Infinitely More

by Krutov, Alex; Davis, Jackie

  Rich and Sue had three children, two girls and a boy. Not long before I was born, when he was only three years old, their son Steven had been killed by a drunk driver. Many years later, when Sue was in her forties, a woman told her she would have another son. Sue did not put much stock in this “prophecy.” The woman repeated her claim some months later, getting a similar response from Sue. Yet it was not long after this that the Lord prompted Sue to “adopt” me. Maybe there was something to this prophecy, after all. The Greggs have now been married for almost fifty years. What a privilege it has been for me to be a part of their family and their family gatherings over these last thirteen years.

  Before I left, Sue hosted a surprise dinner party at the church as a going away event for me. During my time there I had served meals for dozens of different families and many of them came to say goodbye. Sue made a scrapbook for me of photos from my time with them. They also presented me with numerous gifts of cooking supplies: a skillet, knives, a cutting board, a tablecloth with matching napkins and napkin rings, measuring cups, cooking spoons, and a chef’s hat and apron. Sue also gave me a certificate of completion for chef training.

  Cooking supplies in hand, I boarded another plane and headed back to St. Petersburg, still no closer to understanding what I was to do with my life.

  Chapter 15

  I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.

  —Philippians 4:11–12

  Once again, I was “home” in Russia with all of my earthly possessions. They were still confined to a few boxes and a large suitcase, but were far more than I had ever owned. Unfortunately, I had no home to go to.

  Ed and our friend Kostya met me at the airport. While it was great to see my buddies again, it was depressing to be back in Russia, especially with no plans for my future. I hated being there. As much as I felt I was where I was supposed to be, I had no idea why, and my heart still longed to be in the United States.

  The first few weeks I moved around a lot, staying a night here and there with friends. Not wanting to overstay my welcome, I moved often. I ended up finding a spare room with a man named Boris, a Russian friend of Mel and Mary Lou Duke. For $75 a month, I had a place to call home. My finances were helped by $20 each month that Sue Gregg was sending me out of the goodness of her heart.

  Boris’ place was my first experience living in a communal apartment. Sharing a kitchen and a bath with strangers was a little disconcerting to me. I never disclosed to my fellow tenants that I was an orphan, or even that I was Russian. I spoke English well enough by now that folks assumed I was an American student in Russia (ironic, since what I wanted to be was a Russian student in America!). I did nothing to correct their assumptions. I knew that my new community would look upon me differently if they knew I was actually a Russian orphan who had been homeless before I took the extra room in Boris’ flat. I hated it there but tried not to complain. It was God’s provision for me and it surely beat the streets. Taking my cue from Matthew 6:34—“Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself”—I tried to take one day at a time. As Jesus said, “Each day has enough trouble of its own.” I felt certain that the Lord would soon reveal to me His plans for my future. But had I known that I would live in this communal apartment for the next four long years, I probably would never have agreed to the arrangement.

  The bathroom stunk worse than an outhouse. I had to hold my nose every time I used it. The floor in the bathroom was old and wooden and was rotted all around the toilet and the tub. The whole toilet would wobble and rock and the tub had no shower curtain. I suggested that we all put in a little money together and buy one. Their reply was unanimous: “You want one, you buy it.”

  I made a trip to the store and bought air freshener, toilet paper (we each had to bring our own every time we went to the bathroom), scouring powder, and a shower curtain. I had to string the curtain up with rope, but after a while they all loved the new addition. It took me over an hour of scrubbing out the tub to get it acceptably clean. It looked like it hadn’t been scrubbed since the Stalin era. Regardless of my continued efforts to keep the bathroom clean, my fellow tenants often complained that I was in the bathroom too long.

  The $20 a month from Sue was a help, plus I got a few odd jobs here and there as a tour guide or translator. But while I could always count on the $75 rent being due at the same time each month, I never knew when my next job was going to come. I lived mostly on bread and hot water. (As I explained to my friends, hot water was just like a cup of tea—only without the tea!)

  While I was able to improve the bathroom a little, there was another problem in the communal apartment that proved more difficult. The apartment was on top of a small grocery store. Next door to them was a produce market. Convenient, yes, but St. Petersburg is known for its rats, mice, and cockroaches, and living near all that food made it worse. As soon as the lights were turned off at night, hoards of cockroaches would rush in. If you happened into a room at night and turned on the light, you would see an army of them scurrying across the floor and dropping from the ceiling.

  One evening when I decided to splurge on a meal, I turned on the stove and hundreds of roaches ran out of it. I decided then and there that I would never again cook in that apartment. So much for chef school.

  In addition to the varmints, there were the vagrants, the homeless folks who “took up house” in our enclosed stairway, sometimes defecating, oftentimes vomiting, on our stairs.

  Obviously I never felt comfortable inviting guests over to the place. Ed and Sveta each came once or twice, and Mel and Mary Lou Duke came one time. For four years those were all the visitors I had. The Hugheses, my host family in Arizona, had given me a little boom-box and it became my sole source of entertainment. I spent hours listening to Christian music.

  In my heart I knew that this was a testing time for me and the experience deeply humbled me. It made me appreciate all the more my time in the States, and even my years in the orphanage. I knew that the apartment was better than the streets but I also knew that I wanted better for my life.

  During this time I occasionally visited Orphanage Number 51. I spent time with the kids and visited the caretakers that I liked. I also looked for every opportunity I could think of to get back to America. It was almost all-consuming for me. That probably hindered me from bettering my life in Russia—whenever I felt I couldn’t take my life in the filthy apartment any longer, I stayed on a little longer because I just knew that God was going to open another door for me to go back to the U.S.

  My desire bordered on desperation, and I paid a price for it. One day as I was walking downtown I saw a billboard that said, “If you want to become a student in America, we’ll help you.” I found the company and excitedly walked into their office. The lady shared with me about a student program for a school in New York to study English. I took most of the rest of my savings and paid the required fees. Over the next few months I spent a good deal of my time filling out papers and more papers. Supposedly, I was repeatedly denied by the American school. This did not make sense to me, and I was crushed to find out that the entire thing had been a scam. There was no student program and no school in New York looking for foreign students to study English.

  The director of this agency was a woman named Natasha. She had noticed my determination and approached me to help her begin a legitimate immigration company to help Russians get to other countries. She would give me a job in the new company, but she needed some money to help start the new venture. I would be paid well for my work and they would pay back the loan as the company grew. Best of all, the new company would help me get back to America. I took what remained of my savings and gave it to her.

  Natasha started the new company. We had a nice office in do
wntown St. Pete. I served as a consultant for the agency and helped folks complete the necessary paperwork to get their visas for America. I was paid for the first two months. It was an exciting time for me: I worked in a nice office doing important work, I made good money, and soon I would be able to return to the United States. Life was good. Then, after the first couple of months, Natasha stopped paying me and the company’s other employee. She assured us that it was only temporary, that once the company began making more money she would give us our back pay.

  Before long I began to notice that, while I wasn’t being paid, Natasha was living very well. I also found out that she had stolen $5,000 from a former business partner. I realized that I would never get my back pay and I would never see the money I had loaned her. I had fallen for her scam not once but twice. I felt like a fool; and now, a very poor fool.

  I survived by being a facilitator for various ministries and made a modest income, just enough for meals. I also began to go to Orphanage Number 51 on my own in a more official capacity, to teach cooking, English, Bible studies, and organize birthday parties. All the while, I continued to put in a few hours each week at Natasha’s company, trying to maintain a relationship with her, hoping to find out what she was really up to. I also thought that if she was a friend she would feel obligated to pay me my money. However, the longer I was there, the clearer it became that I would never see my money. It didn’t help that I was afraid of her husband, a former policeman. I didn’t know what to do. Once again, though, the Lord provided a protector for me, the same one He had used in my life so often before.

  I went to Melana and poured out the whole story and admitted how foolish I had been. She went the next day and confronted Natasha and her husband. He immediately began to threaten Melana that he would involve the police. Melana did not back down. She had her own connections with the police, she explained, the SWAT team in particular.

  “If I have to come back, I’ll bring the SWAT team with me!” she shouted.

  The next day I got back the money I had loaned Natasha.

  I never did get my lost wages, but I didn’t care. It was a tough lesson, and I just wanted to put it behind me.

  Once a week I would do my laundry at Aunt Marina and Uncle Misha’s house. It was also a social event: We would have dinner together and watch television or play games while my clothes were washing. They had an old Soviet-era washing machine with no spin cycle and they did not have a dryer. I had to wring everything out by hand. I would then put it all in a big plastic bag and lug it back to my apartment, a half-hour’s walk away. I would hang it all up from a rope tied up in my room and wait, sometimes for days, for the clothes to dry.

  A recent picture of Tetya Marina and Dyadya Misha

  It was an inconvenience, yes, but those inconveniences and living conditions were beginning to make me very appreciative. After years in the orphanage system, I realized that I too had developed that entitlement mentality that I found so unattractive in my friends. It was a slow, painful, process, but I could feel the Lord chiseling away at my imperfections. For probably the first time in my life, I was learning to be content in my circumstances and, moreover, to be grateful and appreciative for what I did have. What Paul wrote in Philippians 4 was becoming true for me: “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”

  Chapter 16

  Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.

  —2 Corinthians 1:3–4

  I was in Russia this time for four years. Though I was learning to be content with my circumstances—little money, little food, no regular job, and a less-than-desirable place to call home—there was one thing that I really struggled with: I had no idea what my future held.

  I could not get a good job because I had no education. In Russia, without a college degree there is little hope for a decent job. And even that didn’t help sometimes. At that time, there were people with master’s degrees working in the new St. Petersburg McDonald’s.

  Even more than my lack of education, I did not seek a permanent job or any kind of future plans because deep in my heart I was still determined to return to America. The sporadic work that I did have was the result of the many friends the Lord had put in my path over the last several years, mostly Americans. They came back to Russia from time to time or had friends and friends of friends who came. I was a valuable resource as a tour guide and translator, enough so to maintain my lifestyle, which was not much more than a roof over my head with bread and water.

  Even though I didn’t have a plan, God did, and He was working during those “wilderness years” to shape my heart and mind toward His things.

  I had been visiting Orphanage Number 51 for some time and had taken on more of an official role, teaching English and cooking, and leading Bible studies with some of the kids. The more I was there, the more I began to realize their needs. The government supplies were inadequate. Each child, for example, got only two pairs of socks and underwear per year. Toilet paper and toiletries were scarce.

  I expressed my concerns to several of my American and Finnish friends and they began to send me money to buy supplies for Orphanage 51. I would go all over St. Pete to find good deals or companies willing to give me discounts on, say, three hundred pairs of underwear. I would take pictures of all the supplies I bought, attach the receipt to the picture, and send them to the friends who sent the money. I wanted to not only show that I was grateful for their generosity, but accountable for every dollar they sent.

  Before long, this work became like a full-time occupation for me. It also became my passion.

  There are about one hundred and twenty orphanages in St. Petersburg and its suburbs, housing about ten thousand orphans. I felt the Lord calling me to expand my efforts beyond Orphanage Number 51, and began calling some of the other orphanage directors. In doing so, I truthfully said that I was representing various individuals who wanted to help. I would never identify myself as an orphan, however, or even as a Russian, feeling my work would lack credibility to them because of the stigma in Russia regarding orphans. These directors heard my by-now fluent English and saw me so often with Americans that I imagine most of them assumed I was an American. I did nothing to dispel the notion.

  I visited forty orphanages and ended up working with twenty-seven of them. As my own experience showed, there are three levels of orphanages in Russia: the baby level for newborns to four-year-olds; the kindergarten for five- to seven-year-olds; and those like Orphanage Number 51, for seven- to seventeen-year-olds. The needs at the baby orphanages were vastly different from those like Number 51, and the needs at each individual orphanage were unique.

  Mostly I bought medicine, diapers, and clothing for the baby orphanages. For those in the third age level, in addition to underwear and clothing, I sometimes bought furniture and washers and dryers.

  The number of people giving to my efforts grew as I shared the need with more of my foreign friends. God was answering my prayers in a mighty way and it was always a joy to see how and when the funding would come in. The contributors were a combination of different individuals as well as organizations, all scattered over several countries. Their only connection to each other was me, and a shared desire to serve the Lord by serving the orphans.

  Proverbs 16:9 says, “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.” This was certainly the case with me. I had no grand plan—certainly no “business plan”—no formal structure, nor did I have any intention to build an organization or career for myself. Yet God was putting together a system to provide for the needs of orphans in St. Petersburg, and using me to do it. Along the way, He
allowed me to develop quite a reputation at many of the orphanages, most of whom still had no idea that I too was a Russian orphan, now emancipated and living in squalor with very little income of my own.

  Sadly, many Americans made promises to me that they did not keep. It was a tough lesson but the Lord used it to teach me to never give promises that I couldn’t keep. When the orphans asked me for things, I never promised I could get them; I simply said that I would try.

  I also knew firsthand the corruption in the orphanages and had watched too many times the goods intended for the orphans being carried out by workers. I made it my personal policy to deliver the goods and gifts directly into the hands of the orphans themselves. Knowing, too, that orphans are not all angels, I sometimes had to put conditions on the gifts. One summer, about fifty of the kids from Orphanage 51 were going to summer camp. Most of them had no tennis shoes, and those who did had shoes with gaping holes or tape holding the soles in place. They begged me to bring them tennis shoes for camp. I told them I would try, but I sat them down and told them that if any child sold the shoes to buy alcohol or cigarettes I would no longer bring any more gifts to Orphanage 51.

  I asked Edik to go with me to shop for the tennis shoes. Ed was ashamed of his past and wanted nothing to do with orphans and never told anyone he was an orphan. I wanted to give him the opportunity to experience the joy I felt in helping the kids. I didn’t know it at the time, because I didn’t understand it myself, but looking back I realize that I also wanted to share with him the healing process that I was beginning to experience. I often talked to Ed about God and he had attended church and Bible studies sometimes with me, but he never really discussed spiritual things and, to my knowledge, never made a commitment to Christ. Ed reluctantly agreed to shop for the shoes. When we took them to the camp and delivered them into the hands of the kids, the kids were of course thrilled. Even better than that, for me, was to see how Ed was touched by the children’s response.