A Gangster's Search for God

Alexei Dmitriyev hung around in a gang of 12 – just like Jesus. But his group were altogether different. Now Alex is one of only two survivors.

“A lot of my friends became drug addicts in the early 90s. There were 12 of us – we were a group engaged in, shall we say, unpleasant business. We were criminals.

“Today there are only two of those 12 left – just me and one other guy. He only survived only because he went to prison for 10 years. The other ten died either of an overdose or got themselves killed.

“I thought to myself, why am I better than any of them? But I knew that all those years God gave me a chance to embrace him.”

But Alexei insists that, even during his own drug addiction, he was always looking for God.

As a child in Soviet times, he’d been the only one of his family to go to the Orthodox church. “They even wanted to remove my Pioneer scout tie at school as a punishment for going to church.

“So I always knew God existed. But it didn’t prevent me from falling into drugs – and the street did its dirty work on me.”

The evidence of the street’s dirty work was discovered by Alexei’s doctors when he had a blood test – Hepatitis C. He had got married and even managed to stop taking drugs for six months but the doctors now told him he couldn’t have children because of the effects of his habit.

A short time later he was in a fight and got stabbed. During the operation he needed, the doctors were shocked at the damage he’d done to his liver.

Finally in 2001 all these problems drove him to Exodus, where he became a Christian. One of the first to benefit from help from the then-new Exodus programme, Alexei began ministry in his home town of Krasnodar after a year-and-a-half in the rehabilitation centre. He is now the pastor of one of the Exodus churches.

“I am grateful to God for using me, he constantly performs miracles. Some time ago new blood tests revealed that I had no hepatitis. I now have a three-year-old daughter and my wife is expecting a son.

“God has given me love and fulfilment. As Sergei [founder of Exodus] has said, our programme remains the same: to each help at least one other person.

“Our mission today is to live up to the trust that we received from God to help set others free.”