SLAVIC GOSPEL ASSOCIATION

Different Days, But the Same Glorious Mission

July 13th, 2009

While many SGA missionaries from the earliest days of our mission are now with the Lord or retired, several remain on active service including Ruth Deyneka Erdel, Andrew Semenchuk, Florence Daneliuk, and Nick and Rose Leonovich. We recently conducted a roundtable discussion with several of our senior missionaries to look back, and ahead to what God will do in the future. From that discussion, we are pleased to share a part of the Leonoviches’ ongoing story.

When you sit down for any length of time with Nick and Rose Leonovich, it’s hard to believe that they are past the age when most have long since retired. Their youthful energy and joy of serving Christ knows no bounds, and they remain on duty as senior international representatives for SGA. Nick and Rose served in SGA’s Russian-language radio ministry through Trans World Radio between 1958 and 1985, with most of those years in Monte Carlo. They were ‘on loan’ to TWR and Nick was the director of the TWR Russian Department.

ROSE LEONOVICH

For Rose, it all began in the late 1940s when she was a young girl, and SGA founder Peter Deyneka visited her church in Edmonton, Alberta. In his thick Russian accent, he said, “Roza, you must go to our Russian Bible Institute in Toronto and prepare to serve the Lord among our Slavic people!” Said Rose, “Mr. Deyneka didn’t give you much opportunity to say no. It was like the Lord saying, ‘You go!’ And I really did feel the Lord calling me to go.” After Rose graduated from the Institute in 1948, Peter sent her to work in Europe with Russian-speaking refugees at the International Refugee Organization Camps, to be joined later by his daughter, Ruth. She hadn’t been there long before God vividly declared His power . . .

Ruth and I had only been in the DP camp one week holding meetings at the YMCA house. Ruth played the accordion and did the flannelgraph for the children gathered around us, and in the evenings we had Gospel meetings with the parents in the auditorium. At the last meeting, I gave the Gospel again. Then I said, ‘Those who understand all that I’ve been trying to tell you all week, raise your hand.’ Every hand went up! I said, ‘No, you don’t understand. This is a very serious thing between you and God. Do you want to repent of your sins, put your faith in the Lord and be a child of God? If so, stand up.’ Everyone stood up! I looked at Ruth and began to cry. I said, ‘I don’t know what to do!’ Ruth said, ‘Roza! You pray and let them follow you [in prayer]!’ She had been with her father in evangelistic meetings, but I had never had that exposure. So I prayed, and they prayed with me. There must have been 1,000 people there!

NICK LEONOVICH

Nick Leonovich had somewhat different circumstances than Rose, yet a similar experience with Peter Deyneka, whose wife, Vera, was Nick’s cousin.

[In the early 1950s] I was working with youth at a church in North Carolina, when Peter invited me to a missions conference in Chicago. When I arrived in Chicago, Mr. Deyneka said, ‘Nick, this summer my son Peter, Andrew Semenchuk and I are going to Europe to minister in the refugee camps. Nick, why don’t you go?’ Like Rose, I felt the Lord speaking to me through Peter. When I got back to North Carolina, the pastor I had been helping surprised me on the way home when he told me that the Lord had been moving him to begin a missions ministry, and would I consider going out as a Grace Baptist Church missionary to the displaced persons camps! We prayed together, and it wasn’t long before the church unanimously voted to send me, and took on my full support. I’ll never forget their response!

After I met and married Rose, I just thank God for the way He led us. We went out to minister to Slavic people, many in the camps because of forced labor. When the Nazis occupied part of the Soviet Union, they sent these people to Germany as slaves. Then in 1958, we got involved in radio ministry to those inside the Soviet Union when missionaries couldn’t go. Today, God has given us the opportunity to go personally to the former Soviet Union and minister there. And we still meet people who were reached for Christ through our programs!

Last year, we were in Ukraine. At a small church near Irpen, I was invited to speak by the pastor, who is on staff at Irpen Seminary. Rose and I were moved deeply as he introduced me. He said: ‘When I was a young boy, my family lived in Far East Russia in the city of Irkutsk. My father was a military officer and not a believer. Eventually, he heard the Gospel and received Christ as his Savior. Soon after his conversion, he heard of Christian radio broadcasts and began listening to them, and I also began hearing the Gospel through the programs. When it became known that my father believed in God, he was discharged from the military.

Eventually, I too believed and we moved to the Kiev area, where I began working at the seminary. A few years ago, as I was walking through the halls, I heard a familiar voice from childhood. As I approached the classroom, I saw the man speaking, and realized that this was the man whose voice I used to hear in the radio broadcasts! That is when I got to meet, for the first time, the brother who will bring God’s Word to us this morning, Nikolai Pavlovich Leonovich.’

While these testimonies of the past are joyful and encouraging, today represents yet another phase in not only the ministries of senior missionaries like the Leonoviches, but also in the overall ministry of our mission. Nick believes that it’s vital to press ahead while the opportunity still exists, because the spiritual hunger and need for the Gospel has never lessened across the lands of Russia. We have enjoyed a brief season of open ministry there, but the doors are closing again and ministry there is becoming much more difficult. That is why it is imperative to press on and take advantage of every opportunity the Lord grants to help Russian evangelical churches in their great task of reaching their people for Christ!