Moldovan Father Finds Hope Amid Plane Crash Tragedy

Hope is the name of his eldest child.

By Andrew McChesney, Adventist Mission

The world watched in horror when a midair plane collision killed 71 people in Germany in 2002 and, two years later, a grieving father stabbed to death an air traffic controller in retaliation.

Vladimir Shevil, who was mourning the death of his own daughter to cancer at the time, found hope amid the tragedy.

He found Jesus.

“These days everyone talks about hope,” Shevil said in an interview in Chisinau, capital of the former Soviet republic of Moldova. “But nonbelievers don’t have real hope. We have hope.”

Hope was the name of Shevil’s eldest child.

Shevil remembers Nadezhda, whose name means “hope” in Russian, joyfully coming home with a new Bible that someone had given to her at school. The 15-year-old girl spent hours reading the book, often staying up late at night.

Shevil, an occasional Sunday churchgoer, didn’t like his daughter’s interest in the Bible. He accused her of wasting her time and said she would be more productive working in the family’s vegetable garden.

“I told her: ‘We don’t need the Bible. We have the church,” he said.

Nadezhda didn’t argue and obediently went outdoors to tend to the garden, he said.

About two years later, doctors diagnosed Nadezhda with bone cancer. She spent months in the hospital, and one leg was amputated from the hip. She died in 2001 at the age of 18.

Her father said he couldn’t understand why she died. He pleaded with God for answers. He blamed himself, telling God, “I didn’t think that I was that bad of a father.”

Amid his sorrow, he heard the news in July 2002 that a DHL cargo plane had collided with a Russian airliner flying 45 Russian schoolchildren to a vacation in Spain, killing everyone on both aircraft. Then in 2004 a Russian father who lost his wife and two children in the crash tracked down and killed the air traffic controller responsible for monitoring the German airspace where the collision occurred. Watching the news on television, Shevil saw a journalist ask the father of a girl who died in the crash whether he also would like revenge. The father replied: “I am not going anywhere. I have hope that I will meet my daughter again.”

The words touched Shevil’s heart.

“I thought to myself: ‘He has hope that he will meet his daughter again. How can I have that same hope?’ Shevil said.

A short time later, Shevil returned home from work to find his wife was waiting for him with Nadezhda’s Bible. She opened the Bible to 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. He had never heard the words before.

She read: “Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him. According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not preceded those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words.”

When she finished reading, both she and Shevil were weeping.

“Here is our hope,” she said. “God gave us hope. If we believe in Him, we will meet our daughter again.”

Shevil said the Bible text changed his life. He began to study the Bible, and he and his wife were baptized. Shevil, who worked as a plumber, and electrician, and a driver before retiring, now is an active member of the Komrat Adventist church, where he serves as a deacon. In his conversations with others, he joyfully talks about hope — his hope in the Second Coming.

“How can I live without telling people about salvation?” he said. “I have hope that Jesus is coming soon. I tell everyone: ‘Jesus is coming soon. You have to be ready and to get ready.’ I know it will be soon.”

Shevil expressed gladness that his two other children, now grown, are medical missionaries in Bulgaria. But he said he was especially grateful to Nadezhda for serving as a missionary in her own home.

“Thanks to my daughter, we found God,” he said. “We have hope that I will meet my daughter again.”

A portion of the Thirteenth Sabbath Offering in fourth quarter 2017 will go toward the renovation of a 192-bed multifunctional complex for camp meetings, pastoral conferences, Pathfinder camporees, and other activities in a woodland near Rezina, Moldova.