RUSSIAN MUSICIAN-MISSIONARY RETURNS TO AREA CHURCHES

Charleston Gazette
January 14, 2009, Wednesday
West Virginia

Olga Petrosyan, the young, Russian woman who has performed and spoken
several times in the area, is returning to West Virginia for a visit
and will be appearing at local churches this month.

The 24-year-old, gifted and talented musician from Volgograd, Russia,
will be singing and sharing her testimony of how God continues to
work in her and her family’s lives.

When she was a small girl, they were forced to flee from the tiny
country where they lived to keep from being killed by the government
military.

There was a time in Petrosyan’s life when she feared to make as much
as a single sound.

She can recall a horrifying night when she was only 4 years old
in Azerbaijan, a part of the former Soviet Union which is bounded
by Iran on the south, by the Caspian Sea on the east, by Russia’s
Dagestan Republic on the north and by Armenia on the west.

During the late 1980s, ethnic Armenians in the Nagorno-Karabakh
region of Azerbaijan had pressed for its unification with Armenia,
leading to a guerrilla war.

Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, a large-scale conflict
broke out between Azerbaijan and Armenia in 1992.

Even though they were Armenian by blood, the Petrosyans had lived in
Azerbaijan and spoke only the native Azeri and Russian languages.

Petrosyan sometimes describes the terror in the night – the knock at
the door. Azeri extremists were going from house to house, searching
out ethnic Armenians for extermination. Discovery would mean death.

Then, an Azeri neighbor spoke to the gunmen and rescued the family
from the prospect of imminent death.

Shortly after that, Olga’s family joined a flood of refugees crossing
the border. Then the family moved north to Volgograd, formerly known
as Stalingrad, where Olga’s grandparents had a home.

Her grandmother attended regularly the church services in a local
theater there, and, in those circumstances, despair was transformed
into hope for the family. At age 11, she became a Christian at a
Nazarene Youth Camp.

Petrosyan wanted to go to school in America, but the cost was far
beyond the means of the $100 per month of family income.

Then a letter came, offering a $10,000 scholarship. An Indiana family
offered to sponsor part of her college education here in the United
States.

But Petrosyan had to match it for the $20,000.

She succeeded. Other families supported her with gifts totaling $8,000.

She paid the balance by work on campus and personal ministry in the
United States.

Petrosyan graduated from Bethel College with a Vocal Performance degree
and is now serving as minister of music for a church in Copenhagen,
Denmark, and as a missionary.

To hear and meet this young lady who is using her talents for the
glory of God, plan to attend one of the following:

– Sunday, Jan. 18: South Charleston First Church of the Nazarene,
10:45 a.m.; Grace Church of the Nazarene, South Charleston, 6 p.m.

– Sunday, Jan. 25: Forrest Burdette United Methodist Church, Hurricane,
8:30 and 11 a.m.; Poca Baptist Church, 6 p.m.

– Tuesday, Jan. 27: Putnam Rotary Club, noon, Wellington’s at
Scarlet Oaks.

Olga Petrosyan of Volgograd, Russia, will sing and share her personal
testimony at three area churches during January.