How can you rebuild your life in a new country with no job, no network, no roadmap. My guests today are going to share the truth about starting over in the USA after fleeing Russia. This episode is about grace, faith, and purpose, so you need to keep listening. Welcome to starting over in the USA, the Expat Woman's Guide to overcoming homesickness, embracing cultural differences, and creating a new home away from home. On this podcast, we talk about leaving behind the familiar, you know, the pangs of homesickness and culture shock to the journeys of reinventing yourself. I'm Yolanda Reshemah. And after relocating six times, I know firsthand what it's like to start from scratch, feeling like both a foreign child and a foreign adult in a new world. In this episode, you are going to learn once again why community and genuine local connections is key to making your move to the USAA success. Now it turns out that my microphone was playing up during this recording, I don't actually know why. so you might need to move a little bit closer or turn the volume up. We're very grateful that we can share our story with you this is Serge. Yeah, my husband. And it's my pleasure to be with you. And I'm Anna. We've recently moved from Russia. Welcome. Thank you. It's been how long? One year and a half. One year and a half that we live here permanently now. Oh, that's fantastic. So tell me, how did you come to be in the US for the last 18 months? What brought you here? We used to live here, I mean, like 10 years ago. We came here, tourists and uh, students. Then we went back to Russia in 2017, but before that, we came to the United States with visas. This time we had to flee our country, because of political and religious persecution. First I flew to Kurdistan Uzbekistan Stan, then Kazakhstan, us, Stan, and to the US border. Asked for political asylum. They arrested us, put us into the detention center for two months, then they lease us, and just one month ago we won our court and got asylum in the United States. Now Serge, you just summed it up in 15 seconds, there's a world of story here. I have 1,000,001 questions already. So you've had to flee your country. We can imagine something to do with the war, but I don't want to assume anything. Is it normal for them to just arrest you? Do they not go, oh really? Let's talk about what happened. Start with Russia. Why you fled in Russia. I was a pastor for many years, pastor of a Christian Pentecostal church. Russia is a Orthodox, Orthodox country. So non-Orthodox Christians are considered fanatics. I was called to police couple times and they asked me. What, what I preached I said that I, I preached the Bible. What did you preach exactly? The investigator who asked me this question was from extremist department. From what departments? Extremism. Oh, okay. So they asked me a lot of questions, then called me to, to the office again in couple months. And when the war started, and particularly when they called people to the war, they started calling me what to fight in the Army. I was afraid they would say, we'll put you in prison for extremism, or you can go to the war. You have a choice. That's what our government currently does. They offer people sometimes a choice. They wanna go to prison or you wanna go to the war. When mobilization happened and they started calling me, I realized that we had to flee our country. It took like three days to leave Russia and Flee and as a board at, at Russian border, I wasn't sure whether they would allow me to leave or not. It was like 50 50. I'd say it's, it's not that. I think it's, it's important to stress out that we were not politically agitating anyone in the church. Sergei was a regular person, a regular human being in the country, just expressing his opinion that certain things are not good in the country or what the government actually does, even expressing opinion, your personal opinion is not safe. What were you thinking whilst sergei was being called to the police, what, were you doing as, as his wife? What kind of state are you in knowing, general situation and general Conal climate in the country? I knew that calling to the police is not just a regular visit to the police. I definitely felt threatened, felt threatened to my husband, and it was a very stressful time because, we can't trust the police in our country. The police is not the facility that protects many times. It's a weapon to threaten people. So when Serge was called, I really was. Trust at the same time, I couldn't do anything because if you are doing anything, you worsen your situation and they can make up a story even bigger than they already came up with. I have to leave and in three days I left Russia we just finished building our brand new house in Russia. Oh, you just built your new home? Yes, and we, we cannot sell it. I mean, so yeah, we can't say that we planned to come to the United States, to the port of entry and ask for political, asylum. It wasn't our plan, and we definitely would not encourage people to do so. It was just a life circumstance that we had to face. So when you got to the border, let's talk about the border in Russia what do you say to them? Obviously they look at your passport, your heart is in your mouth. Am I gonna get through? Are they gonna let us pass? Are they gonna arrest him? Is that what it was like I traveled a lot and I didn't experience any issues, I visited many countries around the world, but that particular time, you know, I mean. As a passport control, woman she just was looking at my passport then at me, at my passport, and at me. Then she, she asked me, when did you buy your ticket? I said, oh, I bought it like two, three days ago she wrote down something again, was looking at my password at me, and finally she let me go. Uh, you must have been so relieved. Did both of you travel together? No, because we, we didn't know what would happen to me. I left alone and Anna, stayed back because, Sergei was a priority to leave and we didn't know if he will be able to make it and if he wouldn't be able to make it, then I had to take some actions to sort it out. Whether, whether he will be stopped at the border in Russia, whether he will be arrested. We didn't know. So I was a backup. Wow. I'm getting my head around that. I'm trying to visualize and emotionally just experience what you could possibly have been feeling. Now let's talk about life here in the us. Is it as you expected? I know you lived here before, but the circumstances now completely different. We didn't have time to plan anything honestly, because we left our country urgently and you have to start over. It's not easy, and starting over means in every possible way. Finding somewhere to live. Finding a job, even like developing your career here. We didn't have, much of American experience work experience. Serge did. Some I didn't have at all. No. Like, so it's really starting all over gui We didn't have like perfect education for American market, right? I, I'm, I'm saying no, not in our work experience. I mean, we not, we're not native speakers, all our money we had in Russia, we invested in our house, so we built a brand new modern house. When we left Russia, we had about$15,000. That's it. Okay. So all our money in our house, we left, left our house, our car, everything, and now we cannot sell our house. It's like, starting over from scratch. How is that going? The act of settling in, considering everything that you've had to go through. The weight of the immigration issue is off your plate What are your ambitions now So, I have a current job. I work as a manager here too. It's not my dream job, but still I can pay the bills and I see the United States as a country of opportunities. For example, in Russia, if you are 40, 45 years old, you are consider it too old. But here it's different. I, I feel like, so many opportunities here. Not just for business, and I want to start my ministry here to Christian ministry. Oh, I see. Probably I will. I will do, I will do here the same, starting with small group and it'll take time. But yeah, I will continue working as for a corporate world. And at the same time, I'm praying to start a small ministry here maybe like a Bible study group. I think that's a huge accomplishment because you've been here 18 months, you've gone through so much. Am so impressed because to me, from this side of the screen, it hasn't taken very long at all. I think the courage that you both have and the faith and the resilience. I'm sure there must have been so many days when you just cried and it's like, what's going on? This cannot be happening. Has my life really turned upside down? what about you, Anna? What are your ambitions? I'm trying to find a new job now. I'm working as a dental assistant. It's a completely new field for me, moving from project management to dental assistant, completely new, uh, field. I'm wishing I can find a job in my field, which is a struggle too.'Cause as Sergei mentioned, we don't have American experience. This is a part of a, a journey. And another part, and it's important part too, um, is help Sergei and his ministry to be his support in serving people and bringing the good news about Jesus to people. This is our plan. Okay. Amen to that. When you move and you become an immigrant, obviously in somebody else's land and you are trying your hardest, to become viable value part of that society. I feel, it requires you to dig so deep into your courage, resilience, tenacity, to overcome all of the challenges that you face. Language barrier, you don't have relevant skills or education, there are additional hoops to jump through, Be able to say all that stuff that happened yesterday, all of those rejections. It's okay because there isn't an option of giving up. There is no other safety net, but for the grace of God, there is just something about you having to dig so deep. You find out about yourself that you didn't know before. But I just wanted to say i'm so impressed. Thank you. Thank you. Are you enjoying being here? Life in the US Yes. We definitely do. We feel really blessed. By being here and by how things are going even how the process of settling down is we really feel blessed. Yeah. I feel myself at home. I'm at the right place. You do. What is it that's made you feel at home? You know, I remember the first day when I was released from the detention center. In San Diego and I went for a walk and said, well, I'm at home. Ah, yeah. I, I feel like I'm not afraid. I, I, even without anything at that time, was so much uncertainty at that time. I felt like I could breathe. I felt. Some kind of security. You can enjoy your country, in Russia, all your life. What people do in Russia is they build rich people, build nice houses. And they built big fences to hide their lives. Behind their fences. But here, you notice people don't build very big fences, and iron doors, so you can enjoy your city, you can enjoy your country, you can enjoy nature. What I'm doing, I'm enjoying the country. So not, just my house back in Russia, but I can enjoy the society, can enjoy the country. What about you, Anna? Definitely. All that Sergei mentioned, the United States is such a beautiful country, such beautiful weather, and the atmosphere here, the vibes here is so relaxed. On the one hand, I'm, I'm not, not, not relaxed. I'm not speaking about the necessity to think about how to earn money, but you definitely can enjoy life a little more, because unconsciously you realize you are free here, you are safe here, you can find justice here. And also what helps me, what inspires me is the community we found here. I found here really good friends, with who I can find that support and I can find. You know, comfort and I know they pray for me when I'm going through hard seasons. I know they support me. I know we can love together, we can cry together. You absolutely feel like you belong here. Yes, definitely. But you have to work hard and push hard. In what way? What do you mean by that? I mean, achieving your goals, having a nice job. You have to work hard. Is maintaining your culture something you also have to fight for for me, more important my relatives rather than my culture. I think in our situation it is very important to broaden our mind and be open to American culture. Otherwise, if we go back to our culture. What's the sense of immigration? Of course the safeness, but also immigrating to another country. At least for us, it doesn't make sense to immigrate and keep your culture tightly. If you integrate, you also integrate with local people to understand them more not all Russians I mean about 80, 90% just talk to Russian guys. Work with Russian guys. Because there's safety there, right? But even when we talked about starting a small church, we were talking about international church, not just Russian speaking church. I see. That's fantastic. I'll definitely come and check you guys out and say hi. We're trying to penetrate, Russian culture is great. We do value it. We do lot Russian literature. Russian is great history, but we also are encouraged to penetrate and Serge even, encourages me to speak English at home. Not just keep to Russian, still I feel it's easier to express my thoughts in Russian. It's much faster. Absolutely. It's the tongue. So being here has changed you. I feel like we were ready to be changed the moment that we crossed the border or we were about to ask for asylum. We were ready to accept this fact that we will need to change. So you've made friends, you've settled down you have your jobs you are working on belonging. Your family back home, are they safe? They're not very healthy because my father is 85 and I may not see my father again, so sorry. Yes. But I talk to them every week. Definitely they are safe. Um, but they definitely need to look after what they're talking about on the streets. They feel a little bit more controlled. So what's my takeaway for today? It's a few things, but most of all, that vital missing element. It's community and genuine local connections not just friendships and not just support, but the act of integrating with people outside of your cultural bubble. I love how Sergei and Anna put it so clearly they said that most Russians only talk to other Russians based on their experience, but belonging for them came when they widened their circles and this is the thing, genuine community reduces fear as Anna said, when she's having a hard time people Come and pray for her, which means that she can be vulnerable and express what she's feeling without being fearful of judgment. Community reduces fear. It reduces loneliness and isolation. It made their life in the USA feel like home. For us, we move away. We don't have our family. There's a language barrier. There's no network. There's cultural disconnection. The only way to really, truly repair that is to find authenticity in the people around you who care about you. And they don't always look as you do. Their story shows that even without local credentials or safety net, you can still build a life that is anchored in faith and sustained by community. If you set yourself deadlines and you wanted to be in a certain position by this time and you are not be encouraged. It's not too late..You can still make connections, and you can still work towards becoming whatever it is you wanted to achieve. Every accent is a testament to a journey that is unfolding. That person with that accent has a story that I've not heard. And I hope that you expat women will take time to listen and find the person and their story behind that accent, but also encourage the people around you to do the same. That's the takeaway for today. Bye-bye.