Kiev Church History Tour

Former Ukraine missionaries on our tour (plus one Russia missionary who snuck in next to me)

For those who are interested, I promised I would post some more details about the Church History tour we did in Kiev. The tour was organized by our friend Zoya, who organized all of the programs for the semester I spent in Kiev. We were lucky to have President Biddulph, the first mission president in Ukraine, come with us. He was the professor that took our group to Kiev that semester.

The week before we left on the trip, I started to re-read his book about their experiences as missionaries in Ukraine (The Morning Breaks) so it was fun to have those stories fresh in my mind and then see where they occurred and hear some of the participants talk about them.

The first stop was the Writers' Union Hall (Дом писателей), which was where the first Church service was held in Ukraine and where Church met for the next 18 months.

President Biddulph said he always thought it was somewhat ironic that the Church met just a few hundred yards from the headquarters of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party. Now that building is the Ukrainian Presidential Administration, (which is often referred to as Bankovaya after the name of the street):
Across the street from the Presidential Administration is the House with Chimaeras (Дом с химерами) or the Gorodetsky House (named after the architect), famous for its concrete animals and hunting scenes. It is now used by the President of Ukraine for official functions.

(These are not Church history sites, but they were close to the Writers' Union!)

The next stop was the monument to St. Vladimir, the prince of Kiev who introduced Christianity to the Slavs. I may have mentioned before that to President Biddulph's knowledge, there was no other outdoor religious statue, except those on Churches, that survived the Soviet period.

Overlooking the statue, President Biddulph asked all those who were there at the time of the dedication to raise their hands--a number were. It was amazing to hear them tell their memories of that event--it really made it sink in just how much has happened in just the last twenty years. While we were there, Zoya read part of an article from the Church News that told about some of the prophecies that then-Elder Packer made at the time of the dedication. The article notes that since the Kirtland and Nauvoo Temples, no other temple--until Kiev--has been built within 20 years of the introduction of the Gospel to a country.

Two excerpts from the dedicatory prayer bear special mention. First, Elder Packer mentioned that St. Vladimir had ordered the removal of the pagan idols from Kiev (they were chopped up and thrown in the river). On the day of the dedication, some of the statues of Lenin were removed from Kiev; President Biddulph said that the removal of those "modern idols" signified to him that the people of Ukraine were now ready to receive the Gospel.

Second, Elder Packer said:

"We are gathered here as missionaries and as members, a small group. This gathering is prescient of the tens and the hundreds and the thousands and the hundreds of thousands that will yet join Thy Church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in this land. We see the day when there will be scattered in the villages here and there a member and yet another member and then a gathering and then a branch and, in due time, stakes of Zion set firmly and permanently upon the fertile soil of the Ukraine. And in due time, the spires of temples will be seen across this great land."

As a missionary, we read that dedicatory prayer dozens of times and could only hope and dream of the time when there would be a stake, and then a temple, and someday more stakes and more temples.

After Vladimir, we drove by a number of sites where the Church has held meetings as well as all of the former mission offices. I didn't get a picture, but one of my favorite stories involves the Hall of Artists. President Biddulph was there on the morning of August 19, 1991 signing the paperwork to rent the hall for the upcoming visit of Elders Packer and Oaks. In the middle of signing the paperwork, an aide came into the director's office and turned on the radio and the group heard the news of the August Coup. Since the announcement of the state of emergency did not say anything about religious gatherings, the director of the hall went ahead and signed the agreement.

As we were driving around, some of the first missionaries shared various memories they had. I thought one was particularly touching. The missionary (I am afraid I don't remember his name) talked about how even in big cities there will be familiar faces that you recognize around your neighborhood, even though you don't know the individuals. He said that during the coup a young man that he recognized, but didn't know, came up to him--knowing that he was a foreigner--and said "Tell them we don't want this. Tell them."

Unfortunately, we didn't get to see the place on our tour, but another of my favorite stories from President Biddulph also involved the period of the Coup. From the hotel where he was staying, he could look out his window and see the headquarters of Rukh, the Ukrainian nationalist movement, which was flying not the Ukrainian SSR flag, but the blue and gold Ukrainian flag in use today. He said that for two nights he would be awakened throughout the night by convoys of trucks passing by, and that when this happened he would look across the street to make sure the flag was still flying, which indicated to him that the city had not been occupied by Soviet armed forces.

The next stop on our tour was the site of the first mission office and currently home to the Church's Kiev service center. As everyone was gathered there, various people told various memories they had of the place. President Biddulph remembered that when he was a student in Kiev many years before, one Sunday he had sat on a bench right across the street in the park reading his scriptures and hoping that someone might stop and sit next to him and notice what he was reading, and wondering if there would ever be a day when he would be able to share the Gospel freely with the people here.

The first mission office

One of the missionaries remembered that it was from this place that first group of Saints to go to the Freiberg Temple left on their two-day, 2200 mile journey. The law on religious freedom enacted just before the collapse of the Soviet Union provided for the right of "foreign pilgrimages to religious shrines," and under this provision the Church leaders were able to secure the necessary permission for the temple trip, which the government authorities came to refer to as the "Mormon pilgrimage."

Zoya and Slava in front of the service center.

One of the senior couples pointed out that this was the place where the Book of Mormon was translated into Ukrainian by our guide, Zoya. She is too modest to talk about it, so her husband Slava told us a little about it. It was the first time that any scriptures were translated into another language outside of Salt Lake. In fact, Slava said, that when they had the opportunity to meet President Monson at a Church event in Europe several years ago, upon being introduced to them, he immediately remember that fact about the Ukrainian Book of Mormon. Now Slava, who is a nuclear physicist by training, works here as a translator for the Church. (Several years ago there was an article in Meridian Magazine about their history.) Next, it was off to the temple. On the way, Zoya told us about some of the unique aspects of the construction material (there are many different colors of marble used in the interior, but it all comes from Ukraine; although all the furniture was made in the U.S.) and the open house (a book about the Church written by a Ukrainian professor who is a long-time colleague of President Biddulph's, but not a member of the Church, was presented to many of the dignitaries who came to tour the building).

The temple is right on the ring road that circles the city, so we caught our first glimpse of it while still a ways away. As others have noted, traffic on the ring road is so bad that the Ukrainians will have plenty of time to ponder the beautiful temple:

The temple was being prepared for the dedication, so we didn't get to go inside (until the next day!). We met Erin Brown from the 8th Ward there, she had been helping out with the open house; took some pictures; and headed off to get some dinner before the cultural celebration.
Views of the temple from the ring road: