After meeting John M. Smith at the dedication of the Kyiv Ukraine Temple on Aug. 29, Church News editor Gerry Avant invited him to write this article.

While traveling from the United States to Ukraine in August for the dedication of the Kyiv temple (the first in Eastern Europe and the former USSR), I reflected gratefully on how I have witnessed the fulfillment of prophecy in Ukraine since being called there as a missionary 15 years ago.

Photo courtesy John M. Smith

At the first baptism in western Ukraine, on Sunday, June 23, 1996, in Lviv, are, from left, Elder Barlow Malin, Natalia Rybakova, her son Sergei, and Elder John Smith.

In Kyiv in 1991, as the USSR was collapsing, President Boyd K. Packer, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, dedicated Ukraine for the preaching of the restored gospel, opening the door to the largest nation located wholly within Europe and the cradle of Christianity in the Slavic world. He prophesied that "the spires of temples will be seen across this great land."

As missionaries, we were inspired by that prophecy, taught its significance to the people of Ukraine and helped them pray and work for its realization.

Photo courtesy John M. Smith

At temple dedication, John Smith, left, meets Ivan Stratov, who opened missionary work in Ukraine.

When I arrived in Kyiv as a missionary, Ukraine Kyiv Mission President Neil V. Lamont told me not to unpack my bags yet. He felt prompted to send Elder William Sawkiw and me, both with ancestors from western Ukraine, to open western Ukraine's largest city, Lviv, for permanent missionary work. Until that time, missionaries called to Ukraine had been trained only in Russian and thus were deployed only to a handful of cities that predominantly spoke Russian, but not to the western third of the country, which generally speaks only Ukrainian.

Photos courtesy John M. Smith

John Smith, who served as a missionary in Ukraine 15 years ago, has witnessed the growth of the Church in the country. The road sign points to the village where John Smith's mother and other Ukrainian ancestors were born ("Koonichee").

To open that region (roughly the size of England and Scotland combined), President Lamont needed Ukrainian-speaking missionaries. Having been taught by my Ukrainian-born mother, I was fluent in Ukrainian and had enjoyed studying Russian at Princeton University. Equipped with a short list of referrals and prototype Ukrainian translations of the Book of Mormon and Church hymns, we headed west into the "wilderness."

The Lord's hand in opening western Ukraine was evident immediately. He has promised that every person will hear the gospel "in his own language" (Doctrine and Covenants 90:11), and our very first investigator in Lviv helped explain why that promise mattered so much to Ukrainians: "When you teach me these things in Ukrainian, I can believe you. It was in Russian that we were taught that God did not exist."

Photo courtesy John M. Smith

In 1996, Elder Jake Kelsey, left; President and Sister Wilfried Voge, Elders Jeffrey Mower, William Sawkiw, John Smith gather in apartment that served as first branch meetinghouse in Lviv, Ukraine.

We soon needed a place for our first baptism and found a swimming pond in a park — near KGB headquarters. When the park manager queried why we wanted to rent it for a Sunday morning, I explained. Silence. I worried he would refuse or even turn us in to hostile authorities. (The Saints in Ukraine had many such painful experiences.) Then he replied, in essence, "You are doing God's work. The water belongs to Him, so I cannot charge you for it. Use the pond whenever you need it."

The first LDS baptism in western Ukraine — on June 23, 1996 — was transcendent. After days of steady rain, glorious sunshine broke through just minutes before a brave pioneer from Lviv waded into Church history.

In the following months, guided by the inspired vision of our next mission president, Wilfried Voge, I witnessed many miracles that enabled us to spread the gospel into the other large cities of western Ukraine: Rivne, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivsti, Lutsk, and later others.

Photo courtesy John M. Smith

John Smith, his wife Hannah, and father George, attend the Kyiv Ukraine Temple on Aug. 29. John translated the dedicatory sessions from Ukrainian into English for Church leaders in the temple.

From Ivano-Frankivsk, the city closest to my Ukrainian relatives, a father journeyed to Lviv in search of the Mormon missionaries, having heard that we had now arrived there. With no other way to contact us, he wandered the streets, enquiring after us. In a city of almost a million people, before we even began wearing name tags outside, this seeker of truth found us.

We followed him back to Ivano-Frankivsk, where a branch was soon established around his small family.

The Church took root in these cities in this familiar pattern: First, a single individual or family of believers connected with missionaries, who then deployed to that new city to establish a branch, with crucial help from non-LDS locals. I marveled how precisely the Lord's promise was being fulfilled in Ukraine, too: "I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion" (Jeremiah 3:14).

As we proclaimed liberty to the captives of Communism's legacy, I witnessed how the evil from centuries of tyranny and fear still burdened Ukraine's people, who wrestled "against the rulers of the darkness of this world" (Ephesians 6:12). So I delighted in punching holes through such darkness every day — teaching the doctrines of moral agency, faith in Christ, eternal families — and then watching Ukrainians step into the light. I recall learning why family history research was so difficult for them: Not only had Soviet atheism destroyed so many churches, but the KGB method for destroying determined believers and other so-called "enemies of the people" — by persecuting their whole families — meant that knowing to whom you were related could be fatal. To protect their children, parents kept them in the dark about their relatives. Now, through temple and family history work, the Ukrainian Saints are reconnecting their families and healing their land.

In 1944, my infant mother and her parents fled Ukraine for the West, a day before the re-invading Soviets captured and persecuted their village. My grandfather saved his family by escaping to the United States and won for them the freedom to worship God and to cherish their Ukrainian heritage and language. He was never able to return to his homeland, but he taught those values to me. In October 1945, as my Ukrainian grandparents were reaching safety and the oppressive "Iron Curtain" was descending across Eastern Europe, my paternal great-grandfather, President George Albert Smith, spoke in general conference about "Russia," whose Soviet empire then included Ukraine. He foresaw that land "as one of the most fruitful fields for the teaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ." He prophesied that its people would soon "desire to know" of the Lord's Work.

Indeed they did. As soon as the winds of freedom blew open the gates, the Lord called His missionaries in, to sow Gospel seeds in fertile Ukraine. And now, in a former grain field, a holy House of the Lord rises, yielding a fruitful harvest of eternal blessings to its faithful people.