By Michael Holtzman, Staff Writer, The Call, WoonsocketCall.com
Woonsocket, Rhode Island, USA, Sunday, July 27, 2003

North Smithfield -- As college junior John Charest readies to embark on a potentially life-altering missionary trip to the former Soviet Union's wheat basket, to the Ukraine, where his great-grandparents were born, he sits beside his priest and reflects at the end of a long interview.

"I love helping people. I think going on this trip," he says with a warm smile, "will really be a big test on how much I like helping people."

He knows the comforts of his life in suburban North Smithfield will be far afield in this part of the world.

Yet, in important ways, his two-week journey in August with five other young adults of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church -- three of them from the Woonsocket parish -- fits all of his aspirations.

They will work in a couple of orphanages in Ukrainian cities, including Kiev close to Chernobyl, where they will help ease the pain of children born with deformities and other birth defects from the radiation that reached the rivers and drinking water after that nuclear catastrophe on April 26, 1986.

Exposed to radioactivity 100 times greater than the Hiroshima atomic bomb, the nuclear reactor failure affected an estimated 15 million people, and 10 years later babies were still being born without limbs or eyes.

This youth mission will be with orphaned children whose parents are unable or unwilling to provide for them, where volunteerism is as foreign as these young Americans coming to help, not quite sure what they will find.

"Knowing it's going to tear my heart out to see these kids makes me nervous," Charest says.

Last summer Charest worked at the Rehabilitation Hospital of Rhode Island in his hometown of North Smithfield, owned by Landmark Medical Center. Some of the therapy he learned may be applicable to help these children. He's seen photos of the therapy equipment they will be asked to use.

"I'm going to be an elementary school teacher," said Charest, 20, majoring in elementary education with a concentration in theater arts at Rhode Island College. When Ukrainian Archbishop Antony of the diocese center in South Bound Brook, N.J., told him last year about this mission-- the first of its kind carried out by college-age adults, Charest believed "everything just fit with this trip."

Strongly involved since childhood with St. Michael's Ukrainian Orthodox Church on Harris Avenue in a way that carries its own unique story, Charest shared his desires with Archbishop Antony. "I wanted to explore my roots," he said. "My grandparents -- with the last name Teper -- came over through Ellis Island. So I was excited to go over to the Ukraine, to explore and maybe see some of the villages my family came from."

A tour of adult parishioners last fall to this country of 54 million people between Poland and Russia near the Black Sea, the first former Soviet block member, in 1991, to break from the mother country during the fall of communism, held great potential, said Charest and his priest, the Rev. John Harvey.

It was a tour to remember the two artificial famines imposed by Stalin that killed 8 million Ukrainian people during the early 1920s and early 1930s. It was a time the kulaks, the small farmers that owned property, were brutally targeted by the government for not fitting the communist system. All their food was taken away under an enforced famine, said Harvey.

Charest recalled watching videos of the government knocking on doors during the "famine," asking in these peasant villages if there were any dead, and seeing piles of bodies from the inhuman practices.

"The (prior) trip was so these people would not be forgotten, some had relatives, and to memorialize them," Harvey said. Charest wanted to go, but was advised to wait. During that trip the group visited two orphanages in the Ukraine. Archbishop Antony felt the church should support these orphanages and the unfortunate children living with double overwhelming hardships -- no parents and the ravages of Chernobyl.

"So this is the first group going over," Harvey said of the young adult mission. "We're hoping it will be successful, that there will be others.

"These are the pioneers going over," said an excited Harvey, inside the resplendent orthodox church, filled with golden and colorful symbols of their religion that have an aura of ancient times.

Going over with Charest are siblings Karen and John Meschisen of North Attleboro, also from this parish, along with three others from states that include Florida and Illinois. Charest has known the Meschisens for years and has shared participation with them in the church junior youth group. All three were recognized to be part of the national executive board for the youth group.

John Mechisen is a sophomore at RIC, while his sister works for CVS after graduating college.

Charest says coming from a small parish, with a single weekly liturgy, members were always close-knit, sharing morning coffees after the service. "We're used to all being close like that. That's why I think this trip is going to work out well," he said. "I know we're going to be close."

A 2000 graduate of North Smithfield High School, who now is head junior varsity coach for the boys' soccer team and assistant coach for the girls' hockey team, Charest is a familiar name in this small community.

He's a son of Richard Charest, president/CEO of the Rehabilitation Hospital of Rhode Island and chief administrative officer at Landmark Medical Center, and of Christine (Teper) Charest, postmaster in Slatersville and chairwoman of the School Committee. The family lives on Lincoln Drive and includes an older son, Gregg, a music teacher at Exeter-West Greenwich High School.

When John Charest was younger, his father was a pharmacist, usually having to work Sundays. The parents decided their sons would attend the mother's Ukrainian Orthodox Church, rather than the Catholic Church of the father's French Canadian heritage, since she was charged with bringing them.

"We kind of took on the role of orthodoxy by luck," the son says appreciatively.

He tells the amusing story of how his friends "didn't understand what orthodoxy was." They knew he wasn't Catholic or Protestant, so he must be Jewish. "No, I'm Christian," he'd explain of the world's first Christian religion.

But when they'd celebrate Easter on different dates, his friends would ask again if he was Jewish. Even their cross is different, the third bar "slanting up to Jesus' right" at his feet, rather than being straight across.

"People who know say, 'Ah, that's the Orthodox Church," Harvey says of the unique cross that's clearly visible atop the newly refurbished church exterior with a golden dome.

Harvey notes that since freedom has come to the Ukraine and other former Soviet countries, including Russia, "all religions have picked up," with churches and synagogues reopening all over that Eastern block.

On this journey, two priests will accompany the group, one who speaks Russian, the other Ukrainian. The supervisor, Natalie Kapeluck, is from Pittsburgh. While the trip sponsored by the church, each of the young adults needed to fund-raise $2,000.

They leave Rhode Island on Aug. 6 for a one-day orientation in New Jersey, and a couple of days after arriving fly first to Budapest, Hungary, about a 15-hour flight, then onto Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine.

"Right now, I'm both nervous and excited," Charest says of his trip, as the date draws nearer and the reality becomes stronger.

In a country where the black soil produces wheat as the main export, he describes the Ukraine flag, yellow and blue; yellow for the wheat, blue for the sky, he says. Of the Slavic languages, it's considered more like a romance language, with more vowels, compared to Russian.

Of his mother, who is 100 percent Ukrainian, he says, "She's jealous. She would love to go back and explore. She's excited at the same time I'm going to see the homeland. She grew up speaking the language and doing the traditions."

Christine Charest concurs. "I think it's awesome. I wish I were going," she says.

Father Harvey, who came to this parish 1+ years ago and hails from Hollywood, Calif., is impressed for another reason. "This is really something. It's totally voluntary," he says. "They're going to give of their time, give of their self and be with people, and under circumstances that are not the American standard."

There's a deeper meaning, too, for John Charest. Two years ago, he took a first step toward the priesthood when he was ordained a sub-deacon by Archbishop Anthony. He's exploring that calling, planning to enter the seminary and substitute teach after graduating from college. He has thoughts to marry before he's ordained, as permitted by Orthodoxy, should he become a priest.

Yet for now, he's thinking most about the children he will see at the orphanages in the land of his ancestry.