness and trust in His provision and faithfulness even in the midst of being stripped of everything. Or, in other words, in the midst of denying myself and taking up that cross of suffering, I am still to praise Jehovah.

As a church, the goal is to help each other as we each carry our crosses. Sometimes, we will drop our crosses and try to walk without the burden. We will get splinters and sore feet and the journey will hurt. We may trip and fall into a ditch and stay there awhile.

But if we’re encouraging each other along the way, if we’re listening to the needs and cares of our brothers and sisters beside us on the journey, and if we’re keeping our hearts focused on and in tune with our first Love, we will begin to understand worship. Worship is when we give our whole selves to the journey.

So let’s pick up our crosses and sing of His love forever. Together. As a community.

This is where the Healing begins.

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to go to a conference in Northern Virginia called the Journey to Wholeness. I had no idea what I was getting into when I decided to go…but God set it up perfectly. It didn’t look like I would get the time off work, then all of a sudden it got approved. I am consistently poor, so I had no way to pay for the hotel or anything like that, and then we found that a couple in our church covered it for us. Seemed like a giant open door, so I took it.

It was held at an Anglican church. I grew up in a Baptist church, so it was very different. But I noticed immediately that these people loved the Lord. They were open to hearing His voice, to feeling His touch, and not just talking about it. Joy radiated from them more than any church I’ve ever stepped into.

The focus of the conference was on healing. Not weird charismatic healing…but inner healing. It was a 2-day process of softening up and allowing the Lord in and allowing Him to clean those dusty corners and cubicles of my heart that I hadn’t touched in years. Memories that I had willfully or absent-mindedly forgotten about were brought gently to my attention so that He could heal me of the pain they had caused me.

I’m still processing. I discovered how truly refreshing it is to just be quiet and still in the presence of God. GOD. He is so all-consuming. I could hear Him reassuring me that I am His beloved daughter, that I am valuable and special. He told me that even though people have treated me with evil intent, it is not because I deserved it. His heart broke when those things hurt me.

His heart breaks when evil happens. His heart breaks when the devil deceives His children.

I realized how many lies I had believed about God and myself. People in my life had made me feel inadequate and unimportant and un-valuable…but when I was listening to the Lord, He told me that He loved me. That those things were not true and never would be.

Security in God is better than anything.

I felt His peace. Literal perfect peace. It wasn’t a euphoric, energizing, exciting type of feeling…it was a quiet sense of goodness and wholeness and completion. That the Lord is really and truly all I need.

Now I understand that people act out of hurt sometimes…that because of those hurts, people are conditioned to act a certain way. I was conditioned not to trust guys because of things in my past. I was conditioned to put up walls to new people because I was scared they would abandon me like others have.

Fun fact: Did you know that 8,851 times in the Bible, God tells His children “I will not abandon you”?

That promise makes all the difference…it differentiates following Jesus from every other religion. That the deity we worship is WITH us always, never to leave us. It changes everything. It has definitely changed me.

So readers, even if a handful of people ever see this, I post this to encourage YOU. Get alone with Him and let Him in. He can wash you clean and give you His shalom. Let Him heal.

How I was Rescued

I suppose if I have a blog, I should let my audience get to know me a little. The most important thing in my life is the hope I have found in believing in Jesus. See, when I was a kid, I went to church with my family, ate goldfish, learned all the Bible stories – Noah and the ark, Adam and Eve, all that – and I memorized Bible verses for candy. I had friends there, so I liked that part. But that’s about it.

I thought it was boring sitting through the lessons the teachers would give. I would sit there itching to do crafts or eat a snack, not understanding the meaning behind what they were teaching. Not until I was in the 8^th grade did I begin to understand. It started when my junior high pastor was caught molesting girls in my youth group. Presumably, it was a shocking thing for the church to take, and he ran away to Hawaii and we never heard from him again. Lots of kids in the youth group stopped coming and questioned the faith they had. After all, if this pastor we all looked up to could fall that hard, was it all a lie? Did he believe a word of what he would teach us? Many of them thought being a Christian was a big joke after that. I didn’t.

The way I understood it, he made a mistake. His faith is no less true because he made a mistake. His mistake doesn’t affect my faith. God was still the same God I had known Him to be. Since I had no pastor to look up to, I began to look in the Bible for myself to see what it was I had been taught my whole life. And I found that the way Jesus lived was extraordinary. He loved everyone – everyone, folks – and I saw that He invited people to follow Him. Granted, this was 2,000 years ago, but the words He said transcend into today. So I decided then that I would follow Jesus. I would let Him have control over my future, over my everyday life, over everything. My life belongs to Him. He owns me. He died – was tortured to death, rather – for me. In effect, instead of me suffering my own consequences for my own mistakes, He suffered my consequences. He bought my life with the blood He spilled when He died. The thing, though, is that He isn’t still dead. Jesus told his friends, regarding his coming death, in John 10:18, “No one takes it [his life] from me, but I lay it down on my own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.” Jesus did not die because the Romans decided He was a criminal; rather, He died on purpose. He knew exactly what was happening. He bought me with his blood.

Think about this. Say a terrorist was standing in front of you, hatred burning in his eyes, pointing a gun at your head. He doesn’t shoot yet, but smiles as he relishes the victory in taking your life. Suddenly, a soldier steps in, and both men fire at the same time, ending both of their lives. There you stand, enemy dead, and savior dead. Imagine the feelings that would be racing through you. Crying, you sit at the side of the soldier that gave his life for you…then he wakes up. The hole in his heart is clearly there, but there he sits, alive, smiling. Would you feel that you owed him something? Would you just walk away with a brief thank you, or would you promise to do anything you could for that soldier whenever he needed anything?

Jesus took the bullet meant for me. Therefore, I owe Him everything. And that’s how I strive to live.