“It’s emotionally hard on both sides,” he said. “You don’t say goodbye, but it almost does, because you don’t know when the conversation might continue.”
His wife’s parents are among the 130,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses in Ukraine. In 2017, Russia banned a denomination whose members believe in non-violence and refuse to take up arms in war; Russia called it an extremist group. Since then, according to denomination statistics, about 1,700 Witness homes in Russia have been ransacked and about 320 Witnesses have been imprisoned, including in Crimea. Mr. Telishchak did not dare to guess what might happen in Ukraine.
According to him, the couple tried not to watch too much news, so as not to get too upset. When it was time for bed, they kept looking at Viber, the messaging app they use to communicate with their family. – You go to bed, you check. Wake up, check it out,” he said. “We told them: “Whatever, you write, call, at any time.”
On Thursday afternoon, his wife received word that an air raid siren had gone off and that her parents had fled their old concrete house. A member of their congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses drove by outside and pushed them into his car. The men in their ward checked on them and others for several weeks, making sure everyone had a bag, flashlights, water, and a plan.
If the parents have to leave the country as refugees, Mr. Telishak hopes that other Witnesses will accept them. “Having a community or a religion without borders is a great comfort to us,” he said.
He found solace in the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus told his disciples not to be afraid when there are wars and rumors of wars, when people rise up against people.
“We also understand that the Bible predicts a time when all this will be gone, when there will be no more of these wars, no more of these conflicts between peoples, enmity and contention,” he said. “The students didn’t ask because they wanted to know when things were going to get really bad. They wanted to know when there would be a solution, when a fix would come.”