Quote Originally Posted by genuinefarmgirl View Post
Thank you for the warning. I certainly am not a "quasi-Christian" and I can see why they would be very unwelcomed. We have had Mormon and Jehovah's Witnesses missionaries stop at our country home and we invite them in, sit down and open our Bibles up - to share the truth with them. Needless to say, they don't visit very often!

The American missionary with whom I will be working with has never mentioned any sort of hostility from the locals and he has been living in Ukraine since 1992. He "wasted" his round-trip ticket by not returning to America because there was such a high level of interest from the locals that he decided not to leave. He married a Ukrainian girl and presently is on furlough...his last one having been 7 years ago. So, I'm sorry, but I think I will be very surprised if there is 'hostility' from the locals. I do know that there are some people everywhere that frown upon missionaries, and this from experience - even in America.

On the side, I wish to say that, of all the Christians in the world, of all that I have read about (and that is a lot) I admire the Russians' faith the most. It is incredible. I have not seen such faith, no, not in America. There are a number of Russian churches in our area and I have been to one of them several times. The whole service is in Russian and none of the three pastors speak English. They are all from Ukraine. There is not a single American church that I have been to that has as large of a number with many, many youth and young people in the attendance.

I am greatly looking forward to this trip and hardly think I will be disappointed.
As far as I understand what the word "missionary" means, it's a person, who try to convert locals into his/her confession. As Hanna pointed out, post-USSR countries had an invasion of various type of missionaries after Soviet Union broke. They acted like vultures back in the early 90s. Most people have a very negative attitude just hearing about any missionaries since that time. Besides, Ukraine has a very complex and uneasy situation with Christian churches currently operating there. First, of course, Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), second - so-called "patriarchate" of Philaret, who was anathematised by Moscow patriarchate. Also uniates from Galicia (part of Ukraine which were under Austro-Hungarian rule before WWI, they have kept their Orthodox rituals but consider Roman Pope the head of their church) and several others. All these factions almost hate each other. Also most people are consider themselves atheist or agnostics since Soviet times. I don't see how some religion mission from USA can do any good in this situation.