Igor Bandura is a pastor and Senior Vice-President of the Baptist Union of Ukraine. He recently visited the UK to speak at conferences organised by the Slavic Gospel Association.
JT: Igor, tell us about your background. How did you come to faith?
IB: I was born in 1970 in Ternopil, western Ukraine. My grandfather was the first Christian in our family. He became a local Baptist pastor, and I have a memorable photograph of him holding a big Bible, standing by a river as people dressed in white robes were awaiting baptism. That photo had a strong influence on me, spiritually, as I became a teenager and thought more about my own relationship with God.
My parents worked hard to teach me the truths of the Bible. We had prayers and Bible reading at home. But openly practising the Christian faith was difficult because Ukraine was part of the Communist Soviet Union at the time.
