Meet Pastor Alex Sozinov
How long have you been attending Franklin?
My family and I moved to Tennessee and started at the church in August 2017.
Would you tell us a little about yourself and your background?
I was born and grew up in a small farmer village in the Kherson region of the South of the Ukraine.
From my childhood my family and I were Christians, as many other people in my country. But we did not read Bible, because we did not have it. The Bible was not the book you could easily get in the atheistic USSR. We just followed traditions and beliefs that we got from our grand and great grandparents. I need to mention here that my great grandmother was a Christian and the center of our big family. She provided a Christian base for all of us. She taught me prayers and Psalms, and most importantly, she lived by her faith in atheistic environment of the USSR.
When I was 7, I had an appendix surgery, and then there were some complications. I was unconscious for about three days. My mother promised God that if He will heal me, I would become a priest when I grew up.
After the USSR fell apart, my family finally had the Bible, and we started to learn it. We finally went from just traditional beliefs to a living faith and relationship with God who so loved us, that He gave His Son, Jesus. We found people that had the same Biblical views, and in 1992 my parents, and a couple years later my younger sister and I became members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church's global family.
After high school I was going to a medical college, but God remembered my mother’s promise. That same year, I visited Zaoksky Theological Seminary in Russia, and I loved that place so much, I stayed there to continue my education. In Zaoksky Seminary I met my future wife, Yana, and now we have two wonderful daughters Yana and Adeliia.
After the seminary we came back home to Ukraine and started pastoral ministry as a family. God helped me make that decision to be His minister in the seminary with the Bible verse from Zechariah 4:6, “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the Lord of hosts.” And after about ten years of pastoral ministry in Ukraine, God brought us to the US to continue my education at Andrews University in Michigan.
And ‘Not by might nor by power, but by His Spirit," God led us to Kentucky-Tennessee Conference in August 2017 after finishing at Andrews to join a wonderful Franklin Seventh-day Adventist church family. We are passionate to grow up in the knowledge of the Glory of God and the Lord Jesus Christ together, proclaiming His gift of salvation and to be good neighbors and friends to the local community.
