"May I help you?"

With those words, doors were opened for Andrei Linchenko that eventually led him to a new country, a new religion, a new career, and even marriage and parenthood.Spoken hesitantly in 1985 to American shoppers in the famous Gum department store, the Soviet Union's largest, adjacent to Moscow's Red Square, those words also led him to such Americanisms as cowboy boots and blue jeans.

It all started in sub-zero weather in February in 1985, when the young English major at Moscow University decided to browse in the department store. In the store, he saw an American businessman, former Alaska mission president Douglas T. Snarr; his wife, Carol; and an associate. The Snarrs were trying to purchase a fur hat for their associate. But the Americans couldn't speak Russian, and the saleswoman couldn't speak English.

In the conversation that followed, Andrei helped them buy a hat, and the Americans offered him some English magazines, which he accepted.

An instant friendship developed between the young Russian and the American visitors. The Snarrs twice invited him to dinner in Moscow, which he hesitantly accepted.

Andrei learned they were Mormons, a religion he'd read about and admired through his studies in English.

"Do you believe in God?" he asked Brother Snarr at the time.

"Andrei, I know there is a God," the former mission president replied. "I have had a special witness that there is a God."

When the Snarrs left Moscow a few days later, they left Andrei hungry for spiritual food.

"I was always very interested in religion," he said. "But in the Soviet Union, atheism was a kind of official religion. I believed in God, but I basically had no information. I believed we lived after death and I was content with this - I didn't think it was required of me to do anything."

Four years later, after the advent of "glasnost" with its increased opportunity, the young man was granted a tourist visa and came to America for a short visit.

He arrived in New York to begin a series of adventures that have never really ended. On his first day he encountered a beggar. This was then an unusual sight for a Muscovite. The beggar asked if he could spare a dollar. Andrei responded, "I wish someone would spare me a dollar."

The beggar replied, "My God has been good to me today," and handed him a dollar.

Two days later, though, the New York streets were less hospitable: Andrei was mugged.

"They held a knife to my neck while they were searching me. I thought they would kill me. I was on the verge of giving them all my money. But they found $20 and took it and ran off." He explained that if he had lost the rest of his money, he would've had to return to Moscow immediately.

Instead, he bought a bus pass and traveled to Florida, then embarked on a cross-country bus ride that ended in Salt Lake City with a visit to the Snarrs.

The Snarrs were elated that Andrei remembered them. They invited him to stay with them for a while.

"I was really tired after the ride on the bus," Andrei said. "But when Doug told me of Joseph Smith's first vision, I continued reading late into the night.

"I wondered, `If this is true, why haven't I heard of it before? Why have I been deprived of this?'

"I had never prayed," he continued. "Doug and his children taught me how to pray."

And in a short time, he listened to the missionaries and prayed about what they taught him. "The more I prayed, the more comfortable I felt. I received an answer, a peaceful, warm feeling."

During his search for truth, he'd take his scriptures, a gift from the Snarrs, and go to a local mall. There, he'd stop people and ask them what they thought of the Book of Mormon. "One man said he believed every word in the book - that impressed me, too."

In the meantime, he began dating. Before Andrei's first date, Brother Snarr took Andrei to a clothes store, and then to a hair stylist.

"The blow dryer scared him to death," Brother Snarr recalled.

Andrei dated Heather Smith, a returned missionary and former BYU student who was Brother Snarr's personal secretary. She reluctantly agreed to the first date only as a sort of "service project" for the visitor.

The pair hit it off.

"He was fascinating," she reported the next day. "I kind of like him."

"I felt she was so special after the first date," he said. "The more we dated, the more we felt we should be together."

She knew she was making the right choice, but she did have one favor to ask of her boss, Brother Snarr. Would he be so kind, she asked, as to make the telephone call to her parents, Alban and Mary Smith, who were serving a mission in London, England? Would he tell them she was engaged to a Russian visitor she'd known for 18 days?

All went well with the phone call. And for Heather and Andrei, and for the missionaries. March 18, 1990, became a most memorable day for Andrei Linchenko. At 6 p.m., he was baptized into the Church in a highly spiritual service, one that he treasures yet. And at 9 p.m., he and Heather Smith were married.

Her large family (she has nine brothers and sisters and some 115 first cousins) welcomed their new in-law with open arms.

The Linchenkos now live in Provo, Utah. They were sealed in the temple on March 18, 1991, one year to the day after their marriage. The couple's first child, a girl they named Nina Marie, was born last May.

He teaches Russian at the Missionary Training Center. In fact, the first eight missionaries assigned to work in Leningrad (now renamed St. Petersburg) were taught Russian by the former Muscovite, Andrei Linchenko.

"He's like a leaf of paper white upon which the Lord has written the truth," said Brother Snarr, paraphrasing a poem. "He followed that truth, and trusting in the guiding hand of the Lord, went off into the wondrous unknown.

"If I were to sum up Andrei Linchenko and his willingness to serve, I would do it in four words:

" `May I help you?' "