04.17.09
A Cord of Three Strands
Two impoverished boys born a world apart: Fred, a native Mississippian was an American soldier in Germany at the same time Nikolai was imprisoned as a Russian soldier. Unwittingly their lives would be woven together for a lifetime and how much so would be revealed more than sixty years later. The Weaver’s hands unseen by either man gently placed the threads of their lives and began to loosely knit them together.
Fred had already returned home to his wife and only child when American soldiers freed Nikolai and the other prisoners from their death camps. The war had finally ended. The USSR had expected any soldiers who became prisoners to take their own life. If they did not and returned home to Russia, they were sentenced to a Siberian prison. Nikolai, an atheist with no place to go stayed as a refugee in Germany. He had lost his family and his homeland.
Fred was working as an agricultural county extension agent when he felt God’s call upon his life to be a preacher. He returned to college and eventually on to seminary. After an encounter with God, Nikolai became a believer and he and Fred ended up at the same small seminary in Louisiana. By then, Fred was ordained as a preacher and conducted his first funeral that for Nikolai’s firstborn child. They each earned doctorates in theology and parted for careers as college professors—Fred to Texas and Nikolai stayed in Louisiana. They sporadically kept in touch through letters, exchanged Christmas cards, and Fred sent Nikolai copies of his poetry books and commentaries. As the number of friends expands, life gets busier, men age, and staying in close contact becomes increasingly difficult, but the tightly twisted cords of friendship remain.
Years ago my parents, Fred and Sarah, and I were putting together a scrapbook of their life—more than fifty years of marriage sandwiched between their respective childhoods and ancestors. The enormous task was less daunting because my mother had organized their life into segments: wedding, college days, war days, ancestors, places they lived, and so on. As we worked together placing photos and memorabilia onto pages my parents would reminisce and tell the stories behind the pictures. My sister’s name, Katrinka was one Daddy had heard while serving in Europe. Disappointedly, they couldn’t remember where they got my name, Belinda.
One particular photo was of a former seminary classmate, Nikolai Alexandrenko, his wife and young son. I liked the rhythm of that name: Nikolai Alexandrenko. Daddy said Nikolai had been a Russian war prisoner of the Germans and kindled a fire to stay warm using pages torn from a Bible when he became interested in reading the text. His life was transformed and after the war he immigrated to America, attended college, went on to seminary, and taught at Louisiana College. For more than fifty years Nikolai had no contact with his family for fear of retaliation by the communists. Just prior to the fall of communism in 1991, Nikolai returned to his native Russia in search of relatives, to share about a life in Jesus Christ, and established a seminary. Not only did I like his name, I was awed by his story and asked my dad to write it and place it in the scrapbook next to the picture. My parents and I completed the scrapbook and my father “Fred” died the following year.
Evangelism has always been a natural part of my family. I participated in missions as a youth and teenager. As an adult my older sister, Katrinka has spent most of her summers on short-term mission trips to Eastern Europe, primarily Poland, Belarus and most recently, Ukraine. She is responsible for recruiting me into these mission trips teaching conversational English and sharing Jesus Christ.
Our father died in 2000, before Google was a household name and a verb. Recently, Katrinka and I were looking at the scrapbook when I decided to “Google” that melodious name. In America where Alexandrenko is uncommon, it didn’t take long to locate information. I found a Belinda Alexandrenko and sent her an inquiring email. Her response was, “Yes I am his daughter and I was named after you.” She promised to send me a copy of her father’s book, a memoir with that awesome testimony as the byline. Fred and Nikolai each had six children and a daughter named Belinda.
I went back to Google and found a recorded sermon of Nikolai Alexandrenko telling his story. At the time of the recording he was already eighty-three years old. He talked of his homeland, Russia and now more specifically, Ukriane. He mentioned cities such as Odessa, Kharkov, Kiev and Chisinau, places where two of Fred’s daughters and a granddaughter have ministered.
As I listened mesmerized by the work of The Weaver I could clearly see several of the dark but mostly colorful threads The Weaver had so loving knit together of these two lives and more thread on His spool.
Nikolai Alexandrenko Hear his story of being a WW II Russian soldier imprisoned by the Germans and finds hope in a fire when he discovers two religious tracts written in his native language.
