Welcome and Introduction to the Episode

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is March 7, 2022, and I am so incredibly excited and humbled and grateful for the episode that you are about to hear. For the past several weeks, I think many of us throughout the world really have been heartbroken or afraid about or concerned about the amassing of Russian soldiers and weapons and military units on the border of Ukraine. And then of course, so many in the world, in the aware, thoughtful, concerned world, were so concerned when Vladimir Putin and Russia invaded Ukraine, a sovereign, independent, peaceful state. That may be an editorial opinion, but that's my opinion. And then we've been heartbroken to see the news coverage of again, a sovereign, an Eastern European country being invaded and bombed and shelled. And we've also been inspired by footage of the president of Ukraine along with the citizens and the soldiers doing their best to defend their country and heartbroken to see the refugees and the casualties. And so we have wanted to find out a way to cover this. I should do a shout out and we'll include this in the show notes with Jen that we have interviewed one Ukrainian on Mormon Stories podcast in the past. Her name was Nastya, if I believe I'm pronouncing that right. Behun. We are going to include that episode in the show notes, but we're grateful and humbled that we have found a way to give some coverage to the Ukrainian conflict in a way that also very much aligns with the Mission of Mormon Stories and the Oba Stories Foundation. I want to give a shout out to my dear friend Courtney, who I think was a really important instigator for this episode to happen along with Gerardo, who has been producing this behind the scenes. But today we are going to be interviewing a post Mormon woman who, as I understand it, was born in Ukraine and has lived in Ukraine as recently as just a few years ago. And her name is Ksenia and I hope I'm pronouncing that decently. And we're going to be interviewing her in just a second. But before we do, I also have another companion announcement that I'm really excited to make. As those of you know, we've been so honored to have Kara Burrell join us on Mormon Stories podcast as a co host. And of course, Gerardo Sumano. As we've tried to expand the Mormon Stories team and more voices, I've also wanted to include more international voices. And for those of you who don' know Nemo, we've interviewed him on Mormon Stories. He's from the uk. He can decide whether we use his full name or not in reference to that episode. We will include that in the show notes as well. My interview with Nemo, which was a traditional long form interview about his being raised in the UK as a Mormon, but he also has a channel on YouTube called Nemo the Mormon. And I think any of us who've been following that YouTube channel will know that it's a really important, thoughtful British voice. That is not alone because we've covered the Brit vengers and all the other really amazing British YouTube voices and podcast voices that are emerging now, including Peter Bleakley of Mormon Civil War and Priesthood Dispatches and the podcast I always forget 21st century saints. 21st century saints. I got to get that down. Anyway, so what we're going to do is we're going to be having Nemo come on as an occasional host or co host on Mormon Stories and represent kind of international non US Stories and we're going to pay him for that. So Nemo, I am just really honored and excited to announce this joint venture with you. And Nemo's not going away as well, but we're just honored to have you as a co host for today's episode. And thank you in the future.

Nemo [00:04:09] Thanks. Pleasure to be here.

John Dehlin [00:04:11] Anything you want to say? Just about that intro about our joint venture before we bring on our guest,

Nemo [00:04:16] I'm really excited to have the opportunity to raise the profile of European voices. If anyone's been watching my channel, they'll see that. I've tried interviewing people in the past and I realized that's not really what people come to my channel for. They come for the fact checking, the information, the short form stuff, and that's what I love doing that. But the opportunity to have some stories told that I feel need to be told from outside the United States is really exciting to have the Mormon Stories platform to do that through. So yeah, it's really exciting.

John Dehlin [00:04:48] All right. Well, again, I'm honored and I, I think you are brilliant, Douglas, as are all the other Brit vengers out there. But we're just, we're honored to have you on. So thank you.

Nemo [00:05:00] Cheers.

John Dehlin [00:05:01] All right, and so without any further ado, it's now time to bring on our guest for today. And I hope Ksenia is a decent pronunciation, but Ksenia Everton, welcome to Mormon Stories podcast. It's so great to have you.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:05:19] Thanks so much for having me today.

John Dehlin [00:05:22] I do want to begin and end with mentioning, I don't know if we want to Call it a charity or something else, but it is the helmets and armory vests for the European defenders. We're going to include a link to that in the description of this episode on YouTube and Facebook and also in the show notes. But Kazenya, just to begin, would you tell us a little bit about that organization and maybe how it might be a way that we can help for those of us who want to contribute positively to the cause?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:05:49] Yeah, it is Ukrainian American Coordination Council and the group, this organization is a nonprofit that works out of San Francisco and generally promote Ukrainian American relations. That they have never been involved in any kind of wartime procedure. But a need arose for people in Ukraine who are going in as volunteers to defend their home. People who are not in the military, but they're just going in in order to help out. There aren't enough armory vests or helmets for those people since Ukraine was never planning on increasing the numbers of their army in such a dramatic way. Unfortunately, there's a shortage of these items in Europe. So even if people have the money to buy their own vests and helmets, they weren't able to do that. Lots of us immigrants in the United States were worried about this and trying to help. And the problem is that it is illegal in normal circumstances to ship any kind of body armor and military grade helmets out of the United States and require special permission from the defense of department. So I have kind of hitched my wagon to other people who are working on solving the same question. And Ukrainian American Coordinating Council, this organization has worked with the embassy and the American government in order to get all the paperwork. So my job is to help fund the. The fund that will be purchasing and has already been purchasing these items and shipping them and working with a very credible organization in Ukraine that will distribute them to the units who need these items. So if you're able to donate, it is going to be a life saving donation. These items are expensive, but if we pull together we can really make a difference to preserve lives.

John Dehlin [00:08:13] Love it. Okay. And. And I'm of course going to be your sidekick Nemo for this episode. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna just let you just take lead on this if it's all right, as your first kind of co hosting endeavor. And then I'm gonna, I'm gonna run sidecar. Is that okay?

Nemo [00:08:34] Yeah, yeah. Just chuck me in the deep end. That's fine. That's absolutely fine. So Ksenia, we're in this together because we're both newbies at what we're about to go through. But I'm just going to start by asking you, how does your kind of Mormon story start? How did you encounter the church? Tell me about life growing up and what led you to our little corner of Christianity.

Ksenia's Early Life in Soviet-Era Ukraine

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:08:57] Yeah, it's kind of a meandering road to. To get there. So I was born in 1985, which was still the Soviet Union, and I was born in Western Ukraine, what is now the independent Western Ukraine. And my family ancestry, I've done a lot of the genealogy work, is from a very small radius of an area in Western Ukraine till at least the late 1700s, mid to late 1700s, in the early 90s, so 1991, when Soviet Union fell apart, we were absolutely thrilled because life under Soviet Union was not good. And unfortunately, when you dismantle a system, no matter how bad it is, it does increase chaos and instability. And before a new system can be built up, there is a very difficult phase, especially when not everybody's on the same page and not when not everybody in the leadership or government is honest. So 90s were a hard time. Although I only say that in retrospect. When I was a child, I had an absolutely idyllic childhood, especially after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Just really loved my childhood there. And I never felt like I was lacking anything. Part of it was that most people who were living in my town were kind of on equal grounds of who had what. And I never felt like I was the only kid without some video game system or whatever. People were relatively equal. Sure someone's family had a car and someone's didn't, but it didn't feel like a very big deal and I was not wanting of anything. But it was really hard for my parents, something that they were able to hide from us pretty well, especially in my dad's job, who was a university professor in our town. So there was a lot of chaos going on. And one year during the summer, a woman who lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and is a professor there, she came to visit the university where my dad was working. She made a habit of going to various countries, especially in Eastern Europe, and providing advice. I actually don't know specifically what all of her goals were, but she befriended my dad as he spoke English somewhat. I used to think he was amazing, but later I found out actually he was just conversational. And he ended up having an opportunity to go visit her and her university in Louisiana the following year. And when he came there, he had the goal of getting either a job that could pay him enough money to send back to us or get the whole family over to United States in order to make a little money and escape some of the issues that the serious issues that were going on in the country in the 90s before returning back. So in 1997, my older sister and mom joined my dad for a two year living abroad experience that is still ongoing. And when we moved, it was just, it was really hard. It is a. I would say that was a very difficult time. I was in seventh grade. It was a time when my parents were just trying to survive and relearn a system, a new system for everything in their life. And I think that's where kind of my Mormon stories start, is that I felt extremely not a part of anything because I was out of my home culture and my community, which is very isolating. But I was not a part of any other new community yet. And I was having a really hard time connecting with my parents who were just working days and nights to try to make ends meet. And when I was in high school, I met some Mormon friends who were nice and friendly and their parents kind of supported me. And I was extremely skeptical and thought the whole Mormon thing was just absurd. But it came to a point where I respected the people in my new kind of friend circle enough and their families, and there was enough good that I was seeing that made me in just interested in figuring out how can what I think is like this absurd set of ideas. How is it possible that it can also be the same people who respect.

Nemo [00:14:09] And that's. That's not a unfamiliar experience at all, that people who need companionship, need friendship, need community, find it in the LDS Church. One thing that the church is very good at is making people that walk through the doors feel loved. It's a tactic some people call love bombing. We are very good at making people feel welcome in our buildings. I just want to track you back to your childhood a little bit. I want to ask what it was like growing up in Ukraine in a little bit more detail for those in the audience, primarily Americans who really have a point of reference, what it's like to grow up there. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:14:52] Yeah. So in the 80s when Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union, it was really rough when I was little and don't have any memory of this, but I know from experiences of my parents and all the other adults at the time, there were extremely long lines and you know, I feel like that's something that is shown in media often when Soviet Union's portrayed for there were extremely Long lines for groceries, certain groceries. And it would vary. So one day there's a lot of butter, but there's nothing else. And another day there are a lot of sardines and sausages, but there aren't other things. And so there was a lot of line standing, a lot of bureaucracy, a lot of. You can't say this or that to these people or to those people because historically, historically, although I'm from western Ukraine, we're quite far from Russia, as far as you can get in Ukraine, there were policies of repopulation. So a lot of my people of my grandparents generation were taken out into gulags or a lot of them were imprisoned or executed for various political beliefs, religious beliefs, leaves for having too many cows. And then Russians took ethnic Russians from Russia and sent them to work in these cities. And they are always at the leadership roles. So it was a lot of like hush, hush, don't say things because our boss is Russian. And sometimes they were really good people, but it was still that they who they reported to.

Nemo [00:16:47] Party people. Yeah. Can you tell? Just explain for those who may not know in the audience what a gulag is.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:16:54] Yeah. So gulags are forced labor camps. They are also called concentration camps, if you take that term in its original form. So they were not extermination camps generally, but they were concentration camps in that mass amount of people, usually based on their ethnic background or political belief or were put in these Siberian makeshift towns like there was nothing there. But they built a bunch of barracks and made this town. And then people were forced to do hard labor there for years. So my someone I called my grandma and grandpa, although they're biologically aunt and uncle, great aunt and uncle, they were in Gulag for 16 years. They far north, they were forced to mostly go and without really any decent equipment, cut down the forests of the taiga and then the wood. So it's like slave labor because you are living in these places that would be huge rooms, dirt floors. My grandma would say, just like men and women all on the floor. There's just like a bucket in the corner. It's really, really, really cold there in the wintertime, frozen ground. And then in the morning you're woken up and are marched at Gunp the forest. And you're just given an ax or like a regular saw junkie equipment. And you have a specific amount of trees that you have to cut down and then carry to a certain place or load them onto certain trucks. And then you come home and you get fed and they yell at you. Or give some sort of a check. You know, they check you and your, your place of sleep, and then you go to sleep and get up and do the same thing. So a lot of people died in those and a lot of even more people like psychologically died in those places.

Nemo [00:18:58] You say you can. Sorry, carry on.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:19:02] It's a common story. Sometimes I share the story of my family and it feels like a very big deal when I tell it in the United States, but in Ukraine, it's so generic. Everybody has close family members who experience something like that.

Nemo [00:19:24] There we go. Sorry. So I was, I was going to ask. You said you could end up there for political reasons, religious reasons. Were they also a reason you could end up there? What was the religious climate like for you growing up in Ukraine?

Religion and Atheism Under Communism

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:19:35] Yeah, so when I was a child, it was easing up a little bit, but still communism, what was totally an atheist ideology. However, it is a little bit ironic that the Russian Orthodox Church was pushed on people and it is because it was fully under control of the government and was used as a organization that would spread and embed certain ideas into the populations. So in my grandma's villages, in her village, in the town where I grew up, all the other religious organizations were shut down. And a lot of the churches, church buildings were overtaken by the Russian Orthodox Church. And a lot of people did continue to attend because there was some continuity. And sometimes the previous priest from their Ukrainian Catholic a church was still the one who was saying the sermons in the church because he supposedly converted and they thought, hey, he still got our back. He just says he converted, but he's going to be a good leader. And people needed some continuity, spiritual. But the synagogues were all. There's this massive synagogue in my hometown and it was this furniture storage place in complete disarray. Even though it's an architectural, beautiful building, no proselyting was allowed anywhere. And yeah, so it was really an atheist ideological time. Unless you had joined or said you've joined the Russian Orthodox Church. A lot of people were meeting in their religious groups in secrecy, in people's homes. They called it like the underground religious underground. If you were discovered doing something like that, you were often sent to the Gulags.

Nemo [00:21:47] Right. And so were any of your family non Russian Orthodox or.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:21:52] None of my family is Russian Orthodox. They were all Ukrainian Catholics and none of them really converted to Russian Orthodoxy. Although I did find out that I was baptized in a church that was Ukrainian Catholic but had been converted to this Orthodox Church in that building. But my mom justified it because she said baptism is between, you know, the. The baby, the. The parents and God. And God knows what we mean when we're here and that we. We don't mean that we're wanting to join the Orthodo Russian Orthodox Church.

Nemo [00:22:33] Yeah, but you did have that religious sort of heritage in Ukrainian Catholicism.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:22:39] Yes.

Nemo [00:22:40] Okay, cool. John, any questions you want to ask before we move to.

John Dehlin [00:22:43] You're doing great. This is brilliant. I'm just on the edge of my seat. I love the questions you're asking, Nemo.

Nemo [00:22:50] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:22:50] So, yeah, this is great. I love hearing about gulags. I love hearing about the Eastern Orthodox Church. Just. You're bringing so much value that we Yankees could never deliver. Is that what you call us Yankees? What do you call us? Nemo?

Nemo [00:23:03] Oh, we have names for you.

John Dehlin [00:23:07] Anyway, this is great. And Ksenia. This is beautiful. Thank you so much for being willing to share.

Culture Shock of America and Mormonism

Nemo [00:23:12] So, Ksenia, I just want to ask about the culture shock you will have experienced entering America. And I think that gets ramped up with Mormonism, because Mormonism is a very American church. So for you, you got like, almost a double dose of. Of America, but just outside of Mormonism for a moment, what was that like for someone who grew up in Eastern Europe and the antithesis of America, essentially? What was it like then to. To kind of land in. In America and see the world differently for the first time?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:23:44] So I will say that from 1991, and I was 6 years old, there was a gradual change, even in my home town. So we would start seeing imported goods. There were bananas around that you could buy at the market. I remember that being a big deal. And over time. So by the time I left, there was really a lot of availability of goods, but opportunities as far as work and travel were extremely limited. And all the systems, school, medical system, we're still very much Soviet style. Not to mention that the whole relational connection between humans is different culturally. So when we moved in 97, it was funny because we. Our first three months we spent in Rapid City, South Dakota. So that was my initial introduction to America. And it was one of the first things I noticed was how spread out everything was. Not just the physical buildings and how in order to do anything, you have to, like, walk out of your house, get in the car, drive, park, get out of the car, and then get to place. That was different, but also how little other people seem to be involved in the, like, daily lives. Their neighbors, I mean, you just, like, run into your neighbors on the street all the time. You stop to chat, then you're coming up to your apartment building and someone's leaning out of the first floor window and they ask you something about school or your family or whatever. You're just constantly interacting with people. And moving here, that was a huge change. And of course, it was hard to tell because, well, maybe I'm just new and I don't know anybody, so I'm not interacting with people. But it really is a. Now that I've been here over 20 years, a significant difference. The food, I mean, it made me sick, not understanding, like, what's okay to say Americans are much more British than they are Ukrainian. The politeness, the hi, how are you? Is not actually someone wanting to know how you're doing. And I had to learn that hard way clothing and being in middle school, seventh grade, such a hard time. And I was also very friendly, outgoing kid in my hometown. Had lots of friends at school and was involved in, like, every activity that I could get my hands on. And here, all of a sudden it was. I had no friends and I was. I thought I was a relatively smart kid. And here I felt so dumb because when you're not able to express yourself adequately, there's no amount of convincing, no, I am smart. I just can't communicate. It will really make you feel better. So it was extremely isolating, and it was just overstimulation. Too many things, too few people interacting in meaningful ways, or what I deemed meaningful at the time, it was really difficult.

Nemo [00:27:11] Yeah, I can imagine. Because the areas in Ukraine, I believe they're called oblast. Is that correct? Yeah. So like, it's like a county or a state. But the way you're describing is that it's all very kind of condensed and everyone. Is that a remnant of communism, this idea of kind of everyone living in these apartments and flats and things in these kind of condensed areas, schools numbered, that sort of thing.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:27:35] I think it actually is left over from even before communism. So the area I'm from, I'm from close to Lviv, which is a western city right now, where all the embassies are moving to in order to keep operational. It was a really densely populated city when it was part of the Austrian Empire and before that when it was part of Poland. And the people who live in the villages, they are not living so condensed as far as physical proximity of their apartments, but they were intertwined, their lives were so intertwined in the villages that surrounded these towns. And I think definitely communism kind of stacked on top of that. When they started to build a kind of giant apartment blocks. Yeah, the culture was there, definitely established before that.

Nemo [00:28:37] Okay. And it's that community, I suppose, that you were looking for when you got to America. And that's almost what the Mormon Church offered you, that. Hi, neighbor, how are you? Let's have a chat on the street. I want to know the ins and outs of your life. Right, absolutely.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:28:53] And of course, at the time I did not know that I needed anything and I didn't know that I wanted that. It was all just something's missing. But I feel drawn to certain people who are acting in certain ways and who get together in certain.

Nemo [00:29:09] Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Makes total sense. And I think. I think we're about ready to start talking about how you got introduced to the church. We will keep talking about Ukraine.

John Dehlin [00:29:20] Can I ask one quick question? Yeah, just really quick. I think you may have already addressed this a bit, Ksenia, but like that I would have. I, growing up in the Cold War, I would have been given the impression that the Soviet Union was communist, that they hated religion, that they were atheist and anti God and the to. To equate communism with atheism and anti religiosity. And so I'm just wondering, and again, you guys have talked about this slightly, but like, would your upbringing both in Ukraine and even when you came here, maybe with. With a dad who was a professor or a grandpa who's a professor and probably some real secular slash educated, you know, parents and role models, was there an anti religion bias that you would have carried with you?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:30:14] That's an interesting question. I think the fact that the communists outlawed religion were so anti religion almost made people's religiosity more protected. Where we were in my family, everyone was religious. It was kind of a balance between culturally religious. It's a very different approach to religion than Mormonism, which is what I found out later. But this cultural religiosity was definitely embedded. And when the enemy tells you you're not allowed to think this or believe this, that made people in many ways want to do it even more, which, which is why there are all these underground churches and people doing things in secrecy. And just like when Christians came and tried to erase the pagan traditions, it ended up getting embedded in the way people were living in a new way. The religious identity of people was layered. So for example, my grandfather, who was also a professor, he came from a religious family and that was important to him. But in order to have his job, he had to officially join the communist and he wouldn't be able to have a place to live. So you Wouldn't have an apartment or a job or. I mean you would not have anything if you weren't willing to officially sign that you've joined the Communist Party. Which is one of my grandfather's, like hardest things to live with. Well, he has passed away since, but it was really hard for him to live with that. But he decided that he did that for the good of the family and he couldn't go to church and he couldn't publicly share his thoughts about God or religion. But in my family, I definitely felt that it was a really important part of our identity of being Ukrainian is being religious because being atheist is being communist.

Nemo [00:32:29] Total sense.

John Dehlin [00:32:30] And again, the religion is Eastern Orthodox. Is that how you would have described it? Or self identified?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:32:36] So the Orthodox Church has like so many different branches. It's really difficult to. But there's the Russian Orthodox, there's also a Ukrainian Orthodox Church, there's a Greek Orthodox, there's Romanian Orthodox and they're all Eastern churches as far as Eastern Christianity, but they have various official churches. So Ukrainian Orthodox Church was a thing before communism and it was also outlawed. Only the Russian Orthodox Church was allowed. But I grew up actually Ukrainian Catholic, which, that's a whole history thing that is not worth going. But it's a Catholic Church, but it has the traditions of Ukrainian Orthodoxy.

Nemo [00:33:15] It's striking me very much as what we saw in Britain where essentially Catholicism was a no no, because Henry VIII wanted to get divorced. So he creates the Church of England, which is essentially the Catholic Church by a new name. It has a lot of the same, A lot of the same people are still involved, a lot of the same traditions, a lot of the same ways of doing things. So people maintain their community hubs, their community centers, which is kind of what you were saying earlier, but under a new name and under state control. And I really just want to say something that has impressed me for the past week or so, however long this terrible situation has been going on, is the spirit of the Ukrainian people in not being told what to do or clearly when someone's trying to enforce something on them. We're seeing very clearly that that's not the case. So that, that, that touches me.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:34:04] That's. That's certainly been a long running characteristic, definitely.

Nemo [00:34:09] So I can imagine these underground meetings and these people getting together in churches and saying, yeah, no, we're still going to get together. We're not being told what to do. That's right, absolutely. I can see it. Okay, are we ready? Are we ready for your, your introduction to Mormonism? How did you hear the word?

First Encounters with the Mormon Community

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:34:29] So this is not something I'm proud of but as a 15 year old I had this boyfriend who later turns out was a Mormon and his family was just. And is I still. I'm in touch with them. They're just wonderful people and something like I was a part of a cross country. There's a running thing or track and my parents often did not come to support me during any races because they were overwhelmed with trying to make ends meet and figure out how to Every little thing like doctors, everything's just hard to figure out. So although it's been a couple of years, two, three years since we had moved, it was still a tough going. Also a lot of money my parents were making was being sent back to support their parents and the extended family there. So they just weren't super involved and we were not my parents and I were not on good terms teenager I felt like they didn't understand my struggles trying to live in these two different cultures at the same time. And they didn't and I didn't understand their struggles and we didn't connect. So when I was not only dating this. This guy but also a lot of the friends that I had were LDS because this was outside of Portland, Oregon. We have more LDS people here than in a lot of other parts of United States. And like these people's friends, these. Sorry these friends parents, they came to support me at various races and they'd invite me for dinner and just were really friendly. And this is when I tried to reconcile this. Well this is a weird religion with but these are really nice people and they really care about their families and their kids. Look how involved they are. And that's just what I was craving so badly. And I started going to try to answer some of my questions. You know, you go to the source. I started going to release time seminary classes and the teacher there was also a convert who went through a similar Mormons are strange and weird in high school and then ended up becoming a member himself and then a seminary teacher. He's just a really charismatic, friendly guy. And that's when I first started to feel going into these seminary classes where I really started to feel like I was building this community and I had these friends and these adults who cared about me. Whereas in Ukraine I had many aunts and uncles and neighbors and teachers who like really knew me and cared about me and even knew my family. Here I was after feeling invisible and just so trying to fit in such a hard way here people were interested in me and including me in things. And I mean, a lot of them were really just very kind people that were helping me out as this teenager. But it took me a very long time because I was not one to just like, oh, this is a fun community. I'm gonna join. I had to really believe the concepts and the doctrine. So I really studied and read and talk to anyone who would listen, asking them all kinds of questions about deep doctrine and all of the things. That was a long process.

Nemo [00:38:23] Okay, can I ask you a question about your interaction with this, what's clearly a very Americanized style of community, because you're looking for a new community. And what you're describing to me sounds like you're getting some of that interest that other people had in your life, but did in retrospect, because you may not have noticed it at the time, but asking you to kind of look back, did you notice that it felt different? Was it. Was it different to what you'd experienced?

John Dehlin [00:38:50] And if I can. And if I can append on a question to Nemos, I think you can answer them both. There's a lot of commenters that are maybe a little bit cynical invoking the term love bombing, which is a term we've used to. Just like Luna, Lindsay Corbden talked about how high demand religions or cults sometimes show this excess of love when they're trying to bring someone into the faith that then may die off or certainly disappears if you ever decide to exit. And on the one hand, we don't want to say that Mormons can't genuinely love people or aren't just genuinely kind, but then we also know that this is a tactic and that sometimes investigators do experience that initial swarm of love and affection, but then later it kind of tapers away. So I don't mean that compile add on to a compound question, but I also know that you can probably address both in your answer.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:39:46] Yeah, it's a really good point that you both are making and that I have to look at it in retrospect. At the time I had, of course, as probably most people who are investigating these organizations, you have no clue what someone else that is investigating was treated like or what their experience was like. So it certainly just felt you just take the feeling and you take how people are talking to you and treating you at complete face value without any context. So all there was this hole in me that in retrospect, I know needed to be filled and it was getting filled and it was a little bit on crack because I wanted to attend all the Things and meet all the people and ask all of my questions all the time. And I had no perspective whatsoever about how genuine it was or not A lot of. I will say, out of that first group of my high school friends and the boyfriend, who's of course a friend too, out of their parents, I'm still in touch with most of their parents who, during this conflict, you know, several have checked in on me or have contributed to this fundraiser. So I feel that many. There was many genuine connections that were made, but certainly the whole flow of feeling of like, these are my people, this is the place, was just in the fog, unable to make that call. So if I look back at it now, it was very different than the connections I made and the community feel in Ukraine, because. This was certainly conditional on you go to this church at this time, or you attend these classes, or you dress a certain way and proclaim certain truths to be true or certain concepts to be true, and that what's. What unites you. When I was growing up, what unites you was just like the super vagueness

John Dehlin [00:42:08] of,

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:42:11] like, we're compatriots or something. We are Ukrainian neighbor. It was a very organic. Where you just grew up around these people, and your parents grew up around their parents and grandparents. And everybody either knows each other or you kind of feel like you know each other, because we've all lived such a similar experience. And there was a lot of traumatic similar experience that really brings people together. And here it was a kind of a nitpicking of different individuals that came together for a different reason and in a different way. And the timeline of it is so much shorter than the generational community that's built that it really is just a very different feeling. But on the surface, it certainly felt the same, or at least it felt similar, to be very important to me.

Nemo [00:43:00] Okay. And, you know, the Mormon Church is so obsessed with genealogy. They love it so much that it. And that's so embedded in me that just to hear you talk about these long generations of families bringing a smile to my face, you know, I, on a personal note, now live in Oxfordshire, in Oxford, where my family owns a farm that they've owned since the 1400s. Right. So actually, it's like a homecoming. And. And I think these things matter. And I find it interesting that when you left that place, that place of such long lineages, which, again, I think is a uniquely European thing, we can have these long lineages attached to one place, that you then found what felt the same, something that was developed over all those Years, you found something else. The same with complete strangers. And I think that does show a testament to the level of love that members of the church are willing to show and the good heartedness of members of the church that they are willing to welcome strangers. Like John said, there's been a lot of cynicism and I think sometimes it is rightly called for. But also we have to remember it's a behavior that we are taught as members of the church to be that welcoming, to be that engaged in making others feel welcome in our community. So even though it has its negative consequences, it's great that it is able to almost resemble a level of deep community over hundreds of years.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:44:29] Yeah, sorry, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:44:30] Beautiful. Beautiful.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:44:32] And a lot of, a lot of Mormons feel a deep connection to their Mormon cultural heritage in a similar way that I do to my Ukrainian cultural heritage. There are very important distinctions between the two, but there are parallels that sometimes even when people leave the Mormon church, they feel that that's still their cultural heritage. They're still a Mormon, even if they're not religious. And I think a lot of, you know, ethnic Jews who are non religious can also relate to this. But my, my Ukrainianness, it was like that was the major thing. The religion part of it was like a component of the Ukrainian thing. It was an important component because a lot of times people used it as the, the hope in withstanding the invasions and the changes of leadership is if you have this hope in this God who cares about you and who will eventually let you have your opportunity to rule your own people and have your own sovereign nation, it's embedded into that culture. But it's the Ukrainianness first and all the experiences that we as people had together over centuries and the religion is just a part of it. Whereas in the Mormon cultural concept it is the religion first and above all. And then there are other components of culture that are also there. You know, the songs that are taken from some English hymns and then rewritten and then it becomes the Mormon song. And even the dress, how you dress and how people talk, that all contributes to that Mormon culture. And you know, how women work, you know, aren't encouraged to work all of the aspects of life, it's because of the religion. In Ukraine, it's a totally opposite thing. The religion kind of fills in to the culture. And in fact, I remember when I was trying to, I was arguing with my parents during this period about various religious things. One of the like jabs I stuck in them was like, you don't even know what you believe in. You say that your Catholic Ukrainian church is so important, but you don't even know the doctrine. And I would say, like, well, do you know what the catechism that you know, the book of the Catholic doctrine, like, what it even says about the sacrament? Do you know that it says that they believe it's the literal blood body and blood of Jesus Christ? And my mom be like, whatever, that's not even relevant. Who cares? So to me, I felt, well, all these Mormons, they know like everything about what they actually believe in. My mom or dad just have these like general, vague ideas about a God and the Trinity and Mary, mother of God, very important, and some saints. And then it's part of this cultural cloud where everything melts way together. It's hard to distinguish. You don't even know your doctrine. But these people, they know their doctrine. So that means they are better at being religious than you are. My parents were extremely resistant to me having anything to do with the Mormons because they really felt like it is me rejecting my heritage. And. And they thought, oh my gosh, do we need to count how many people were murdered or in the Gulags for how many years and what people suffered in the collective farms and all of that to preserve your culture? And you're throwing it all away for this? I didn't see it like that, but they did and I can see it now.

Nemo [00:48:40] And you went. You went full Mormon on them by the sounds of it. Like, well, other religions don't practice their religion properly. You don't even know your religion because Mormons get this almost kick out of. Well, we have everything laid out for us and we all know exactly how it's meant to be done. It's all uniformly out in a row. So, yeah, that you picked up on that very quickly and I love it.

John Dehlin [00:49:03] You just taught me something about myself that I didn't even know. I was absolutely Mormon first and American second and Nemo. I'm curious, were you Mormon first and British second or were you British first and Mormon second?

Nemo [00:49:15] Always British first.

John Dehlin [00:49:16] Yeah, that's not true for me. I was Mormon first and American second. Anyway, thank you for teaching me a little bit more about myself, Ksenia.

Confronting Her Parents About the Church

Nemo [00:49:24] And I want to ask you about confronting your parents, actually, because I was going to ask. You mentioned in your. In notes that we have that you kindly sent us, that you attended seminary in secret and you didn't retell your parents. And you've now mentioned that obviously there were some arguments and some difficulties. I'd be interested to know did you preempt that? Did you think there would be problems and is that why you didn't then tell them or why, if not, why did you not tell them initially?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:49:52] Yeah, so I did think there would be problems. This is probably true for a lot of immigrants from all kinds of other cultural backgrounds. Where your parents bring you place, you had no choice in the fact in the matter. Maybe you were not even trying to escape a terrible place because to you your childhood was wonderful, wonderful. And a place where you had this community and were loved. They bring you there. Here you're in America now, but you cannot be American in any way and you need to reject all of the American things and hold on to all of these things, pieces of the broken up bits of your culture of origin. And it was so frustrating. But it was in every aspect of my home life as far as just like clothing and sometimes, you know, there were certain things that were invented in that time and I would just start using the American word for it because I didn't know the Ukrainian word for it. And my parents would get frustrated and you know, roll her eyes or correct me. They gave up on that pretty quick because it was just so difficult. And during that time and the age that I was once, the American ness kind of took, it just like snowballed really, really quickly where I started thinking in English and talking, even when I talked to my parents in Ukrainian, kind of in an English manner of speech and my behavior. And I could tell, I knew that anything that is even remotely as American as the Mormon Church, that they would not be thrilled. But I will say I've always tried to be really honest with them the best I could. I did kind of float the idea. So I said like, oh, it's cool. There's this class that's like learning religions and different scriptural things and I was thinking about like sitting in and joining it and my parents were like, what? And it was this vague thing and I left it and then thought, well, I'll ask for, for forgiveness rather than like real permission. But they did find out. I can't remember how now, but they did find out that it was just like this Mormon thing, not some world religion class. And they were really, really.

Nemo [00:52:22] You just gave them milk before meat, like that's all you did, right? That's. I tried Mormon Reasoning 101. If you don't want to tell something about something, it's because they're not ready to hear it.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:52:32] That's right. That's right. It didn't help me because they're like, we didn't. You lied to us about this. Like, well, withheld some truth. That's just not how they start.

John Dehlin [00:52:44] I also love it that Mormon kids rebel against Mormonism and non Mormon kids rebel by joining Mormonism.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:52:51] Yes. And the Mormon teach. The seminary teacher ended up having a conversation with my dad, who called him and said, look, this is a minor, a child, and we, the parents who are in charge of this child are not okay with her going to you. And the seminary teacher was very understanding. He said, I really support you and I wouldn't want my kids going places. But he also said, like, but did you know your kid is so great because they're exploring this wonderful thing that's gonna help her in her life. And that's when the seminary teacher promised my dad that he wasn't gonna let me come anymore. But after a little while, he did. It just wasn't a daily thing. I just could stop by and we'd chat and I'd sit in on one class instead of being there for like two classes.

Nemo [00:53:47] Mormons are so good at boundaries. We just was so good at it.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:53:52] Yeah. I will say that I didn't stick to the rules very well either, but you know, teenagers, I guess.

Nemo [00:54:00] Yeah.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:54:01] But I graduated high school before I turned 18, so I was still a child this. This whole time. And the boyfriend and I broke up. I was still friends with many of these Mormon kids. And by that point, I was in this place. I mean, I went to sometimes. I was in seminary for multiple classes per day. So by this point, I had this. You now know the truth, and if you don't do the right thing, you will be possibly damned or have internal consequences. You back, you know, a year ago or two years ago, you would have been okay because you just didn't know. But now you're really responsible and you have to make the right decision. And I was completely consumed by that.

Nemo [00:54:51] Okay. Some of the rebelliousness that you were talking about there, you know, there's that rebellious change. Did that actually push you into the church? We're kind of getting into almost. Your conversion now was part of it, like, well, I'm going to show mum and dad. I'm going to join this.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:55:05] That's right. Yeah. You just do the opposite of your home culture or what your parents ask you to do.

Nemo [00:55:10] Absolutely.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:55:13] I didn't smoke or drink or party, but I joined the Mormons. Oh, that just sounds. I didn't join quite yet. I didn't join quite yet, but I did, you know, didn't join it officially, but I was definitely around as a rebellion. I didn't see it as that. My parents were saying, you're just doing this because you want to separateness from us. But there's no part of my brain that thought that was the truth. Yeah.

Nemo [00:55:42] And I suppose as a kid in a new country, you almost feel like you need to kind of get involved, get along, because this is your new home now. And I don't think anywhere is quite like America for saying, well, look, this place is full of people that left their home and are now here, and they all form this culture. Right. It's a real big melting pot, as far as I understand it. Maybe John can speak to that a bit better than I can, but you're in this environment that essentially says, oh, well, my grandparents came here from part of Europe or my great grandparents came here or there. So you're almost primed for it in America to want to then become American and leave your old culture behind and join in.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:56:24] Absolutely. Because there seemed like there were benefits of doing that. It was just going to be easier. And I was tired of things being hard. So, yeah, I was all in. But there was no real conscious rejection of my culture. I was still, at any opportunity I could, I would tell people that I'm Ukrainian. At this time in US Pretty much, no child had ever heard of that word or had no clue where that was. So any project and, you know, history classes, I could. I would pick Ukraine as the topic. I would tell Ukraine is not the same as Russia, and Ukrainians have their own language that is different than Russian and that I speak Ukrainian and my family's Ukrainian. I was very big proponent of that. So I felt when my parents were convinced that I was rejecting my culture, I felt like, you just don't know me at all, do you? Because I am the biggest advocate for Ukraine. And the place where we moved had no Ukrainians. There were no other Ukrainians in the town, as far as I know. Certainly not in my school. Schools anywhere other than my sister.

Nemo [00:57:33] So you didn't get that experience where in some places you get people from a certain area when they move to a country, you get kind of a congregation. Chinatowns are a great example. Right. And things like that. So you didn't have any of that to fall back on. You didn't have, like, little Ukraine to kind of.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:57:49] That's right. And. And when we were. I had the English as second language class. Most of the kids were Mexicans, Central American origin, and they had their own group. They hung out and they spoke Spanish to each other. It did help me learn English really fast, and I think it catapulted me into this. I am all in. Because I had no other group or connections that were available. If you drove. We did drive to a. It actually wasn't a Ukrainian Catholic church, but it was a. A Catholic church of Eastern European immigrants. We drove like 40 minutes in the morning on Sundays to go there, but it was very small. There weren't a lot of kids. I don't know if there were kids my age, maybe a couple kids that came occasionally. And it was impossible to keep connected to them because we'd see them once a week. So, yeah, there was no community. And I jumped into this one. Just fall in.

Nemo [00:58:52] Yeah. Although you did mention that you have mental reservations, you had intellectual reservations, and you want. You said you really wanted to understand the doctrine. Can you talk me through the process of how you went about really trying to understand Mormonism kind of from an intellectual perspective?

Reading the Book of Mormon and Conversion

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [00:59:10] Yeah. So the first big project was you read the Book of Mormon and at the end you pray and. And you ask if it's true. And from the very beginning, like first Nephi, I was like, whoa. This does not mesh with any of my understanding of history or Old Testament stories or just so many things that were just not making sense. But the best I could, I had a really open mind because I wanted this. I really kind of wanted this to work. So when I got to the end, all of my friends were like, how far are you? Like, have you made it through this? Have you made it to this? Have you done the. I can't remember what it's even called now, the prayer where you ask. And I was so 100% convinced that because I was going through a hard time in order to do this, and because I was, like, reading every word and really thinking about it and always praying about it, and because I was so full of faith that this was going to work, that when I prayed, I was 100% convinced that I would have a. Out of this body, spiritual experience. And when I prayed and there was nothing, it was kind of a shock. But the first thing that my friend said was, well, it's because you're not doing these other things.

Nemo [01:00:39] So there was always something that was almost your fault, your shortcoming as to why the expected answer didn't come. Was that your experience?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:00:47] Yeah. And I would not say that my friends came out and said, well, you must not be holy enough. But it was always something like, well, you don't go to church because I Did not go to the LDS church because you don't go to church or because you just need more time to show your devotion more. And I continue to read the ensign and all the talks and I remember this boyfriend and I had this like multi day long discussion where we'd come back to the whole we become God concept. And I remember him thinking, telling me like, I haven't really thought about this. And we would both be digging for answers and reading talks and sending each other printouts of the general authorities thoughts about this concept. And I'd go through these periods of really hyper focusing on one part of the doctrine as much as I could. And at this time my parents were buying books like one of them was called the Kingdom of the Cult and.

John Dehlin [01:01:51] Right.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:01:52] Yeah. And it had like a chapter on Mormonism.

Nemo [01:01:55] Okay.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:01:56] And I completely rejected it. I did not, I genuinely did not even crack those open. I don't think. I certainly didn't read them with any kind of an open mind. And my parents would try to sit me down and say, well, Joseph Smith was a fortune seeker and he was not honest. And I would just tell him, you don't know what you're talking about. Because when I asked my teenager friends who of course knew everything, they were like, that is not even true. That is just something people totally make up to because they're working against God.

Nemo [01:02:32] And so I have to ask you, do you think, because essentially you said that your, your community around you, as far as I understand it consists of your parents at home and your Mormon friends outside of the house. Do you think you had.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:02:45] I had a few friends who weren't Mormon, but they all hung out with the mostly Mormon kids too.

Nemo [01:02:49] Right. So do you think if it had been someone other than your parents that presented you with these books, you might have taken it more seriously? You might have considered the evidence or were you. Was there so much sunk cost into Mormonism at this point that you were already kind of at that point where you wanted it to be true? And you were.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:03:06] That's a really great question. And I am kind of curious why my non Mormon friends didn't bring up any. They probably just didn't know resources were harder. I mean this is like late 90s early, this is early 2000s. Internet's there, but we're still figuring it out. I think that yeah, if someone else would have brought it up, I certainly would have been at least a little bit more open minded. But it's also true that I really wanted this to make sense, but I was not willing to say, I'll figure this out later. I'm just going to join and then see how it goes. No, I need it to be at a certain level of conviction before I would make that step.

Nemo [01:03:56] Yeah. And so you. You continued to try and get to that level of conviction. What ultimately brought you to that?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:04:04] So I decided I need to move away from all of my Mormon friends and from my parents. So I moved to the big island of Hawaii in the middle of the Pacific for my freshman year of university.

Nemo [01:04:19] Which university?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:04:22] University of Hawaii has a campus on this island, and I attended there. And on Sunday morning, I. For Sunday morning that I was there, I took a walk, and after like 10 minutes, I ran into the Mormon Church and I thought that May. That was a sign. Like, I was like, oh, my gosh. And then I walked. I was really nervous. And I walked to the, like, courtyard area that they had, and this man came out and was like, hello, super friendly Hawaiian man. And he. I told him that I had just moved there, that I was just interested in maybe learning more. And he said, yeah, you're in the right place. And like, Mormons are nice. Hawaiian Mormons, like, exponentially, sir.

Nemo [01:05:12] Polynesians, man.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:05:13] Oh, it was unbelievable. They also were not so nitpicky about, like, the. The doctrine, like, the religiosity of it. They also were kind of more loosey goosey with things, and it was just another opportunity to have a community. I later found out that the. Where I was living, specifically this housing for university, was super party, party hard. So there were all these kids getting drunk and high and police coming, and yet here I had this community that wasn't doing that. And they were stable and nice, and not that the drunks weren't nice, they were nice too, but these people were stable and kind of where I saw myself connecting. And then I met the sister missionaries who were also really cool girls, and we really connected. And that's when I started for the first time, really meeting with the missionaries.

Meeting Missionaries and Path to Baptism

Nemo [01:06:12] Okay, so you hadn't met with missionaries up until this point and it took you moving to Hawaii. Was the cultural center open at that point, the Polynesian Center?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:06:19] It was, but it was on a different island, so I never.

Nemo [01:06:22] Okay.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:06:22] I never made it there.

Nemo [01:06:24] Okay, so which island were you on? Sorry.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:06:26] It's called the Big island of Hawaii.

Nemo [01:06:28] Okay, all right. Okay.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:06:29] So that is Hawaii is because this island was named Hawaii, Hawaii.

Nemo [01:06:33] And then the outlying islands are all part of it, but they've got different names like Oahu and things like that. Right.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:06:38] That's Right, Cool.

Nemo [01:06:39] Okay. Friend of mine went on a mission to Hawaii, so I know a little bit about it.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:06:44] Yeah, that's a great. And also a hard place to be on a mission. Yeah.

Nemo [01:06:47] Imagine being on a mission, you're not allowed to go swim and then you're there in a tropical paradise.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:06:53] Tough. Yes.

Nemo [01:06:54] So difficult. So you ran into the missionaries, was it sisters? Elders?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:06:58] Sisters. At first.

Nemo [01:06:59] Yeah, yeah, sisters. Okay. What was that like meeting these people who are so hyper focused essentially on ensuring that you become a member of the church?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:07:10] They really were not overbearing, which is to their credit. And we became really good friends. I also had an accident, like I fell and had this concussion and they came when I didn't have anybody that was really helpful. Although I do remember they tried to get someone there to give me a blessing and like could not get anybody over there, which I now look back at and like, why did I take that as a sign? I took all these other things as a sign. I did dismiss that as everybody's busy. But after it got to the point where my roommate got baptized in November of that school year because they're coming and I still wasn't ready. I was still learning because I needed like, I needed to intellectually be convinced that Joseph Smith and Book of Mormon that there's some legitimacy to it. But it got to the point where I was so neither here nor there. Oh. And I was. They asked me to be the youth Sunday school teacher as a non baptized skeptic, but did I? Maybe they were just really clever in that this would be a way I would learn really well.

Nemo [01:08:27] Oh yeah.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:08:28] Which did help. Yeah. But it got to the point where I was so tired of being neither here nor there. And the message that I got from the voices around me was, well, at this point God just needs to see you take the leap of faith, even though you don't understand all of these things and they don't make sense. And that leap is baptism.

Nemo [01:08:49] Right.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:08:51] So I came to back home for Christmas break and I told my parents I was going to get baptized and my friends and their parents were organizing the whole thing and that is when things really blew up with my parents and they said, no way you are.

Nemo [01:09:05] Do tell.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:09:07] So there was just like multi hour shouting and arguing. And then when the day came, this was for many days, which was just horrible to be at your home where you're supposed to be taking a nice break from college. And that wasn't it. It was just eggshells and mad and arguments. When the day came that I was getting baptized. I was in my room getting ready and my mom locked the door, barricaded it from the other side and she says, not going over my dead body. You are not doing this. She's like, you do not have all of your. I can't remember what she said, but like your brain is underdeveloped. You do not know what you're doing. You're gonna regret this. I'm not letting you do this. And she was yelling and I thought she's lost it, like she's crazy. So I. This is cell phones or flip phones are now a thing. And I called the people who were all waiting at the church with all everything set up and said I this I'm stuck. I'll give it a. The bishop of this ward where I was living, I didn't really know him, but except for this plan for the baptism, he did say, look, this is not the right way to get baptized. We need to cancel this and you should like approach it at another time. So eventually I got out of my room and went and met up for the baptism after party, which like with the treats and everything at one of my friend's parents house without the baptism happening. But. And my parents cut me off financially, which I totally think is reasonable that you're not, you are not living like you're in their opinion, like you're a part of this family and we're not going to financially support you through college. So I had like a week to scramble to all I would say I think they already did pay tuition for next semester. So like my apartment and living expenses and books and I got to back to Hawaii and it was a great opportunity for me to like figure out how to sustain myself. I got jobs and made it work. And when I came home for the summer, I had the same conversation with my parents and I think they've had some time. They basically said, we're too tired. You, you do what you do. We love you. We don't support this, but we love you and it's your life. They were still upset, but it was a much different scale of upset. So I got baptized that summer at my home ward, which I didn't know those people, but all of the friends from school, many of them were there. It was this big wow, you're so amazing because there you had no support at home and all the challenges, and yet you did this. And God is going to reward. So I knew that as soon as I get up from that water, I knew it, everything will just fall into place and it didn't. There was no change.

Nemo [01:12:16] Mormons love adversity. We lap it up. The idea that because something was difficult, therefore it is the right thing to do is like Mormonism 101. So I'm sure there were people around you encouraging that narrative, saying, you've gone through all these trials and it will be worth it. What do you think caused your parents change your mind, Nemo?

Family Opposition and Parental Concerns

John Dehlin [01:12:36] Can I just. Can I? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm, I'm just trying to like be fair and objective about all the parties involved. So from your perspective, you're an adult and this some, this is meaningful to you and this is something you're interested in, and that's a valid perspective. From the church's perspective, they believe this is true and they believe it's going to be helpful for you. And so they're like you said, Nemo, they're kind of viewing your parental objections as the work of the adversary of Satan trying to defeat, you know, the cause of righteousness and what's good for you. But your parents, their perspective is my occult is stealing or a high demand religion is stealing my daughter away. We raised her better than this and they're, they're stealing our daughter. And all perspectives are probably valid. You know, it's really hard.

Nemo [01:13:31] What caused your parents to change from that perspective there?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:13:35] My mom kind of didn't want to engage with me. She was just too tired of life and trying to steer me. But something my dad, she was the one who was more upset. My dad said, look, all these things you've ever wanted to do and you've been really independent and you go for, for it. You've never done something stupid thoughtlessly. So I trust you. And that was a big point of us and our like, new relationship. Me and my parents entering a new relationship where, you know, it may have been the fact that they cut me off financially and I did not complain one word about it. And I still called in to like check in with my parents throughout that semester. And I was just taking responsibility. Like, if you want to live completely in your own way, then you got to take responsibility for all those choices. And maybe my parents saw that I was kind of trying to do that and they were willing to let me live my life in the way that that was totally my own path. I, I don't know the answer to that. They were either just really tired of it or they decided like, well, who are we to know what's the best thing for this adult person?

Nemo [01:14:59] So we have your parents reaction. Do we have the reaction of any other members of your family.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:15:05] My grandfather, the one who was the professor, he told my parents. They did not tell me that. They did say he was disappointed. But it was after he had died that we got his journals. I think the last thing he ever wrote about me. And he wrote about, you know, when he's really quite older, he would write about what's going on with all the family members. The last thing he wrote about me was that I was the biggest possible disappointment in his life because of this conversion and this rejection of my heritage. And that was tough. That was painful to hear. That was not. That was not unexpected, I guess, but it still really stung. There was nobody who was nobody in my extended family who was supportive of it in any way.

Nemo [01:16:06] That's tricky. And that often can push you further into the church. It can push you further into the arms of those who are accepting you. Did it create any distance between you and your extended family? Did you find that you did withdraw?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:16:21] Absolutely. I withdrew almost entirely. And my relationship with my grandparents, who I was close with growing up, was just very surface level. I would call in, hi, how are you? They would give me a few very surface level updates, and I would give them mine, and that was it. So I would say it began this almost complete withdrawal from my Ukrainian friends and family members and from my culture in general. And now that I was completely in, I should say, I transferred to BYU in Provo.

Nemo [01:17:04] That'll do it.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:17:05] Yeah. And I began dating, who is now my husband, who was on a periphery of all these Mormon friends from high school, not immediately involved, but was part of that bigger group. And I just jumped completely in. We talked about getting married, and I was excited that he was part of this big family who seemed really close and really tight. And I was going to be a part of that. And I was going to have it. I was going to have all the things that I needed.

Nemo [01:17:40] Yeah,

John Dehlin [01:17:43] I just being mindful of this. Like, on the one hand, of course, members of the LDS Church and missionaries are very sincere when they do their missionary work. On the other hand, I do think this is some feedback to Latter Day Saints or Mormons that a Mormon should understand. A Latter Day Saints should understand that having their own children leave Mormonism or leave the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints is one of the most traumatic and upsetting things that could ever happen. And so since Mormons or Latter Day Saints understand that, I wonder if we need to do a better job as Mormons or as Mormon missionaries or if The Mormon Church or the LDS Church. Church needs to be more thoughtful about baptizing converts into the church and what trauma and family division that these conversions might happen to make. Because as a Mormon missionary, I'm just telling you there was no pause, there was no concern. It was get him in the waters of baptism. This is God's righteous cause. And if it, if it tears the family apart, that's on the non Mormons, that's on the non believing family and friends. Because God's, you know, the standard of truth has been erected and no unhallowed hand shall stop the work from progressing. But I think, I think maybe the 21st century latter day Saints church needs to be more careful about dividing families. Is that maybe, maybe Mormon's going to laugh at that suggestion, but it feels fair and ethical to at least raise that question.

Nemo [01:19:25] Although we think it comes from our perspective that we're going to look after them. Right, Sorry, carry on.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:19:32] Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And now that my husband has left the LDS Church as the only person in his family, in his big tight Mormon family, it has been very hard on his parents and siblings. It is a traumatic experience for everybody. And I don't, I do not. The reason, one of the reasons in my story that it took us a really long time to really leave the church is because I love these people and I did not want to do that to them. Not that I was doing it, but of course they felt like I was a part of the reason why their son was leaving their everything. It's their church and culture and religion, all of those things. It is very difficult and I hope that there is some thought that goes into the kind of bilateral perspective on this.

Nemo [01:20:31] I think that's a great point. And it's almost like we're seeing a faith crisis in reverse. Your family cuts you off because you're doing something that they don't agree with. And it is exactly the same as is when your husband, essentially it's the threat your husband would live under when he's deciding about leaving the church. Is am I going to essentially go through what Ksenia went through by having my family cut me off? And I suppose if you want to talk to how his family reacted, that's fine, but if you don't, it's also okay.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:21:01] Yeah, his, his family was very upset and there was a period of time that they were sending, you know, church talks and articles to try to change our minds in general. They probably took it the best anyone really could. We still have a, It's a little bit. They're awkward points, but we have a simulation.

John Dehlin [01:21:26] I don't mean to. I apologize for cutting you off. Let's continue with your story in the chronology, and maybe we'll end with how his family has treated you, et cetera. Is that okay? Because I. Yeah, okay. Okay, Nemo, I don't mean to step on your toes there. I just.

Nemo [01:21:42] No, no, no, no, please.

John Dehlin [01:21:43] Maybe we can. Maybe we can end with that, because I. I don't want to get lost in the actual timeline of. Of. Of the story where we are in the story. Is that okay?

Dating, Marriage, and Life at BYU

Nemo [01:21:54] Tell us about byu. Tell us about dating your husband and what that was like to finally be able to kind of go all into Mormonism.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:22:01] Yeah. BYU was. I did school extremely fast. And one thing I noticed. So my boyfriend then, he was still living in Portland, and it was this long distance thing. And what I noticed is that nobody wanted to be friends with me because I was not dating people there. So the boys didn't want to be friends with me because I wasn't dateable, because I had a boyfriend at home. And the girls, they were friendly, but it's all about the double dates and having these dating experiences. So I really focused on school. I got my patriarchal blessing. I really dug my heels in to do all the religious study as well. I was a biology major, so science was taking over my life, and I did really love that. And I thought it was a good experience. I made not. I did not make a lot of meaningful connections at byu. I don't like even if I drive through there. We recently went backpacking in southern Utah and drove through Provo. I have no really warm feelings toward it because once, for various reasons, but once my husband and I decided that we wanted to get married, I was telling my parents, and of course they were really upset about it because he was not Ukrainian, he was not Catholic, and he was Mormon. And the whole wedding, I was trying to explain to them the whole wedding procedure, and they were trying to compromise with me, like, can we do a wedding at our church first and then you do this wedding or you can do it second, or any other Ukrainian tradition that we could tie in there. And when I would bring it to my BYU bishops, it was really, no, you can't do that. It is. You have to be all in. And this is the procedure. So anything they bring up, I would reject. And this was very upsetting to them. So my wedding, because I wasn't particularly close to my husband's family yet, my wedding was just Planned kind of by me, a long distance with no money and no support. And on the wedding, I graduated on Friday and on Tuesday I was back in Portland and we were getting married on a Tuesday. Yes. And my family had left town for that weekend and for that day. Nobody was around. A lot of my non LDS friends were out of town or I had kind of lost connection with them. Some of my LDS friends were on missions, so they weren't there. It was a very depressing wedding for me because I had nobody who were like my people there at all.

Nemo [01:24:53] And can you tell me about some of the Ukrainian traditions that you essentially missed out on? Can you tell us about some of the things that your parents were suggesting that would be traditional?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:25:02] So depends where you are. In Ukraine, there's some different traditions, but one that in retrospect I think I kind of missed the most is there is. So embroidery is a big deal in Ukraine. And moms embroider these. They're like a runner that have different elements with different symbols and colors depending on the kind of wishes they want to wish their daughter who is about to get married. They hand embroider these runners, they gift them to the daughter. And then during the church wedding, the bride and the groom, they kneel on this piece of embroidery. There's a prayer and there's a whole church ceremony for the wedding that you hold a candle together, you get crowned with these crowns sometimes made of flowers, and you do these circles around the, the altar together as husband and wife. And the whole church congregation is there. It's really like a church liturgy, the whole church thing, but it has a special wedding element tied all into it in various parts. And after the wedding, there is like a massive two day, two night party with live music and a huge dance floor and tons of food and drinks and all of your extended family and neighborhood and friends. And I will say that now, 2022, the weddings have been toned down in many ways in Ukraine. But when my older cousins got married and I was a kid, this is what Ukrainian wedding was like to me. And here what ended up happening was we had this sealing ceremony.

Nemo [01:26:52] Yeah, talk us through that.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:26:54] And of course, I had the endowment ceremony before that. And there was another point where I was really convinced that because I was overcoming all these difficulties with my family and that it was a hard thing for me and that God knew it, that he would give me a conviction of all of these things. And that also didn't happen. I thought the whole ceremony was really strange and I had no problem with symbolism Growing up Catholic at all or chanting or anything like that, but they just didn't. It was not a particularly positive experience and I was really disappointed. But when we got sealed, it was like we got sealed and we went to a back of a Italian restaurant in a strip mall in a private room and had dinner with my husband's family and a few other adults that were meaningful in his life. And there were a few adults that came who knew me from high school, parents of one of my non Mormon friends and a couple of the parents of the Mormon friends came. But the whole thing was just very sad. It just, you want your family there. Like the elements of my traditions, it just was completely gone. And nothing that was supposed to be meaningful really had any meaning to me. And that was, I look back at it as a sad day. Although luckily I love my husband and he's great.

Nemo [01:28:27] Yeah, that always helps. But this is clinical is the word I describe.

John Dehlin [01:28:33] Yeah. And for our half of our listeners and viewers have never been Mormon. And I just want to make this point really clear, even though it's probably important, implied or it's even been stated. In the modern Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the only valid marriage that really matters on this earth or the next to an orthodox Mormon is a Mormon marriage with Mormon priesthood authority in a Mormon temple. And so Mormons are encouraged to marry other active faithful Mormons in a Mormon temple. But only active faithful tithe paying. And that's the critical point. Only active faithful Mormons that pay 10% of their income to the church are allowed to attend Mormon temple weddings. And that I, I am just going to call it and say that's one of the most cult like aspects of the modern Mormon church is that Ksenia's beautiful, wonderful, supportive, educated, thoughtful, loving family was excluded from her Mormon wedding intentionally by design because that's the way the Mormon Church does weddings and marriages. And it, I think most of us, some would want to say that's just sincere beliefs and that only worthy, worthy people can go into a Mormon temple. And I'm saying worthy in air quotes. But what many of us who have deconstructed Mormonism have come to feel like is it's a tool of coercion to force orthodox Mormons to pay 10% of their income to the church and tying the most sacred special ordinances or life experiences to that source of income so that the church can become a trillion dollar organization. And I know that there are going to be Mormons that reject that interpretation. But the fact, you know, whether you do or not. I hope that everyone on the planet would agree that excluding Ksenia's loving, beautiful, worthy family from being able to witness her wedding is. Is not only egregious, but it's. It's one of the most important things that the modern Mormon Church still needs to change in the 21st century. And Nemo and Ksenia, please feel free to correct me or disagree.

Nemo [01:30:56] No, I. I agree. It. For the most part, I think it's. It's also one of the things that, from my perspective, it's one of the things that's most divisive. You know, my wife. Most of her family aren't members of the church. So many members of her family couldn't come to our ceiling. You know, it's. It's very clinical. There's this beautiful cultural kind of experience that you're describing there. I'm getting that cultural envy where I, you know, I see another country's traditions, and I think those are. Those are incredible. I think you have that as an option or you have this very generic. There's no love mentioned, as far as I'm aware, in the ceiling ceremony. It's very strange. And I. I used to kind of sit in and. And help officiate and sign and do all that sort of stuff as part of. As a missionary at the temple. But it's one of those things that still creates the us versus them more than anything else. I think the temple in particular, the idea that it's tied to financial fidelity to the church, creates an in group and out group more than basically anything else in the church. And I don't think it's right.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:32:04] I also asked if I could. If we could have like a civil wedding and then have the Mormon Temple as a. Maybe a couple of weeks later as a. Like a very intimate, just a family, private thing that. That's not. But they said no, it has to be the main major, only important part of it. And you can exchange rings afterwards, and that's what you can do with your parents. And my parents said, that sounds like completely meaningless thing. We don't want to have any part of it.

Nemo [01:32:33] So.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:32:35] Yeah. And I know that in some European countries you do have to have first a civil marriage, and then they're allowed to have a big wedding. But I was told, no, here you cannot do that. That will show God you are not dedicated. And I was in too deep. I had to be completely dedicated because this was the last step that I could take. Although I've made up more steps, like, oh, if I Just have a baby and all of these, that I could show my full total faith so that things would start really making sense to me and everything would click into place. And it didn't. And it actually started my rift of I don't think. And it was. Started being this balance between sunk cost and. Well, but there are a lot of things I don't feel good about.

Nemo [01:33:20] So there was a lot of grass. Grass is greener for you. You were very much like, oh, if I can just get to the next bit. If I can just. Then it'll be fine, then it'll be fine. And Mormonism does very well at laying out these very clearly defined life goals for people. You know, from the age of eight, you get baptized. Then if you're a young man, you go 12, 14, 16, 18, you go through your priesthood stages. Then you go, you get your endowment, you go on a mission, you get married, you have children, you then raise those children, you support those children through all their steps and lifestyles. Then you go on a mission, right? Your life's planned out for you. And it's done in such a way because essentially a large part of the Mormon belief is that, well, it's not really about this life. We're actually just waiting to die so that we can then go to heaven. We can then get our rewards for all the stuff we've been doing now. So it's just a series of stepping stones until you then pass on onto the actual, the more important part of the journey for a lot of people. So I suppose you had all those laid out in front of you and you were just waiting to see which one would bring a knowledge and a comfort and a confirmation that it was true. Is that accurate?

Navigating Deep Faith and Early Doubts

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:34:23] Absolutely. And I, and I, I thought, look, even, Even if it's a God that maybe is not like the Mormon God, but there is a God and he sees how hard I'm trying and that all sincerity is in there. He will give me something to help me feel like I'm in the right place or I'm on the right path. And we got married. But then you get so busy with. Now I'm attending the temple monthly and I am doing all my callings as perfectly as I can. And two years later, we had a child, and I'm putting everything into him. And what really started that big wound opening for me was when I realized that combination of the American culture and the Mormon American culture, my child was not really connecting to any of my heritage. That was really important to me. So he, when he started Preschool, he stopped speaking Ukrainian to me. And I did not really have anybody to help me with it. And because of how little I was nourishing my Ukrainian ness, it was a lot of effort for me to continually speak Ukrainian by myself when no one else was doing that. And then when we had our other children born, the oldest would start translating all my Ukrainian for them into English and we would start arguing over it because I'm like, Ukrainian only. And it was so hard. This is when my husband and I started talking about moving back to Ukraine because I needed my kids. And this is when I started realizing I have neglected a hugely important part of me and it really hurts now. And these kids were the visible effect of that. And I was just too Ukrainian to allow that to keep going, to erase my culture. And it felt like it was a half of a generation and it was going to be gone. All these people in my family had suffered and died to preserve something, and I just let it wither. I was also bitter that I didn't choose to live here. I didn't choose to move here. But I couldn't really blame my parents either. They were trying to do what's best. We never went back to Ukraine because as soon as you start, like my parents got over the first two years of being barely surviving, they're like, well, we're not just gonna, you know, completely crack our lives open and move back. We're gonna. And it just kept going and going. And I was in college and all of these things were happening. And then there was Prop 8 that I was like, I cannot believe I'm supporting this as a scientist when I know the scientific basis of a lot of these LGBTQ issues, that I was not in agreement with what the Mormon Church was doing. And I was upset that my money was going in some way to support this. And then my son was in primary and would come home and say certain things like, I need my sins to be cleansed. That's why I need to get baptized. And it was just really starting to get to the point where I was openly talking to my husband. Like, look, I tried with all of this dedication for all these years. I did all the right things. I gave up everything that was asked of me. I never got a conviction. And now it's actually like I am sliding back to not believing these things even more. Because not only is it, let's say it's just an organization that's based on made up things that are not historical, but they're doing all these amazing community building contributions to the world. It's like, yeah, who cares? Like, most religions have a lot of made up stuff. Let's just take all the good we can get. But then when I felt like it was actively doing negative things and I didn't have the conviction of the basis of the religion, it started being like, I can't consciously be contributing even if there are still great people who I love and a community that I have enjoyed. The benefits of the. The scale started to tip and my husband went through his own journey of his was a completely different story just because he grew up. It was his family culture. He. Everybody in his family was truly believing. But when it was time for our son to get baptized, I didn't want to do it. And it's. We. We did end up. He did end up getting baptized because we justified it as we're not ready to deal with a fallout with the family. And we were planning to move to Ukraine the next year and we'll just like leave then and let's just have it as a kind of rite of passage. It's okay experience for our kid, but it deteriorate. My belief and dedication deteriorated pretty fast as I was seeing it through the eyes of my child, as I was feeling the complete lack of my. My culture of origin being involved and the LGBTQ issues. And I already knew about most of the historical stuff. I just, I knew about it way before most of my friends did because I was a digger and I justified it and shelved it in various ways, but this was just too much. And that's what tipped the scales. And now we move to. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Nemo [01:39:55] No, I was just going to ask about this tipping of the scales because we've. We've talked about how you went step by step by step. Oh, well, if I do this thing, then I'll feel better. I do this thing, I'll be better. You've had a child now you've got two children at this point, and you're, you know, looking at it through the eyes of your children and then you're almost going the opposite way. Was it a conscious thing of, okay, well, these things are okay, but if it's. If it turns out to be this bad, then I'll stop. And then you realize that it is like that, you know, oh, if it turns out the polygamy was done by Joseph Smith, oh, then I'll stop. Okay, it was, but. And then the next thing. And the next thing. How many was. Was that. That's kind of how shelving seems to work. So.

John Dehlin [01:40:36] And, And If I can piggyback and if I can piggyback. Nemo. Did you ever have that honeymoon period, Ksenia, where, like, for several years everything was great and you reach that, oh, everything's fine now. And finally I'm in and I'm righteous and we're temple married and I'm loving my experience in the church. Did you ever have sort of like some years where it was like. Like utopia, like nirvana, like idyllic, or did you never actually even obtain that?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:41:03] Oh, I wish I did. There was the period of after marriage and after the ba. The two babies, when I was super sleep deprived and didn't study or go deeply into anything. And I just had the families, or I should say the community support there. There's a lot of support for people having babies and park dates and all of that. But I always knew in the back of my mind, like in every church lesson, I raised my hand about, but what about this polygamy thing? And what about that? People let me do it because we are living in a pretty liberal. We were in a pretty liberal ward. And also everybody was like, ah, she's a convert. Ah, she's Ukrainian. She just speaks her mind without filtering. And I got a lot of grace on that. And people tried to provide answers occasionally. They were never. My questions were never answered. So there was never a time where I felt like I've arrived. It was like, I'm trying with everything I can until I have the conviction, and then it, oh, but I'm contributing to something that might be actively negatively impacting other people. And I'm seeing the way it impacts my son. So to me, I could reason all the shades of gray and, well, people aren't perfect, but this, that. But the way it's taught to children is so black and white. And what they said was black, I did not think was black. I thought it was gray. And what they said was white, I didn't think was white, I thought it was gray. And it started to take a lot of energy to come home and reteach my child and go through that to the point where I'm like, I am not really getting anything out of it. And what was keeping us in there was that I really, really love my husband's family. And they are really great people who care about me as a person. And I felt like they will reject me and that they will feel like I have ruined their son, who was the perfect, in their eyes, Mormon child for a mom who put all of her life into making sure that he is with her in the celestial kingdom. I just felt so bad about contributing to any of her pain. But when we finally made the plans to move to Ukraine, which was a multi year way more difficult. If I would have known how hard it is to pack up your life and move, I would have never done it. Luckily we don't know these things. Right before we moved we did tell my husband's family that in Ukraine we do not plan on attending the LDS church for reasons of this has been a long time coming and we don't believe these things to be true. They were upset and wanted to have. There were lots of discussions and they wanted answers. We never went into the details of any history or even the Prop 8 stuff. Tried to keep it just like this is our life and we've really, really put a lot of effort and thought into it, but it's not. It doesn't resonate with us. And when we moved to Ukraine and that was hard in getting adjusted and I started to understand my parents really well at that point, their immigration to the United States and I wasn't even going to a completely new place. But of course 20 years, that country changed a ton. I was a different person. I was now an adult responsible for three children and an English speaking husband. My parents and I started to really connect and understand each other and we didn't attend an LDS church or really any church in Ukraine and we were fine and our family was strong and we loved each other and the world didn't end.

Nemo [01:44:50] Awesome.

Family Returns to Ukraine and Heritage Reconnected

John Dehlin [01:44:50] Two quick questions. So I probably missed this. So your parents moved back, your family moved back to Ukraine at some point?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:44:58] No. You. You did not miss it. I didn't mention it. When? After my first child was born, when he was a baby in 2008 to all the crisis, my dad lost his job and he moved to the east coast and that's where they have been the whole time. They did not move back to Ukraine.

John Dehlin [01:45:15] And then is it. Is it. Is there a degree to which you were going to Ukraine to escape the Mormon thing or is that not.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:45:23] That is absolutely true for my husband wanted to test it out of like what would it be like to live in a completely community where I don't have any of this on the large scale but to me the main goal was to have my kids and me really get into the culture, live in there and have a connection, a real personal connection to this place. Both of my grandmothers were alive at the time. One of them passed away right before we moved. But all of my aunts and uncles and extended Family, cousins were still there.

Nemo [01:46:02] Can I ask a question about. Just before we get into what I'm sure is going to be some really beautiful moments of reconnecting with your heritage and with your. With your family, I want to ask about something you said in regards to your son, which is he was being taught things as black and white, and those things were things that you saw as gray. I think this is something that maybe is specific to you as a convert, because those of us who grew up in the church were taught those black and white things first, and then we gained the nuance. We didn't start with the nuance as you did. And so what you heard was, I think, possibly more shocking to you because it had not been told to you when you were five years old. I was taught when I was five years old, years old, all these very simple, very plain black and white things. And so if I were to hear my child being taught that, it would kind of almost go over my head, because that's just what you teach children. I wonder whether for you it was different because you weren't taught it yourself. What do you think?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:46:57] That's a really interesting question that I have not thought about. And I think you are probably right that in fact, I think there are multiple things in Ukraine when a kid is growing up and is the same age. They're probably Ukrainian things that are being taught black and white. And that maybe if I witnessed that, I wouldn't have noticed it because those are the things I was taught. And it was coming from my home culture. And at this point I had of a lot, little bit of resentment toward the Mormon Church. So if they weren't saying something perfectly how I thought they should to my kid, I was critical of that already. Not consciously, but that's probably what it was like. Yeah, there were. There were things about like, these people are bad people because they burned these things in Missouri, and Joseph Smith and the LDS people were the really good people. And I didn't like any of those things because I was worried that was gonna create unhealthy dichotomy in my child's brain of who's good and who's bad and why people are good and bad. But I bet a lot of it was because I didn't grow up with these teachings. And also I was already feeling resentful that I've given up a lot to have these convictions in the Mormon Church and I still was not gifted them. So maybe God did not think I was worthy of giving that knowledge. And I was kind of Starting to be like, well, to hell with it, then I cannot do anything else.

Nemo [01:48:43] You'd reach that point where you're like, well, I've done everything that I was asked to. I've taken every step, I've made every faithful step by step. I took the step to get baptized, I got married. I had the children. You've ticked like 90% of the Mormon lifeboxes. So if you get to that point and you think, well, this still isn't working for me, then I think you're perfectly justified in saying, well, maybe I should look elsewhere. Maybe this isn't the place after all.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:49:07] Yeah.

Nemo [01:49:08] So the place is Ukraine.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:49:10] Yeah. So I'm in Ukraine and I am reconnecting. And it is a culture shock for me to move back. I had visited Ukraine two or three times between 1997 when I moved out, and 2018 when we moved with my husband and three kids. But being a visitor is so like opening a bank account. The way you communicate with the other parents at school, the way you would find a doctor and any little thing was so exhausting and so hard. And it was hard because I would ask people these questions on the street or in the office somewhere, and I would ask them in Ukrainian. So to them, like, you're clearly not a foreigner, so why do you not know these things? We'd be like, what's wrong with you? You don't know how to get this, this paper or how to sign your kid up for school or get them in to see a doctor. And that was really hard. But because Ukrainians are not used to people moving back there and they're not used to foreigners, although there are more now, but they're usually really clearly identified. They're either black or they don't speak Ukrainian because there are actually a lot of black foreigners who do speak Ukrainian and incredibly well. It's very impressive. So I was reconnecting and I was feeling glad that my kids were connecting and learning the language, which they didn't know. They only knew some words. And it came to be difficult because we said we were doing it for two years. And when it was coming close to the two year mark, I realized that I wanted to stay longer and so did my husband. We were having a really good experience, but it's like, am I doing to my kids what my parents did to me? That was a really hard thing. And also the pandemic hit and we made it work in the pandemic for the first year. But we returned in the spring of 2021. So actually has not been a year that we've been back yet, but almost.

Revisiting Ukraine as an Adult

John Dehlin [01:51:30] I'm curious, Ksenia, like, how was it for you to go back? I guess you might have gone there with some idealistic notions. You may have some romantic, kind of like returning to my heritage. But then there's reality. And there's also maybe what Ukraine was like right after the dissolution of the Soviet Union versus how it's progressed socioeconomically from then until now. So I guess I'm kind of asking what. How did you find the modern Ukrainian socioeconomic sort of cultural experience to be, especially, you know, having been raised at least in your high school years in the United States? What was it like? Was it super modern? Was it. Was it like old school, Soviet style? Like, what was it like? What can you share with us about that?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:52:22] I will say that as far as the living conditions, and we were in Lviv, so it's a city of about a million people. But it is small, compact in size. I compare it to Portland in that Portland also has close to a million residents, but it is exactly double the area of Lviv that has about the same amount of residents. Most of my. As far as socioeconomic, I was pleasantly surprised how good a lot of the roads were, how I could find anything in grocery stores. There were specialty stores, designer clothes. Not that I was into them, but. But there were available, and people were talking about it. People had nice cars. Not everybody, but lots of people had cars. And they were going on vacations. Lots of people were going to neighboring European countries for trips because you could go. A Polish border was about an hour away. Sure, you have to stand the border. But at this time, Ukraine could travel to European Union. Ukrainians could travel to European Union without a visa. So people who had the money did make those trips. So most of the physical, material things were very comfortable. Figuring out where to get what was tricky and what's the best. This or that was tricky, but it was available. You could order stuff online that would get there not from Amazon, but from various other places you could receive them. The places where I was a little disappointed was that some of the mentality of the common folk parents at school, some of the communication style and some of the way that the kids were taught was bit like thick with Soviet mentality. Not everybody. And so it would cause these arguments between parents of how they wanted things done. But one example is, so my kids were going to a public school, and we got this text from the head of the class, class parent, I guess that the teacher and the principal are asking us to Remodel the kids classroom because there is water damage in the wall and it needs to be ripped out and redone. And that's definitely nothing that we would be doing here in the United States if there was. And the parents are like, okay, well how much money do we need to pull from each parent to take it in? And some parents would say, this is a public school. They are supposed to feel fix these problems and we need to push for the government to give enough money for this. And other parents are like, well, it's going to take so long that our kids are going to be done with this classroom and they're going to be in this moldy environment, so let's just get it done. And the other camp, well, if we constantly do these things, then the government is not going to change how they fund these kinds of projects and needs. And there would be these kinds of arguments that were hard for me to participate in because I totally agree that this is a public school and the government needs to take care of the walls being mold free for the children. But it was any little thing, the floor needs to be redone. And the way that people justify like, well, no one's gonna take care of this, so we just need to do it was frustrating.

John Dehlin [01:56:04] I'm wondering which is the Soviet mentality and which is kind of a more

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:56:10] mentality is the school director or the principal and the teachers saying, well, no one's going to get this done. We're not going to take care of it. If you care about it, you should fix it. And I guess I see why that is. Like, well, it wouldn't be Soviet, but this was the reality of the Soviet Union. They say they will take care of everything, but in reality, no one takes care of. Of anything. So if you want it done, you had to figure out how to do it. So I would go in and we would be scraping things off the walls and remodeling and painting. There were public, I should say there were private schools that we considered. But I really wanted my kids to be with the like everyday diverse population of the city and not with like the elites. Also, we were on a Ukrainian salary. My husband got a job, the Ukrainian company, and it was in it. So it paid better than most. I should say better than most, like Ukrainian average jobs. It was on the lower end of the tech. Ukrainian tech world. So we were within certain budget constraints and not going to a private school was there was. That was another reason for that. But all in all, it was such a good experience. And my husband and Kids and I, we do really feel closer and connected to the communities and the culture. And we made a lot of good friends. And had it not been for the pandemic, we probably would have finished up that third year instead of returning in the middle of the third school year.

Nemo [01:57:47] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:57:47] And Nemo, I want you to guide this. I do have a couple more questions about their Ukraine experience, but I. I don't want to step on your toes, but I just want to get them in before we move on to the U.S. did you have more you wanted to ask, Nemo?

Nemo [01:57:59] Oh, yeah. I was going to ask about. About Ukraine and about.

John Dehlin [01:58:03] Go for it. I'll add things at the end. Yeah.

Nemo [01:58:06] From my understanding, 2019, Zelenskyy is elected, Right. And I know one of his big running points was to rid corruption out of the government, which is, I suppose, a vestige, a leftover of kind of that Soviet way of money talks. And if you want to get something done, you pay me, I'll do it for you. So that compared to when you left, I just wanted to ask you about the size of the dichotomy, right. You said all the roads are a bit better and this sort of stuff. But you've got a country that is essentially now trying to play on the playing field of the rest of Europe. They're trying to join in with the eu. They're saying, look, we hold these values, too. We want to get stuck in. So did you feel a difference at a community level, not just with that division, but with, with members of your family that when you'd left, there was this one sense of community, and now you're starting to. To reintegrate with these family members. Does this make sense? Like, have you noticed a shift in your family with this big cultural shift?

Ukraine's Cultural and Political Shifts

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [01:59:08] I certainly noticed it with the younger members of the family who were more invested in Ukraine, getting closer and closer to the eu. And everybody in my sphere and all of my family members, young and old, were pro Europe and all wanted European integration. No members of my family at any point, Even before, before 2019, none of them ever, ever wanted to have anything to do with Russia again. There was no trust there and nothing. It hasn't been good. We've giving it a shot, not voluntarily, but we were forced to give it a shot. So there was a shift in people trusting government more. This was different than when we left in 1997. And even when I went, my first visit back was in 2004, there was still a lack of trust in the government thinking that, hey, they're just all there to steal our tax money and to build themselves mansions all over the world and vacation places and a lot of it. Because in reality, in the 90s when the Soviet Union fell apart, I had told you that there were a lot of people in the leadership positions that were imported ethnic Russians into Ukraine to be the managers and the bosses and all of that. And it was through the politics as well. And after the fall, a lot of those people, they stayed in Ukraine and said, oh, we, we are totally Ukrainian, we want Ukraine's independence. Because what else were they going to say? There's nothing else you could do. But in reality they were still in cahoots with the Russian government and the Soviet mentality. And people were saying we just, the young people were saying we just need to wait for that generation to die out because we don't know how to get rid of them. And the mentality. But by the time we were back in 2018, a lot of things had changed for the better. And people were trusting, especially the younger people, I would say like 35, younger, 35 and younger, maybe even 40 younger people were really trusting the government much more. There was a lot less corruption. And I was never asked to pay a bribe anywhere. In 2004 at the airport, I was asked to pay a bribe when my sister and I arrived. And in 2018 we went through all the things in life to get an apartment and this and that and doctors and I dealing with police. I got pulled over. I was never asked for a bribe. There was never a situation where I thought they might be hinting at a bribe. And that was true of most of my friends saying that's not a reality anymore. People are really trying to get rid of these moochers and these corrupt individuals. I was really pleased with the changes. But of course, yeah, you want to just be like, oh, now we're like Switzerland or Germany, it just takes a long time. We were under, were suppressed and anyone who had leadership skills or who was a go getter in Ukraine was killed or sent into the Gulags. Like that's how it worked. So of course it would take a very long time gradually to build up leadership skills and self governance skills and trust in the government. But I was seeing significant changes in that then.

Nemo [02:02:50] My final question about your time in Ukraine is just how you started to build bridges with those members of your family, how you started to go about getting to know that Ukrainian side of your family again.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:03:03] I was shocked at how even the aunts and uncles that I didn't really Know in childhood that, well, when we moved there, they were calling and checking in. They would drive from their village with sacks of potatoes and canned everything. My grandma took three buses with a quarter of a pig to bring to the. Which I was like, grandma, we can buy all of these things, like, around the corner. You do not need to bring us a quarter of a pig. And you're 85 and have to change buses three times to get here. But she was like, no, we got your family. Everyone just reached out, invited us for all the traditional holidays, checked in. It was so easy to connect with most of them. And also, I will say it's partly my family and it's mostly the Ukrainian ness. People are so open. So I would go to visit my aunt and uncle who invited us for a holiday. I'd ask them, hi, how are you? And I'd be like, oh, you know, our daughter is struggling with this and our son's wife is this. And then they're talking about divorce, but I don't know because she's great and just, like, really tell you a lot of things. And it's so easy to connect with people like that because you feel like they trust you and they care about your opinion on this, and they're asking you about how you're doing and what they can do to help you. And of course, there's, like, a lot of unsolicited advice that comes with that, but people are. People are really good at distinguishing. Like, yeah, everybody always gives advice. You just take it or leave it. There's no hard feelings that you didn't take someone's advice whatsoever. I mean, there could be, but it's. People do what they need. People do what they want to do and what they think is right. Surely we're still trying to get out of certain cultural norms that are holding people back. But my relatives were really awesome, and it was so nice to feel like I have this tribe. They didn't understand a lot of things about me because I am very American as well, but I felt very much accepted and loved and my kids, too.

Nemo [02:05:18] Yeah. So that's brilliant that you. You got that community back, the one that you felt like you'd lost. You've gone to America, you found another one. It's not working for you. So you've gone back to Ukraine and gone. Right. Is that community still there? And yes, it is, which is wonderful to hear. John, your questions, please.

John Dehlin [02:05:34] Oh, man, I'm sorry, Nemo, forgive me. I've got so many questions still. So, Ksenia. So first off Were your parents thrilled that you were reconnecting with your home culture?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:05:44] Yes. Although I will say that my dad was nervous about it. He's like, you just don't know how hard it's going to be to move as an adult with your family across the world. You just have no idea. It's going to be so much harder than you think. So maybe you shouldn't do it. But once I get my mind set on something, I'm going to go for it. Sometimes it takes a long time. I'm slow at it, but I will go for it. So my mom was just beyond thrilled. She had this house that she had started building before we left that was still sitting there, and she is now finishing building it because she's like, I'm going to return back to Ukraine when I retire and your kids are going to be coming there for the summers. And she was really thrilled. And when my dad saw that we were there and we were making do and figuring it out, he was really proud of us. So, yeah, they were so excited that they now can speak with their grandkids kids in Ukrainian. It's been a gift.

John Dehlin [02:06:46] Okay, that's beautiful. Also, how did you like the food and the music and the culture, having your, you know, had your more, let's just say, you know, let's just say your teen slash adult taste buds kind of in many ways formulated in the United States and in Hawaii. How did you end up really liking the culture, the food, the music, the art, the entertainment there? Did you end up loving it? Did it still feel foreign to you, or did it feel like coming home or somewhere in the middle?

Life Back in Ukraine with a Family

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:07:23] In many ways, the food felt like home for sure. And there's something insanely magnetic about memories, the brain connections that once you taste that thing, it just lights up.

John Dehlin [02:07:36] What are some super yummy Ukrainian foods that we should know about?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:07:39] Yeah, you know, Eastern European food is heavy, so it's hard. You can't compete with them Italians, but. So we have borscht, which is a vegetable. It can have meat soup, but it has beets in it. That's tough for people because of its bright red color. I think it's. It's absolutely delicious, and my kids love it. We have vareniki, which is also called pierogies. Pierogies is the Polish term of it. But where I'm from, Poland, Ukraine is a very mixed cultural identity there because Poland was in. We were ruled under Poland for several hundred years as well in the. In this part, western Ukraine. So pierogies or vareniki in Ukrainian are like dumplings, which have lots of different things, could have lots of different things inside. We've got holupti, which is a steamed cabbage leaf, and it has vegetable and meat, sometimes rice or another grain mixture inside. And it's like slowly cooked for a long time. There are also a huge variety of food that people associate with Ukraine now because it was Soviet food, they tried to standardize food across all cafeterias and all work environments and all schools. And as I was living in Lviv, I realized there are all these revival restaurants and projects to bring back the pre Soviet Ukrainian food in each different area of Ukraine and the pre Soviet art and other aspects of culture, which was great. I was so impressed with a lot of people who put their heart and soul into either maintaining or bringing back some aspects of culture that had been either lost, because it was never lost. It was still there, but it was suppressed during the Soviet times and giving it a modern spin. So, for example, this is called a vashavanka, which is a traditional shirt. And they come in different colors with different kinds of patterns depending on the area that of Ukraine. And they were outlawed during the Soviet time. You couldn't wear them in public because that was a sign of your nationalist identity or like your ethnic identity. That was not the Soviet identity. And people always had them. People always wore them under things and during holidays and in their underground church meetings. But now in the 90s, it was kind of almost uncool to wear them as people were grabbing at all the Western and modern things. But when I moved back now there are all these really cool clothing lines that incorporate the embroidery in that traditional sense, but into very modern designs and wedding dresses that have it. They're just gorgeous. And it's not just some select people. It's very common for people and the influencers and everybody to be interested in that. And that's true in all aspects. Lots of museums, art museums. Kids are constantly going to art museums from school field trips. And there's a huge uptick of books published in Ukrainian language since the 90s. Just exponential growth of those. It was all extremely encouraging to see. And it is a shock what's going on right now. And it feels like it will be many years before we can come back to level zero that was there a month ago. It's extremely disappointing. And the amount of shock and anger that my brain and body have, I cannot communicate it and I cannot process is just so upsetting.

John Dehlin [02:12:05] And I want to get to that in the timeline. But I'm. I'm. Both. I'm both shocked and disappointed that this and this. This just shows how uneducated I am that the Soviet Union would sort of like, try and get rid of local cuisine and get rid of local dress as a way of almost colonizing the Ukrainians. Although Americans are pros at colonization, so I shouldn't be surprised or even throw stones from a glass house. But it just makes me sad to hear that. And it just feels so uplifting and inspiring to hear about the Ukrainians over the past five or 10 years, reclaiming their heritage, their food, their culture, their dress and being proud of it. Like, that's inspiring. And of course, it sets up the tragedy we're about to talk about. But before we get to that, let me just ask really quickly, did you ever. A couple more questions. Did you ever try and attend a Ukrainian based church that was Mormon or that wasn't Mormon? More specifically, just to see if you had any interest in rekindling your religious. Your original religious roots? And again, forgive me if you've already answered this question.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:13:19] There was a church in the corner next to our apartment building in Lviv. And when I had my windows open on Sundays, you could hear the beautiful singing. And I did go to it a few times. The cultural experience, the art in the church and the singing and the group involvement in the songs, just the way it's conducted, the smell of it was extremely comforting to me and I loved the vibe of it. But at one of the times I went something that the priest had said in the middle of his sermon. So it's like a lot of this, like kind of thing, back and forth, single song that happens in the church and then there's like a 15 minute sermon and then there's this back and forth of prayer and chant and sing song. So when I was there, there were a couple of things that were mentioned about an LGBTQ issue during the sermon that I was like, oh, no. Why? Why? I was enjoying this so much that I do feel a strong connection to some of the components of the religion culturally. But I've gone too far in eventually, when I was continuing and analyzing all of my Catholic background in the same way that I was analyzing all the Mormon stuff. And I know this is true for people who have been on the podcast before. You just. The sweater gets unwound and not really a way to make it all work again. So I'm really. I only. I'm a spirit. I feel like I'm a spiritual person and I value the. The cultural aspect of the religion of origin. For me, but I would not say that I would like to get back into the religion.

Nemo [02:15:35] That makes total sense.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:15:37] And we did not go to an LDS church, although we were stopped by missionaries on the street multiple times during just walking around there. And we were friendly with them, but we did not go.

Nemo [02:15:50] Missionaries in Ukraine are walking around just like missionaries in any other place country. Because I know in Russia, obviously they are volunteers or whatever term the church uses to get other legal problems, but in Ukraine it's absolutely fine, right?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:16:02] Yep. They're allowed to proselyte in Ukraine. And there was a church that I walked past on the way to my kids school. We did meet one couple that were members. They didn't know we used to be members until like a year later. And it was fine, but I just didn't want. I had no interest in going to check it out.

Nemo [02:16:24] That makes total sense.

John Dehlin [02:16:26] I love it. Okay, a couple other quick questions. I'm just loving this. Oh, by the way, we have a comment that. I don't even think I understand the comment, but I want to give voice to it. Saint Random Ed says Mormon Stories podcast, Please consider that different ethnicities were treated differently. USSR was huge. So I don't even know what they're trying to say, but maybe, maybe you two would. This is someone basically objecting with how I characterize something.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:16:51] Yeah, I think, I think it's. You mean the Soviet. Even today's Russia is made up of so many different ethnicities. Ethnic Russians make up a minority of the total massive transcontinental country of Russia. And some of those cultures were treated differently. Anything that showed that you would rather have an independent state or in a separate identity was extremely discouraged. In all of my experience and everything I have read about Ukrainians that may have been different for people of other cultures, maybe that the Russian government finds Ukrainian identity particularly threatening. So there were a lot of cases where they were particularly sensitive to Ukrainians showing their love for something that's different than the Soviet Union. And maybe it wasn't as big of an issue for other cultures. I have some that I know about it and I could say. But that's just not, you know, the direction necessarily that I want to take this. But yeah, the dissent by Ukrainians and the demonstration of their identity was. Was very much discouraged.

John Dehlin [02:18:10] Okay.

Nemo [02:18:11] Because without going too far into it, you know this better than I do. But from my reading into recent history, Ukraine as a progenitor of Russia and the Russian state, they're quite closely tied as a geographical area. Russia's history and Ukraine's history have been like this for a long time. I think that's fair to say.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:18:33] I would push back on that a little bit. I would say that the. Of course what we consider as a Russian identity or Ukrainian identity is a very modern concept. And in fact this is true for most people in most places, most of it. French Revolution was kind of the first, the first movement in Europe where there was a little bit of that identity. People overcoming their regional differences to come together against something that disagreed with to as their king. So what we say Ukrainian identity and Russian identity is a little different when we talk about it in the past versus now. But Ukraine, if you look at its geographic boundaries now in Kyiv, the capital, it was the place of Kievan Rus, which was a loose conglomerate kingdom of Slavic tribes. And this was the beginning of the formulation of the full Ukrainian identity at that time. So this is going from 800 to 1200. Those 400 years about where Moscow is now was not even a town or a village. It was just swampy all up there. But as this kingdom, this Kievan Ruiz kingdom that ended up breaking apart, separating because of inheritance, feuds amongst the sons and lineage issues. There was one lineage of one of the brothers of the dynasty that was northeast. And that began to develop as the western Ukrainian branch of this also began to develop. This is 19, sorry, this is 1200 common era. So at that point there's very little communication that's going between these groups. And these are very long distances. This would be a multi day trip on a horse. So the development of that Russian identity at that point versus the Ukrainian especially the western Ukrainian identity was very separate. And at that point this western Ukraine, after having its own branch of this Kievan Rus for a short time, ends up getting taken over by the Polish king, conquered. And after 300 years of that, Poland is basically dissolved and chopped up and divided amongst more powerful entities. And western Ukraine becomes a part of Austrian empire while the rest of Ukraine becomes a part of the Russian empire under Tsar until World War I. Russian Revolution in the west, where I am from, we had an extremely small amount of Russian influence until after World War II. So this 1945, the rest of Ukraine had more Russian influence. But it still takes only the last one and a half centuries or so, depending on where we draw the line, because that changed multiple times. So this idea that we were super intertwined in our language and culture and politics for centuries is just not supported by history. But we were neighbors and our language has evolved from a common ancient Slavic language like the Other Slavic languages, you know, Czech and Slovak and Slovenian, Polish, Belarusian, etc. So we, I mean, we are, we are neighbors, but it's not as tight as Russia has told the tale so many times. There's a reason why this tale is told differently from their perspective, and that is to lay more of a claim to these lands and to people and resources.

Nemo [02:23:03] I'm sorry, John, I know this is Mormon stories, but I'm having a whale of a time.

John Dehlin [02:23:06] Oh, man, I'm loving this. I was going to say Nemo. Welcome to this mountain masterclass in Russo Ukrainian relations. I'm.

Nemo [02:23:14] I think it's really important, though.

John Dehlin [02:23:15] I'm eating this up. Yeah. And the, you know, and the, and the, I guess Putin's trying to recast a new narrative. We're watching that and we don't want to jump to that yet, but it's so it's so valuable to hear, Ksenia, your, your informed perspective. Let me ask you two more questions before we jump to you moving back. One is, you know, the way that they talk about your president or prime minister. Tell us his name one more time.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:23:45] President Volodymyr Zelensky.

John Dehlin [02:23:48] Zelensky. Sorry. Thank you. He's kind of described, I've seen him described here as like a Jon Stewart, sort of like a comedian or actor turned president. And I don't know if that's a fair analogy or not or if you could give us a better one. I also, from my study of US History, I think about this idea of when have we ever had a young president get elected that kind of gave the country a new sense of optimism or even of nationalism? And, of course, we could think about the Obamas. But what I really think about is JFK, John F. Kennedy and the early 60s and how there was just something about the JFK, John F. Kennedy, Jackson Onassis administration that seemed to imbue America with this sense of optimism and hope and sort of this young, you know, White House. So what can you tell us about your president? And I guess you were there when he got elected and how you. But also how Ukrainians have seen him and his wife and his family. And then I want to talk about Putin and Putin in Russia before we talk about you moving back to the

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:25:05] US I will say I was in Ukraine and I did not vote for Zelensky. I voted for the other candidate. And big reason for that was, well, he was not Ukrainian enough for me. And I'm willing to be corrected by new information and new, you know, new developments and to change my mind, but he didn't speak Ukrainian. So at any of his. In all of his public appearances during his campaign, he spoke Russian. And to me, that was frustrating because there is a part of. So Ukrainian language was either suppressed or completely outlawed during various parts of Russian rule in various parts of Ukraine. And people who were holding onto that did it at a great cost. And it's now part of the claim that Putin has on Ukraine is that, well, they speak Russian, so they are Russians. And so to me, it's always very big deal that Ukrainian language remains distinct and has its own identity and that the president of Ukraine should speak Ukrainian also. He was a literal comedic actor who was. His only experience with the public was being on TV and writing comedy and acting in it. So it didn't seem like the best person to be president.

Nemo [02:26:43] But we saw how that went in America, didn't we? Sorry.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:26:54] I do appreciate that this was a democratic election and it had all the checks and balances of foreign. The word is escaping me. The people who ensure proper elections, who can certify that it was a democratically elected individual. And he was. And I was, was proud of that. That was a big deal to me. But I was. And I was thinking, okay, now I got to support him in some way. But I was very hesitant about it. One thing was extremely impressive is him going from really not being able to formulate a Ukrainian sentence very well within a few months, he was doing well. Right away. He was starting to do all his public appearance in Ukrainian. And at first it was like a little rough, but he got really good really fast. I imagine he had tutors and he put effort into it, and some of the things he was deciding and people he was putting in charge, I was a little concerned about. But he did gain some of my trust that he's not going to let Putin just take whatever he wants and that he did consider himself a Ukrainian. And of course, this just blew up in my face during the last 10 days where he has been a heroic figure and his family in general. And I imagine that he's not making all the strategic military decisions because he doesn't have experience with that personally. But what he has done incredibly well is step up to unite the people, to provide hope and a voice and to say, like, I'm not giving up on this. So you don't give up on it. And, and I think we wouldn't. We still wouldn't. But it is extremely helpful to have someone that unites the people and has hope and a strong voice for the Ukrainian People and I respect him and I am admitting that I may have underestimated him and I may have been wrong.

John Dehlin [02:28:52] Did I hear you say his first language was Russian, not Ukrainian?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:28:56] That's right.

John Dehlin [02:28:57] Whoa. I did not know that.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:29:00] And this comes from where he is. In the country. During the Soviet Union, if you did not speak Russian, you did not get the jobs, you never got promoted, you didn't get the apartments. So people, and I see this even in the United States, people are like, let's not speak Spanish. We're just going to teach our kids English because we want them to have all the opportunities. And it is very quickly how that can happen within one generation max, two generations, where you're just speaking English, we're speaking English, but in that, in that case, you're speaking Russian.

Nemo [02:29:33] We have that here in the UK too. Like a lot of the native Gaelic languages, like Irish, Scots, Gaelic, Welsh, you know, those languages are disappearing because there's no jobs in them. People are just teaching their kids English because that's how you get about so.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:29:48] Absolutely. And it's so sad because with the death of a language, there is a death of a whole dimension, new dimension to humanity and the way you think about everything and perceive the world. So it makes me sad. Even though after 91, most official things in Ukraine were done in Ukrainian and there was a pro Ukrainian, a lot of policies that were in place, but much of eastern and southern Ukraine was just so. There was just such an overwhelming amount of Russian speakers that it was very difficult to reverse. And also there were large amounts of ethnic Russians and they had zero interest in ever learning Ukrainian, even if they'd lived there for three generations. But Zelenskyy's Ukrainian is actually quite good now. I'm very impressed.

Nemo [02:30:43] It's like when you have a lingua franca, when you have a language that you can get on with and speak, like there's almost. This is one of the things I'm quite ashamed of as a. Though I speak more than just English, I did it. I learned other languages because I felt ashamed that no matter where in the world I go, I can speak and people will understand me because I am lucky enough to have been born with the global lingua franca that everyone uses. So.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:31:07] Absolutely. Yeah. And so if there's not a need, then you just. Language learning can, can be hard, especially because all the news and things in Ukraine were in Ukrainian. A lot of the kids who grew up in Russian speaking families, they could understand Ukrainian, but they certainly couldn't speak it. It's a different, different skill.

John Dehlin [02:31:28] Well, I have some tiny bit of sad news. Nemo, we're so grateful you were able to join us. I'm so honored to kick off our collaboration and our partnership. And you have done a big bang up, fantastic job leading this interview as your first interview out of the gate. We've had dozens and dozens of people say how amazing you are doing. I don't think you need me here at all, ever. But I'll be happy to join you when you want me to. But Nemo, we're excited to have you on the Mormon Stories Open Stories foundation team, at least for a trial, but hopefully it'll be medium to long term. Thank you for being a part of this episode. We're super sad you have to go. And I. I look forward to some really, really good European and international interviews and analysis coming from you in the weeks, months, and years ahead.

Nemo [02:32:19] Thank you. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna say it. Thank you very much. Tanya. Tanya and Slava Ukni.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:32:27] Hello. I am Slava.

Nemo [02:32:29] Thank you. Have a great night.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:32:30] It was so nice to meet you, Nemo.

Nemo [02:32:32] You too.

John Dehlin [02:32:32] Bye, Nemo. Thanks, brother. Okay, Ksenia, this has been so wonderful. Let me. If it's okay, let me ask you one final question about your time in the Ukraine before you came back. And then we'll talk about what it's been like since then. What, to what extent were you concerned about Putin while you were living there? To what extent did Russia loom large or cast a dark shadow? And as. As Ukraine was starting to, I don't want to say flirt with, but like, communicate with NATO countries and even with the United States. And I guess in the Biden administration, there was a lot of talk, or in the Trump administration or the Trump Biden elections, there was a lot of talk about Ukraine in. In that you talk about how you were feeling about Putin and Russia and the threats to Ukraine and the tug of war between the United States, NATO and Russia while you were living there. And then as you were leaving, did you feel like this type of war was even imminent or not?

The War in Ukraine and Decision to Leave

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:33:41] Yeah, there was a big heaviness and a big concern with Putin when we were even moving to Ukraine. And that's because this war in, by many accounts, it started in 2014 when Putin annexed Crimea in a sham of a referendum. And he also set up a bunch of his cronies to get the parts of two of the eastern areas to be pro Russian and to supposedly fight for their own independence. Of course, these people had no, like, where did they get their missiles and tanks and their weapons and all of that. There was no doubt in anyone who was studying the issue in Ukraine, in anyone's mind that Putin was totally doing all of it and much of Ukraine's budget. Instead of going into investment in education and health care, it was going to keep those eastern parts at bay and control the expansion of that incoming Russian military power that's been going on since 2014. I have classmates that have been on that front for years. My cousin's oldest son was taken prisoner by the Russians and kept in solitary confinement for several months and was tortured. He was released as a prisoner exchange after everybody we knew was calling all the representatives in the US and trying to get any support for this prisoner exchange because Putin didn't want to do it. He did get released and is okay after a lot of rehabilitation. So it was certainly a concern and a cloud of doom and gloom that there. When I was living in Ukraine, it was a constant talk that we have a war in this country in the east. But it was quite distanced from or separate from people's daily lives who were living where I was living in the east, sorry, in the west or in the center of the country. It was only the Eastern people who were really feeling that. We did have a lot of refugees from the eastern areas that came to Lviv, where I was living in the West. So there was a different kind of population dynamic as you got these kids coming into school who did not speak Ukrainian and they were thrown into a fully Ukrainian environment that they were learning. So it was a threat and a concern and a drain on the economy since 2014. And as Putin was accumulating his forces on the three sides of Ukraine, in the north, at the border with Belarus and the east border of Russia in the south, where the Black Sea is, people were saying, certainly concerned, but really hoping that this was some sort of a manipulation game he was playing to get something out of the west and is not going to do anything super dramatic, which, of course, because he didn't get what he wanted, we can see now that he is acting out.

John Dehlin [02:37:14] I think we may have one. I don't know if he's Russian or he's sympathetic with Russia, at least in our chat group. And I do want to, you know, I don't know anyone that can excuse the behaviors that we're seeing right now. And so this isn't an attempt to do that, to excuse Putin's behaviors by any stretch. But if I am thinking about, I'll just put one theoretical in front of you, Ksenia, and I'm curious if you have a response to it. If you think about the Cuban missile crisis of the early 1960s in the United States, which I was sure, I assume you might know more about than me, where it was discovered by John F. Kennedy that the Soviet Union was putting missiles in Cuba, which was just, I don't know, 90 miles off the coast of Florida, which would give them the ability to bomb us here in the United States in a matter of minutes or hours. And when you think about maybe Latin America and the way that the Soviet Union not only influenced Cuba, but also there were wars in Nicaragua and other Latin American countries that were leaning towards communist kind of rule and how concerned we were in the United States of this domino effect, that communism would sweep ultimately to the borders of the United States. I remember feeling really worried that communism and Soviet or Chinese influence would get too close to the United States for comfort. What can be said for some empathy or understanding that Putin might be concerned if Western or NATO or American influence gets too close to bordering countries of Russia? Like, again, never to excuse invasion of adjacent sovereign states, never to excuse war or criminal behavior or war crimes or anything like that. Is there any, and maybe this is too much to ask a Ukrainian, especially right now during this war. But like, have you ever tried to put yourself in Russia's shoes or even in Putin's shoes shoes to say, well, he has a point here, there I can see why he's nervous or concerned about expanding Western and or American influence. And forgive me if that's an offensive question, but I'm just trying to be fair.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:39:54] No, not offensive. And I'm not, as you all know, not an expert and a historian. But there are a couple major differences. And first is that Ukraine has no nuclear weapons and it was not even close to being in NATO yet or in the European Union yet. Yes, the Ukrainians were working towards that. And also he has more weapons than anybody else anywhere. There's no way Ukraine in any coalition with NATO or European Union would ever be able to compete with him. And also he's right now very actively trying to take over all of Ukraine. And that's what all the analyses of people who are experts in the field are saying. That from what he has been saying for years and what he has been doing in the last, well, since 2014, but more so in the last two weeks, he wants to take over the land of Ukraine. And if he does that, isn't he putting, you know, if Ukraine were to get incorporated into Russia, wouldn't he be putting his own border right up to existing NATO states and EU countries, I'm not sure how that would help him to have this buffer that he wants to have. There's also just no way for anyone to tell other sovereign nations who can and can't join what alliance. And Ukraine has shown zero provocation. There has been zero signs that Ukraine wants to hurt Russia in any way. Like, you can dig really deeply. There's been no military move. There have been no aggressions toward that. So he is using that. Sure. As his narrative that he finds Ukraine as a threat militarily or, you know, as someone who's courting with the idea of joining NATO, I just don't see any evidence that that is an actual threat.

John Dehlin [02:42:17] Okay. Okay. Thank you for responding to that question. Okay, so now I think I've answered. All right. Asked all my urgent questions about your experiences in. Do you say the Ukraine or Ukraine?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:42:29] So it's Ukraine.

John Dehlin [02:42:30] Okay.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:42:31] Without the. And I know that it's.

John Dehlin [02:42:33] I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:42:34] It is now thought of as a derogatory thing. So I'm an. I've been an educator of the. No, the. Before Ukraine. Since 1997.

John Dehlin [02:42:43] I'm so sorry.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:42:45] It's okay. I. I think most of the time you said Ukraine. I think they only caught it when once or twice.

Nemo [02:42:49] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:42:49] Okay.

Nemo [02:42:50] Okay.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:42:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:42:51] Is there a history in why the article has been included there?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:42:55] Yeah. So grammatically, the article. I apologize for the noise. Grammatically, the article was used when people talked about the Ukrainian Socialist Republic and as Ukraine, implying that it is a part of a large, larger whole. When it is an independent. When it's an independent, sovereign nation, it's just Ukraine.

John Dehlin [02:43:24] Got it. Okay. I'm gonna try and I'm gonna.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:43:27] I know it's hard to rewire those.

John Dehlin [02:43:29] Rewire my brain, because I don't. It's just like when you say transgendered, you never say that. You say transgender. And I. I was able to fix that. I'm gonna fix it. It's not. It's. It's always Ukraine. Okay, thank you. Okay, so your family decides to come back to the United States, but not fleeing, thinking that war was imminent, Correct?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:43:49] Absolutely not.

John Dehlin [02:43:50] Okay.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:43:50] That was not in any part. There was not part of the equation at all. We moved there when the war was going on, and it had not escalated in the time that we were there. We left because of. We were running out of money. We had saved a lot of. I shouldn't say a lot. We had saved certain amount of money that when we're in Ukraine, when we do anything that's extra, like we would travel to neighboring countries, participate in various things. So anything outside of maintaining just daily life, we had extra money for that. And we were running out of it because we had only planned on two years. And here we. We were two and a half years in. We still had some, but it was running low. I also teach for a community college here in Oregon. That is a valuable job for me. And after a certain time, I wouldn't be able to return to it. If it was only those two things, I think we would have figured it out somehow because we were having a good experience and wanted to stay longer. But it was also a year into the pandemic and because of some health issues in my family and the fact that there was no light at the end of the tunnel and no vaccine on the horizon in Ukraine, at least for a few more months. It was hard to tell at this point when it would be, if it would come that we made the decision to return. And it was a hard decision to come back earlier.

John Dehlin [02:45:23] Yeah. Because you had grown to love it, Is that right?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:45:27] Yeah. And also it was this. We had promised the kids that we would be there for two years, then we would come back to their grandparents and cousins who are all in the United States. I was worried that if we stayed there for long enough to be like, really comfortable and we just decided to stay for forever, that at some point they might be upset with me. The way that I went through a period of being upset, upset with my parents for bringing me to the US and telling me it will be two years, never really returned, planning to return in the first place. So it was really difficult to know what the right thing to do was. But the war at the time, so this is a year ago, did not play into that equation to come back.

Leaving the Mormon Church and Reflecting on It

John Dehlin [02:46:15] Okay, okay, so you come back here and then what do you want to share? And by then, by the time you come back to the United States, you guys were done with. With the Mormon Church in terms of active participation and. And all of that.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:46:31] That's right. And even before we went to Ukraine, there were probably a three year period where we were very sporadic in our attendance or participation. And when we left for Ukraine, it was completely zero. And when we returned, we did not have any plans to return back to church, and we have not returned back to church. We've had some people from our. Because we moved back to the same house that we were in before. We had some ward members come and visit and Invite us back. And the missionaries, we have not gone back. And in that time I was surprised that many people we knew, at least like multiple people that we knew in that time, have also stopped participating in the Mormon Church. And a few close friends who are still Mormon. We are on friendly terms, just don't see them as often because we're not the same activities. But it's been pretty friendly. There's some awkwardness with my husband's family and they have doubled down on their dedication to religion. So when we get together it's a little more religious than it was before we left. But other than that it has been okay. I mean, we're in Portland. Maybe it would be different if we lived in Utah, but no issues. Yeah, it's been good. And there has been no point in the last few years. There's been no point in time where we even considered that thought that we may have made the wrong decision for our family

John Dehlin [02:48:13] to become Mormon or to

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:48:14] come back from Ukraine to, to leave the Mormon Church. There was a part of me that thought I, I didn't think I would ever regret that. But there was a part of me that thought that my husband might, after living outside of his childhood and cultural like religion, religious experience, that he might have some regrets about leaving. But the only the opposite has been true.

John Dehlin [02:48:45] So I'm thinking about how hard your parents fought to keep you from joining the church and how they probably didn't raise you to join a church like the Mormon Church. And then how much you probably strained and, or sacrificed your relationship with your family to join. How to what extent was there kind of some eating, some humble pie or apologies or embarrassment on your part to try and maybe explain to your parents or your, your grandparents that they were right or you were sorry or how do we rebuild or were they just thrilled and just welcomed you back? What was that reconciliation like?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:49:31] Yeah, so one of the things that we had, even though it's Mormon, we started building a pretty good relationship. That was particularly strengthened after I had kids. And I've heard this from other people too. And also my parents were living on the east coast and I was here. The distance helps in sometimes making a relationship better between family members. And they were so invested in my kids and they were extremely impressed by my husband's involvement in my kids lives. I worked part time, but I worked a significant part time at the local college and my husband did everything when I was gone. That means cooking and cleaning, putting babies to sleep, changing diapers, everything. It was a very good partnership. And they were extremely impressed by that and they assigned it to them, a lot of it to the Mormon ness in him. That because there's such strong family values, he is a really good father and really attentive to me and my needs as well. And I think there's a part of that that is true. A lot of it is I was a hardliner of like, I'm not doing this. I'm all domestic and you just go to work and then relax. So my parents grew warmer to the Mormon Church. By the time I was leaving, there was an element of them being worried for me again because they said, well, you look like you're in a really good place in your life and your relationship with your husband, your kids, and you have support. Are you going to be okay? And they were a little bit worried for me to leave the Mormon Church. And I will say that I absolutely apologized for what I put them through and that now as a parent and as someone who has been an immigrant to Ukraine from the United States, as an adult, I realized how hard things were for them and how much. How selfish I was as a teenager. And they said, yeah, you know, that's fine. They were very forgiving. And I also maybe justified myself by saying that I wouldn't be where I am now if I didn't take that step to do the Mormon thing. Like, it was very much just my thing at. And it was a huge risk. And it's something that kind of severed my ties from my family in many painful ways. But a benefit of it is becoming an independent adult that sometimes we may not have opportunities for becoming our own person. That's not just living in that current, the river current of life that we were born into. And then when were older kind of being like, wait, did I even choose any of this life? Did I even want any of these things? I feel like I started doing that earlier because of the Mormon interest that I had. And even when they cut me off financially somewhat, I stood on my own two feet. So there were some very, very positive things. And they admit that they think that was a positive thing for me. I'm not a religious person now though, so it's not like I'm going back to my Ukrainian Catholicism and being religious in general. So it's a. They were glad that I was a Mormon, but also worried and also like, well, the Mormons, I guess, aren't so bad because you had a good life in it and your kids are loved and your husband is great. So it was a mixed bag, but it was very Hard for me to eat the humble pie and go to them and say, I know I put you through hell to do this, and now I'm leaving this thing. And you were right about all the Kingdom of the Cults points. Those are actually accurate. I'm sorry I didn't listen to you. They kind of laughed at me for that. But we're good.

Did the Church Deceive or Mislead Her

John Dehlin [02:53:54] Do you feel like. Do you feel like the Mormon Church deceived or misled you or wielded undue influence in their recruitment of you as. Let's say. I don't want to characterize you as vulnerable because just because you were an immigrant and didn't speak English as your first language, you were also very smart and well educated, came from a great family, et cetera, et cetera. But do you feel like you were either misled or deceived or coerced or misled in your recruitment into the Church?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:54:34] I am careful to. Not to take most of the responsibility on myself. I am, in retrospect, as a parent now, I'm a little surprised by the actions of my friend's parents in encouraging me to kind of disobey my parents and culture of origin. That was maybe a little. And I don't want to characterize them in any kind of a negative light because I know that meant well and they were supportive in many really important and helpful ways. But it was definitely like, it's okay to sneak around and maybe not tell your parents the full truth if you're doing this Mormon thing. And I am surprised by that and frustrated. It's really hard to regret anything because I don't know where I would be if I never went down this meandering, meandering path. So I feel relatively at peace with my Mormon journey. I probably wouldn't have had kids as young or as close together. That was a big thing that I felt like I should do to be a good Mormon. That's one thing that you can't undo and like, oh, I'll just wait and have these kids later. Now you can't change any of it because there are certain life decisions about my career and educational goals that got shifted because of this. But again, I kind of. It's easier. I think it's easier for me to move forward and to have a more positive future if I take as much of the experience, as much of it on my own responsibility as I can and say that this is just how things go and you live and learn. But there is a little. It's a little. It's a little off And I will say I'm a little concerned that my kids might get, you know, all their cousins and family members and who they love are in the Mormon Church. So we'll see how they wield their powers in recruiting or sorry, you know, the, to, to get my kids to maybe come to church when they're teenagers. I hope not, but my mom would probably say I deserved it.

John Dehlin [02:56:59] Well, what's complicated is that it's developmentally normal for a teen or a young adult to differentiate from their parents. That's actually your job. And so if you were to raise just like your parents, your parents didn't raise you Mormon or even super Christian per se. And whatever happened, happened, you joined the Mormon Church and that was just what happened. You could raise your kids atheist or agnostic as just one example. And what might very well happen is they'll rebel and find something else to kind of use to express their individuation or differentiation. And so this is just a tricky thing about life is that teens are gonna, they're supposed to differentiate. And you just. I, I do like to say sometimes there are worse things than Mormonism. There are worse ways you could have rebelled or differentiated.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:58:02] Right, Absolutely. And so, and I've learned the lesson that sometimes the more we push, the more we push them away. So I need to remember that lesson and be open, open minded to their journey.

John Dehlin [02:58:16] Yeah, we call that the backfire effect. And sometimes it's a real thing. So overall, I'm guessing if you're happy with your family, with your spouse, with your kids, and you're feeling okay now, maybe you feel okay about having join the church overall.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [02:58:38] Yeah, because I can't, I can't separate it from, from the things that I do with, I do with what I do. Like sometimes it's harder for me to actually be happy about having been moved to the United States and the, the path that that took me down and I had no control over that, and it's always grass is greener on the other, on the other side. I feel like I could have contributed a lot of positive things to, to Ukraine more so than here, because if you're in a place where you're needed more, it's easier to make a bigger impact. And I would be in that culture of origin. It's a, could be a powerful thing. So sometimes it's hard when I look back at that turn off or that off ramp of my life, but when I've just returned back to live in Ukraine and talked to my Ukrainian friends, they're like, you yeah, don't think about it that way because you have no idea what it would have been like if you stayed. And it could have been. It could have been worse. And maybe you are contributing now. And look, I am sharing this story with you about Ukraine and that's something I wouldn't have been able to do probably, if I stayed in Ukraine and never been Mormon. So trying to just accept it, what is. And enjoy what I can.

John Dehlin [03:00:04] Yeah, yeah. And I'm imagining on the one hand, you feeling grateful that at some extent you're. I mean, we'll talk about this, that you're not in the middle of a war zone right now and, or a refugee. But on the other hand, you probably, I would imagine, feel some survivor or some, some guilt that, that now you're here and there's a lot of other people suffering. But, but before we get to that, I guess what, what would you like to now say just about the, the recent events and, and the events that led up to the recent events just so that we can now kind of put the Mormon stuff aside and just talk about Ukraine and the Ukrainian people in Russia and what it's been like for you to see the past few weeks unfold.

Nemo [03:00:55] Yeah,

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [03:00:57] it has been absolutely awful. And it's more than just the conflict right now. It's more than the invasion and destruction that is happening right now, which is huge, and I can't even process that. But the bigger part of it is the kind of generational trauma that this triggers. It's almost like being in an incredibly abusive relationship that you escape. And then when you think you're like so far away from that, you somehow get forced back into living with that abuser again and thinking that this might be for decades, like, what will we lose not just in terms of human life, but culturally? What will those kids lose as far as education and health care and opportunities? It's so traumatizing to think that this could now last for years. And then there's no way militarily that Ukraine can withstand a Russian invasion. They are the biggest military in the world. And we are not, because we're a small country. I mean, as far as size, we're about the size of Texas. And although it is the biggest country in Europe, that is fully in Europe in terms of area, we do not have the biggest military because we have never been a colonial power. Zero goals to invade anything or anybody.

John Dehlin [03:02:47] So

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [03:02:50] I worry about the long term effects of this. And after all these people have died and suffered and tried to preserve this identity and culture, and the freedom to lose it or live in this horrible phase for decades like we did during the Soviet Union. That's really upsetting. And of course, the invasion now is entirely unprovoked. Nothing. I tried to read up on some more recent European conflicts like Kosovo and the Yugoslavian conflicts since World War II in the 90s and early 2000s. And those were really horrible, hard events that traumatizing to people and cities, full cultures. When you look at the beginning of those events, there was always a little bit like somebody killed someone or someone, you know, cut off some deal. There was a little bit of a back and forth. And when we look back at this particular event, there really was no provocation of any kind. Even when there was fighting going on on the Ukraine Russia border since 2014, Ukraine never sent any missiles or rockets into Russia at all. It was always being really, really careful to not upset this neighbor and to just still be attacked like that with zero regard for human life. And. And they're just flattening these cities, the cities that many of which have stood for a thousand years or hundreds of years, they're just getting flattened to the ground and people are being forced to flee their homes, leave everything behind. Even if it ended today, it would take years to get back to where we were. And this is so upsetting, but it's not ending today. And even if other countries provide Putin with, or, sorry, if the neighboring countries and international community provides Ukrainians with all the humanitarian aid and the weapons and the food and everything, there's still one limiting resource in this fight, and that is the humans that need to be using these weapons and who need to keep standing there up against these aggressors. And that is a finite resource. At some point it will hit a critical mass where there's just not enough people that can keep fighting for this long. And in such conditions, Ukraine still has not launched or done anything toward Russia at all.

Nemo [03:05:45] So

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [03:05:48] my brain cannot even. There's so much anger there right now. I hope that it'll pass. It's just not a healthy place to be. But there's a lot of anger and trauma that has been triggered that I didn't even personally live through, but it lives in my body as this generational trauma from my parents, grandparents and their parents.

John Dehlin [03:06:12] We're hearing two things. We're kind of hearing, just say, a US media based narrative of what led up of the billet of the buildup of the military buildup on the border of Ukraine and predictions of what was or wasn't going to happen and how things were unfold. And then we're hearing Putin give his justifications and his story and his narrative of what he's done and what has been happening. We also hear that he agrees, and I don't know if this is even true, that Putin expected to kind of just waltz in and take everything over in 48 hours. And we're hearing a lot of stories about heroics on the part of the Ukraine, Ukrainians and their resistance, and that they've made things much harder for Putin. What's your story about the buildup and then what happened and then what's happening now? To the extent that it may or may not differ from either what Putin's saying or what the mainstream media in the United States is saying, if there's anything you want to say about that, because you have friends there, you've lived there, you're from there. And I just, sometimes I don't love. You know, I, I do care about the media. I do think media is important. But I also sometimes do wonder how much I'm hearing, even from mainstream media sources in the United States is also propaganda just on our side. So is there anything you want to say about your perspective on the narrative of the buildup and of the actual what's going on on the ground now? Putin and the, and the resistance?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [03:07:52] Yeah, the, the, the narrative from Putin is. Entirely fictional reality. And it's to the point where the lies, you know, sometimes lies are based in some truth and half truths. There really so many of them are just completely not based in any reality that has been confirmed by any facts, that it's just feeding into this idea that perhaps he has completely lost his mind or maybe he is believing in his own stories. But the independent historians and journalists on the ground, who I trust, their perspective lines up with a lot of what I'm seeing from Reuters and BBC. I think it'll take years of analysis in the future to really untangle all of his. His strategics or his motivation. But it's been clear he annexed Crimea. He wanted that back. He started annexing eastern Ukraine by placing these separatists there. May have. I mean, I've told you that there were numbers of Russians that were moved into Ukraine. So there are ethnic Russians in, especially in eastern Ukraine. There probably were some that want to be united with Russia. They were in a small minority, and they got boosted by Russia's resources and more people in the East. And there's no evidence that is contrary to that. So he's been trying to grab and bite off pieces of Ukraine since 2014. And now he's deciding that because the strategies that he has been employing up until now have been working too slowly. He's just gonna go all at once and grab Ukraine back into his fold and try to re establish the glory days of Russia. I am skeptical of the media that I consume and try to go to the primary reporters, people on the ground and people who I trust. But there is nothing about Putin's narrative that lies in any fact. And there has been a lot of truth to what I'm reading in Western media and it aligns with my lived experience and the history there are still, there is history of Ukraine that has been written by non Ukrainians and non Russians. There are experts that are respected at Harvard and Yale and Oxford and other very well respected institutions. And that history is mostly what I learned as a Ukrainian. And it is completely different than what Putin is trying to convince his people of on national tv. So that's where I stand as far as the media and, and Putin's narrative.

John Dehlin [03:11:15] Yeah. And when you, when you see that misinformation that, that Putin's putting out there, where he's making it illegal to even call this a war within his own country, you know, and where he's recasting the narrative to defy all facts, then it kind of makes the recent, let's just say of the past five years here in the United States, the recent conversations about social media and news accuracy and the respectability and the importance of journalism, it kind of gives that a new layer of significance in my mind because propaganda is real and it can really, it can really impact citizen awareness and citizen motivation and the political atmosphere and political dynamics. It just, just reinforces the importance of evidence, of facts, of, of respectable journalism and the fear of fascism, the fear of propaganda and of misinformation kind of like, it's almost like a live illustration of the things many people have been fearing for the past five years in the United States. To me, not, not to make this political, not to say one party's better or to even specifically denigrate any, anyone's candidate, but just the importance of journalism and of evidence and of history and of candid, accurate information. It's, it matters.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [03:13:08] And especially since Soviet time, the Russian propaganda machine has been masterful and people are studying that in depth. And, and now with Internet, social media and all these other media for the movement of the propaganda, it's really tricky. But they're utilizing some of the same strategies in just new ways. And yeah, I think it'll take years to learn, really, where the tentacles of that propaganda got to in all kinds of events that took place in other. In other countries.

John Dehlin [03:13:51] Yeah, because. Because if you, if you read anything about the Cambridge Analytica stuff with Facebook and the way that it has been alleged that the Soviet, that Russia has been infiltrating our own political processes to have undue influence, and you think about certain new TV news reporters that have expressed a lot of sympathy for Putin and for Russia, and then a lot of politicians that seem to be closely allied or connected with Russia. If, if, if you're now troubled by Putin and Russia and the invasion of Ukraine, then you should be really paying attention to who has been speaking favorably about Putin and Russia and who has been taking money from them or trying to advocate for them here domestically. Does that not follow?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [03:14:46] Absolutely. I do agree with that 100%. I don't have anything to add because you said exactly my thoughts.

The Russo-Ukrainian War and Western Support

John Dehlin [03:14:52] Again, not to Mormon stories. We don't care if you're Republican or Democrat. There are good reasons to be conservative or liberal. And, you know, there are problems with all political candidates. It's just, if you value democracy, if you don't want fascism or tyranny, then these, these are really important things to be considering, you know, And I hope

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [03:15:17] that this tragic event will maybe unite a little bit the, the sides of this political spectrum in the Western world, because we are all seeing this, and there are a lot of things we can agree on. No matter where you are on the political spectrum, there are a lot of things we agree on. Like, you don't overtake a sovereign country. You don't kill a bunch of civilians. You don't cause war crimes. Just a lot of things we do agree with. And maybe we can work backwards of, like, how did these things, how could have these things happen in the 21st centuries? And what do we have in place to prevent that from happening again? Maybe that will be something that will unite us across the political spectrum.

John Dehlin [03:16:08] Yeah. And just personally, I've been grateful to see what I appear, what I perceive to be bipartisan denunciation of Putin and the invasion of Ukraine. You know, even to the point of Lindsey Graham, which may or may not be appropriate, but like saying that someone should take Putin out. I'm not, I'm not calling for that. I'm just saying I'm, I'm grateful that I've seen bipartisan denunciation of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And I don't pay attention to a lot of the political stuff on the media these days, but Is that, how has that been for you?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [03:16:51] Yeah, it has been a drop of positive in this sea of horrific that the world is supportive of Ukraine and me thinking back to 1997, when I moved back or when I, when I moved to the United States and I'm asked to introduce myself and where are you from? Ukraine. And no one has any clue where that is. People were guessing Africa and South America. You know, like places where we don't know where anything is is what the kids would be saying for years. And now people know where Ukraine is and how it's relevant. It's horrible that this is what it, this is the reason for it. But I am grateful for the support from a lot of places and a lot of countries from different political ideologies that this war is not, is not okay and should end as soon as possible.

John Dehlin [03:17:51] So about that support. As I'm, as I'm trying to track the news coverage, I've felt several things. I've felt like, man, is Zelensky going to be okay? Is he hiding from multiple assassination attempts? Are we doing all we can to protect the leader of this sovereign country? And I mean we, the United States, NATO, bordering countries, like what will we be able to live with ourselves if something happens to Zelensky and we didn't do everything we could to protect him? That's one thought. I have second thought is like as, as they're like is there, is there literally launching missiles at nuclear, nuclear power plants and taking over and seizing now as I understand it, three nuclear power plants in Ukraine, that's a disaster. But then I'm also, when you hear Zelensky saying protect our, the fly zone and can you keep, can you at least patrol our airspaces so the Russians don't have free reign of the airspace and NATO doesn't seem to be wanting to step up to that level. And even the United States, we send money, we, we say we support. But like why aren't I can, you know, on the one hand I'm like, why aren't just all the countries bringing all their military into Ukraine and just saying Russia, no, we were not going to go into Russia, but we're going to protect Ukraine and we'll send our tanks and our planes and our anti aircraft missiles, we'll send them into Ukraine to protect this sovereign country and to protect Zelensky. I don't understand why we're not doing that other than we don't want a full scale world war. And if we do that, it could trigger a full scale world war. Tell Me how you process the degree of support and or lack of support from the United States and other European nations.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [03:20:03] Yeah, the support. There's a lot of verbal support, right? There's a lot of verbal support. There is a lot of material support that has come in from some countries in the form of weapons and money that is significant. I don't think Ukraine would have been able to hold off as long as we have without it. The biggest and I understand like if you have American troops or people who are able to launch these missiles from any other country, if they launch something at the Russian aircraft, Russians will say oh, the Americans attacked Russian aircraft and that is a reason to retaliate. And then maybe Putin would go and shoot something off into Alaska. Like that is the fear. And I understand that and can, can sympathize with that for sure. The really difficult part of me of my understanding of this is that 1994 Ukraine was left with the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world as much of the Russia's. Now Russia's nuclear weapons were made in Ukraine and the world pushed for de escalation of nuclear arsenal and pushed Ukraine into a corner to give up all nuclear weapons that Ukraine had. And Ukraine did this because they wanted to be moving toward being an equal partner in the Western world, in Europe and potentially join NATO and European Union which was still far away from that. But that was the hope. Hope and the Good Faith act is okay, we will give up nuclear weapons because of this longer term goal. And in return, United States, United Kingdom and Russia made the promise that this Budapest memorandum that they would protect Ukraine if its borders were ever threatened. I don't know how you can possibly say that. This is not the time. Of course it was not spelled out in this memorandum that they would send in troops. But what it looks to me is that any country, whether it's North Korea or Iran or anyone else, Venezuela who are wanting to make their own nuclear weapons and United States or anyone tells them no, don't do it. Only we and these other guys are allowed to have nuclear weapons. You shouldn't have and you don't need them. I mean, you don't need them. We will protect you or any other deal that they might want to make with these countries to try to de escalate the nuclear weapon development. That's just not going to fly. Because what it looks like right now is that if you do not have nuclear weapons, people will do this to you. And even maybe if you do have nuclear weapons, they will do this to you and everybody will Stand around and kind of watch, maybe like hand you tools, but they will stand there and watch. I would like to be there to be the least amount of weapons in the world possible. I don't want this to be our reality, but it is. The message that we're sending to the world is that if you yourself do not have nuclear weapons and you don't have an ability to protect yourself from these possible invaders, attackers, bullies, then there's nothing that we're going to do about it. And since you have to stand on your own, you got to do whatever you need to do. And that may mean build your own nuclear weapons. So the no fly zone and the boots on the ground, I understand the rationale against that. But what will be the future consequence if Ukraine is leveled down to the ground? If Russia takes over and forcibly makes Ukraine be a part of this neo Soviet Union or employ this puppet government and force its own agenda on the country? What does this mean for the future of democracy and sovereignty? It's upsetting to think about and it's upsetting that because we gave up our nuclear weapons and trusted that there would be help. None of that's not, I mean there is help. I don't want to sound ungrateful, there is a lot of help and Ukraine is standing strong because of that help. But I just don't see, even with the help and all the determination and the freedom loving and all the sacrifice from the Ukrainian people, I still don't see that being able to withstand Russia, who they have way more people, not to mention weapons. And look at the history of World War II or even World War I. Russian government never cared how many Russians are lost in these conflicts. They have a lot of people and they're not caring for their military personnel as well as the Germans did during World War II. So they're just going to keep sending and Ukraine's going to run out of that critical number of people who are able to use these weapons, who are able to stand up against these tanks and what's going to happen then? So I feel as ambivalent about the support and lack of support as was evident that you do in your question. And I don't have the answer to that. But of course on like a purely emotional level, I feel like, yeah, people who care about freedom and democracy need to step in. This is not a regional, this is not a regional conflict or a civil war. This is a country who is a bully, came and just totally attacked, unprovoked a smaller sovereign nation. And apparently it's okay to do that sanctions work, but sanctions take a long time to work, and I don't know what's going to happen in the meantime. And it's upsetting to think about.

John Dehlin [03:26:41] Yeah. And we just need to look to history, because if you think about Hitler, when he rises to power, at first it's Austria with the Anschlutz, and then it's the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia. And, and it's not like this is Putin's first invasion, as you, as you mentioned before, before, before Ukraine, he invaded other parts of Ukraine. Right. And.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [03:27:06] And he invaded Georgia. In 2008. There was an invasion of Georgia, and there have been two parts that are now under Russian control and have been annexed. He's also had his tentacles in Syria and several other places. It's been very evident to contribute to global destabilization and chaos with zero regard for the loss of life. And it's continuing on. And I know that right now it's like, well, if he levels down Ukraine, and Ukraine's completely destroyed, maybe in a few years he will come and attack the Baltic states, but maybe by that time we'll be ready and then we'll all step in and fight. And it feels sad to be the people who are like the disposable country that, well, it's okay if he completely destroys them. We'll step in if he gets this far. It's sad.

John Dehlin [03:27:59] I'm so sorry. So I guess, I guess to make this a little bit more human, you know, humane and personal, we've got the refugee. Well, we've got the soldiers, the Ukrainian soldiers that are trying to fight. It almost feels like with, like tractors, they're fighting tanks. But, you know, of course they're getting some military support. And they have their own, whatever military weaponry they already have. But, but, but they're supporting the soldiers. And then there's the humanitarian crisis and all the refugees. So, you know, there's the charity that we began this show talking about. I think there are ways that, that we can support the, the Ukrainian soldiers. And then also there's, you know, there's a lot of friends of mine, Americans, that are just saying, how can we support? We don't want to give charity in ways that will be thrown away or misused. So I've even my dear friend Sam Young recently said, john, how do we, how do we help? How do we support. So what do you, what do you want to talk about? How we can support the war efforts on the Ukraine side. And then if there's anything you know, about how we can support the humanitarian refugee crisis. Anything you want to say there?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [03:29:19] Yeah, as far as supporting the military, it's really not so black and white. Who's the military and who is the non military? Humanitarian support, the military was a certain size in Ukraine that is size for this country and maybe bigger because they've been fighting in the east since 2000. Sorry, 2014. But there are a lot of people right now who are going in and enlisting to volunteer to fight without prior experience, because they just need more people for a conflict of this scale. So this organization that I am working with is to support those people. It's not sending these armory vests and helmets to the military per se. It's to support these units of volunteers that are stepping in right now, signing up, getting some very basic training, and they're maybe given weapons, but they don't have any body protection. And I am working with this Ukrainian American coordinating council to ship these things, these vests and helmets to the Ukrainians who are volunteering, who until a week ago were just regular civilians walking around and their family members are all needing humanitarian assistance. There are a lot of charities that you're all probably familiar with, like Save the Children and Red Cross, that do good work and have been all over social media collecting funds for support of Ukrainians with various overhead. This organization I'm collecting money for, there really is all of the people working to collect the money, buy the helmets, distribute them. They're all volunteers. So other than paying for the gas that's actually transporting these things from one place to another, it's all going directly to help people. So if someone wants to help financially, I would very much appreciate considering this fundraiser. And if not, please donate to a humanitarian charity that you personally maybe have had an experience with and that you trust and specify that you want it to go to helping Ukrainian refugees or the Ukrainian humanitarian needs right now.

John Dehlin [03:32:03] And the. The link that we're providing in the YouTube and Facebook comments is to helmets and armory vests for the European defenders. And it's a Facebook link that then allows you to donate. And we at the Open Stories foundation just made a donation, and we call in our listeners and viewers to support that or any other effort that that is worthy. But let's find a way to end this war and to protect the sovereignty of Ukraine. When Nemo was sort of giving a chant, that's a chant I wasn't familiar with. Can you tell me what he was saying there and what it means?

Closing Reflections and Slava Ukraini

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [03:32:44] Yeah, and there's no, like, Hand gesture to it. He just added it, and I went along with it. The chant has no. No gesturing. Slava Ukraini means. If you translate it literally, it means glory to Ukraine. It doesn't have the same vibe, saying those words in English, but it just means, like, we're gonna survive. Like, we're doing this. And it's been used for at least four or five generations since. I think it goes back earlier than this, but it's become really common after World War I, when Ukraine was actively trying to gain independence in 2018. It's been going for a long time, and there have been a lot of lives lost. So it just means Slava ukraini means this. Glory to Ukraine are like, we're doing this. We're hoping for freedom. And the response is herojam Slava. And it's glory to its heroes. Again, different vibe in the language translation, but it means like, and we support the people who are doing this.

John Dehlin [03:33:51] I love it. I love it. Thank you for that. Courtney just wrote in and said thanks to Mormon Stories. We want to thank Courtney because my dear friend Courtney is the one that reached out to us and told us about you, Ksenia and of course, Gerardo helped make it happen behind the scenes. So I want to thank Courtney. How did. Remind us how you met Courtney?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [03:34:13] Courtney and I met at church.

John Dehlin [03:34:16] Before you went to Ukraine or after you came back?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [03:34:18] Yes, years before we went to Ukraine. Courtney and I were in the same ward, and we were also members and are still members of the same book club that was mostly all Mormon women, and they are now all not Mormon women.

John Dehlin [03:34:35] It sounds like reading is dangerous to Mormonism. Is that what you're saying? Apparently women. Women getting together and reading and talking about books does not bode well for the Mormon Church.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [03:34:45] Apparently, these were outspoken, deep thinkers type of women.

John Dehlin [03:34:49] Well, Courtney and Danny and Logan and the entire family have been good friends to me and to Mormon stories. So love you, Courtney and Danny and Logan and other children that have come after. And. Yeah. And, Ksenia, you are just so thoughtful, so intelligent, so graceful. Your story is so amazing. It's Mormon, it's post Mormon, it's Ukrainian, and it's just gorgeous and lovely and inspiring. We want to give you the last word of whatever else you want to say that you don't feel you've said either about Ukraine or Mormonism or post Mormonism. What. What would you like to say that we haven't asked you about or given you a chance to say?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [03:35:34] I've really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so Much, of course, to Courtney and to you, John, to Nemo and everybody who's behind the scenes participating this podcast. And the discussions that have taken place with your guests were a part of my story that didn't mention, but I was a listener when I was going through the act of figuring out which way I'm going to go days. What I want to say is that. I'm just overwhelmed and emotional about the state of the world. But I do have a hope that good and freedom will prevail. And I know that that is a common hope of all Mormons and non Mormons and people across the isles and across continents. And I appreciate anyone who can support, whether by reposting or sharing or liking or donating. I would really appreciate you considering that if someone is interested in some of the historical stuff we've talked about. There are two great books that I recommend by Anne Applebaum. Applebaum is how you pronounce called the Red Famine that talks about Stalin trying to exterminate Ukrainians in the 30s. And there is a great book called Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder that is about the kind of World War II, just a little bit before World War II and after Ukraine and the area around Ukraine, all those political and social and just general historical perspective for any of you. Both are American authors that I really respect. Thank you for this opportunity to share my story and I hope to stay in touch.

John Dehlin [03:37:42] Yeah. And Jen's getting already getting those links to those books in the show notes. I also listened, I hope I don't know if you endorse this or not. I love Fresh Air, the podcast on npr. And just in the past couple days, Terry Gross had Michael Kimage on to talk about how the war between Russia and Ukraine might end. But I found it to be a really, really thoughtful and interesting treatment of that, that the, the entire conflict. So we're gonna include that in the show notes along with the book she you just recommended. And Kia, I hope to meet you in person someday.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [03:38:20] Yeah. When you're in Portland. I would love to, to join you and Courtney and Danny.

John Dehlin [03:38:25] We'll do it. We'll do, we'll do a Portland Thrive or something one of these days.

Nemo [03:38:29] All right.

John Dehlin [03:38:30] Well, this has been amazing. I want to thank Jen Camp for handling the show notes and the time codes behind the scenes again. Gerardo, Courtney and everyone. And I want to get this right. So is it with Slava Ukraine?

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [03:38:43] Slava Ukraini.

John Dehlin [03:38:46] Slava Ukraine. Yeah, I'm gonna say it. Slava Ukraini, hero. I am Slava all Right. Well, we had Mormon Stories wish you and your people all the best. And we're all. We're all one, really. There is no. There is no far away like this affects all of us. So I hope we can get as a humankind to the place where we feel like we're all family. We're all in this together.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [03:39:16] You know, I agree. I agree with that. Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:39:19] But until then, we wish you and your people all the best and please stay in touch. Ksenia.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [03:39:25] Thanks, John.

John Dehlin [03:39:26] Yeah, and thanks for. That's almost four hours. You didn't even take a break. So go take a break. Thanks, Ksenia.

Ksenia Andrukhiv Everton [03:39:35] Thanks. Bye. Bye.

John Dehlin [03:39:35] Okay, take care. All right, everyone, thanks so much for joining us today on Mormon Stories podcast. Hope you've enjoyed this episode. We're so honored that we could talk about Ukraine in a thoughtful way and have such a delightful guest. Thanks to everyone who makes Mormon Stories in the Open Stories foundation possible. We couldn't do this without your support. And we're able to pay for Jen and Kara Burrell and Gerardo and Jennifer and Brooklyn. We're able to do all this because of donors who make all this possible. So we're really grateful for a fantastic 2021, and we want to be able to continue with the momentum the, the growth that we've had on TikTok in 2021. Thanks to Kara, our YouTube growth, our Instagram gram growth, we are making an exponentially large difference. If you think Mormon Stories was Impactful Prior to 2021, 2021 has been an exponentially impactful year. Again, Gerardo and Brooklyn and Kara have been really important parts of that. 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