A Journey from Atheism to Evangelist

Meet Dmitriy Mizichenko, North Caucasus Learning Center Student

My name is Dmitriy Mizichenko, I am 31. I was born in Nalchik city into an atheistic home. Neither my parents, nor I ever thought about religion, because our attitude to it had been formed by Soviet propaganda, which taught that God and everything religious was fictions of old and uneducated people.

However, in the beginning of 1990s we began hearing other information about religion. People started discuss spiritual topics in newspapers and on TV, and Christian literature became available. After the spiritual hunger of the Communist time, many people were searching for some kind of spiritual explanations and mystical experiences.

One day, my mother brought home a copy of the Bible. I remember that we all were feeling a kind of reverence toward that book, but its content seemed so remote and beyond our comprehension. I did want to understand it, but as a teenager, I lacked patience to delve into it. Yet God showed his favor to me when my mother’s acquaintance (she was a Baptist) gave us a copy of an “easy to read” children’s Bible. It was when I began reading it that God reached out to my heart and gave meaning and purpose to my existence.

At the age of 16, I came to the Baptist church of Nalchik for the first time. When I saw so many people who loved God and each other, my doubts regarding God and his word were dissolved completely. I 1993 I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior and was baptized at the same church. At that time, I decided that I would put all of my life into service to God and people, and so I became involved into youth ministry, evangelistic and social outreach, service in hospitals and orphanages.

In 1998, I entered Missionary Department of Donetsk Christian University in Ukraine. Three years later, when I was a student of the last year, I got married with my wife, her name is Leyla. She is a Tatar, and comes from Muslim background. She was also a missionary student, and it was our common longing to bring the Gospel to Muslims. After graduation, I asked the leaders of Nalchik Baptist church to bless us as missionaries to Tyrnyauz city, which is located in upper mountain Balkaria. In total, we lived there for 6 years (2001-2007). By the end of that time, there was a small church of about 20 people, though mostly it consists of Russian people living in that city. During those years, I served as missionary-pastor of the congregation.

In 2007 I entered a Master Program in Missions at Saint-Petersburg Evangelical Academy because I felt I needed to grow professionally in the work I have been called to do. My initial plans were to return to Tyrnyauz city, but as a student, I received an invitation to join the faculty of North Caucasus Bible Institute and become the coordinator of their new Missionary Training School. I gladly accepted this invitation, because it is my passion to contribute to expansion of Missionary work in Caucasus. Actually, I was ready to return to Tyrnyaus, but I agreed to NCBI administration’s reasoning: it will be a greater investment of our time and efforts, if we are able to prepare scores of missionaries, by God’s grace. The way this particular program is designed and approached seems to be realistic and promising.

Now my wife and I have three children and recently we moved to Prokhladny. I have not finished my study yet as I switched to part time mode. What I still have to do is to take a couple of courses and write a thesis. My topic for the thesis will be ministry project. I will be investigating the ways the Missionary program of NCBI may best contribute to the growth of Christian churches among Muslim nations of Caucasus.

Thank you for your support of our students, including Dmitriy.