Galena

My first introduction to Galena came back in 2004, when I moved to Kiev for a year. I walked into that first day of language class, knowing just a few Russian words, to be greeted by a very stern woman who started pounding the table and speaking loudly in Russian. I was dumbfounded… I hadn’t known what to expect but it definitely was not this. As the pounding and tone of her voice intensified I and the other 2 guys with me started to panic. What did this woman want from us?! Finally one of us tried to repeat what she was saying, and her expression softened just a little. We started babbling like incoherent toddlers trying to repeat her. And so the tedious, humiliating process of learning Russian began.


On one hand we were terrified of Galena. She was very intense and sometimes used the Soviet method of embarrassing you in front of the class when you made a mistake. There were days when Russian was so frustrating, it was all I could do not to throw something and storm out of the class. However, she also had a terrific wit and sense of humor so she was impossible not to like, even when that humor was used at your expense. Underneath her intense demeanor, she had a maternal affection for all her students. She taught me valuable phrases for running a house of orphan boys and helped me understand better how to relate to them. Her humor also allowed me to ask her about certain words I heard them use that were not in the dictionary. “Don’t say that,” she’d tell me, shaking her head and trying to stifle her laughter.

Although she taught missionaries for years how to clearly present the Gospel in Russian, she herself did not follow Jesus. There was not much room for softness in her worldview. On more than one occasion she explained to me why Stalin was a good ruler and his harshness was necessary. Like most missionaries that she taught, I felt a special bond with her and came to realize what a gifted teacher she is. I prayed for her often but she is such a good person that it seemed unlikely she would embrace salvation by grace. So you can imagine my joy when I found out a couple years ago that she did place her faith in Jesus Christ. I recently saw her for the first time since those language school days. She invited a group of her former students over to her apartment for a Thanksgiving breakfast. The change in her was instantly recognizable. “For so long I thought your job was to teach the Gospel, my job was to teach Russian grammar,” she told us. “But every one of you planted a small seed in my heart, and God brought those seeds to fruition. Now I understand.”