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Making Russia My Home

By Haeli Betzold, MK

When I was thirteen years old, I was living a normal life as a teenager in America until a month before summer break 2002. That was when my parents told my sister and me that we were moving, not just a couple hundred miles away but a couple thousand! We were moving to Russia. I couldn’t believe my ears. Moving? I had lived in the same house and had the same friends my whole life, and now I had to change. We were going to sell our family farm and build a new one in Nacadkino, Russia.

My friends were extremely sad to see me go, and I was even more heart broken. A couple days after school let out for the summer, my family and I left Wisconsin for Russian Language School at Columbia International University in Columbia, South Carolina. This eight-week intensive Russian language course was a preview of what communicating was going to be like when we got to Russia. I don’t remember much about the eight long weeks we spent in South Carolina, but what I do remember is the miserable goodbye.

We left South Carolina after we had completed the language classes and went back to our beloved home in Wisconsin. My Grandma met us at the door with open arms, and we were there for about two weeks packing everything up and getting ready for the long plane ride to Russia. At the end of two weeks we loaded everything into the back of Grandma and Grandpa’s van and left for the airport. Two vehicles full of people traveled along to see us off. When we arrived at the airport there was an extremely tearful goodbye. It took me about a half hour to stop crying. That was the first of many lengthy airplane rides that I have taken in my life.

The arrival in Russia was immediate culture shock. After we landed at the Sheremitrovo International airport in Moscow at 9:30 p.m., we collected our countless bags of belongings and waited for a driver to meet us and take us to our house. It was midnight when we reached our destination, and the house cook had a three course meal ready for us. The only thing I wanted to do was go to bed, but to be polite, I ate. At that point, Russian food was not appetizing to me, but eventually it would grow on me.

That first night I couldn’t sleep at all. I missed America and my comfort zone. It was hard to adjust, because we didn’t know what to expect. We had never been to Russia before. The next day my dad’s boss gave us a grand tour of the area that was going to be our new home. Then it hit me: I had to learn more Russian. No one in rural Russia knew English. I started getting scared. How was I going to find friends? How was I going to do anything? I hadn’t gotten much out of the eight-week intensive Russian classes. I wasn’t fluent in Russian!

Haeli with her Russian friends Nina and Zina.

We were in Russia for a month when my parents put my sister and me in Russian public school. We were scared to death to go to school, but the first day God sent us a set of twin girls that wanted to be our friends, and to this day they are still our closest Russian friends. Without them, I don’t think that we would have learned Russian as fast as we did. Nina and Zina, our twin friends, took time everyday to teach us a little bit of the language. They repeated things over and over again until we understood them. In the first six months my sister and I learned to speak enough Russian to get any point across that we needed to communicate. I was amazed that I didn’t understand a word six months earlier.

Our first year in Russia was a trying time, and I sometimes didn’t know if I was going to make it. I was missing what American kids get to experience, such as hanging out with friends, going to the movies, and attending a normal school. I felt like I was losing my American friends. However, our second year in Russia was easier than the first. My language skills improved tremendously. The Lord continued to send us new friends while we were getting closer to old friends. Two boys, Igor and Leosha, started coming to our farm every day. They taught us traditional a Russian card game called Durak and the four of us played everyday after we fed calves.

The third year in Russia was, in my opinion, the best. I knew the language, and I loved living in Russia. I had lots of friends, and I was starting to get involved in the local church. I felt like I was closer to God at this time than any other year before that. I started holding youth group activities at my house. We had games, food, and a Bible lesson at every meeting. Before our first meeting, I didn’t think the non-believers who were coming would enjoy it, but to my surprise, they loved it and asked when the next one would be.

When the third year ended, I had tears in my eyes when I left Russia to return to America for a vacation. When I first arrived in Russia, I thought America would always be home, but I was wrong. My family and I lived in Russia almost five years, and Russia became my home. Then in 2006, my parents told my sister and me that we would be encountering another change—we were moving to Ukraine. We were crushed, but with God’s help, I am sure we will learn to love Ukraine just like we learned to love Russia.

Haeli Betzold is now a freshman in college. This past year she went on a two week trip with Dr. Miriam Wheeler and other health care professionals doing medical clinics in Ukraine. She is interested in medical missions. Haeli is currently a freshman at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.