c. 1998 Religion News Service

PORTLAND, Ore. _ Handcuffed to a heater in a shack outside a Russian town, Andrew L. Propst and his missionary partner, Travis R. Tuttle, played word games, practiced Russian grammar and devised a dream team of professional baseball players to keep from going mad.

The two Mormon missionaries, who had been kidnapped, beaten with clubs, bound and gagged by two men to whom they had planned to preach church doctrine, were resigned to die, Propst revealed in the first account of their March captivity.

Propst of Lebanon, Ore., and Tuttle of Gilbert, Ariz., both 20, were assigned to a two-year missionary post in Russia. Both returned to the United States in late October.

“We suffered, but we made it,” Propst said. “Our faith brought us through it.”

If they were killed, they thought, they would die as examples to the world that the Mormon church would not bow to kidnappers’ threats.

They had seen their abductors, knew where one lived and realized the men had failed to obtain the $300,000 ransom they’d sought from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

During their days of captivity, Propst imagined a thousand ways his abductors could kill him. Bullet to the head. Torture by burning his hands and feet on the burners of a gas stove. Poison from a bottle and syringe he saw in the shack.

The two missionaries tried to speak to their abductors and share Mormon teachings. After all, one of the abductors asked for information when he approached them after a church meeting. That’s when the missionaries were knocked down with clubs and held for ransom.

“It is not too often a person approaches you and asks to be taught,” Propst wrote in a journal he compiled shortly after he was freed.

The two asked their assailants what they thought about God and what kinds of lives they wanted to live, Propst said.

After four or five days, the missionaries were led to a car and driven miles over bumpy roads into the woods.

“I was thinking to myself, `They did not get the money,”’ Propst said. “We are driving farther out into the woods, and I knew they both had their guns. It was the end.”

The car stopped after about 40 minutes. The two were pushed out. Propst took three steps and fell face-first into about three feet of snow. They were ordered to lie face-down for two minutes.

“If they were going to cap me, I knew that was the moment they’d do it,” Propst said. “I was praying at the same rate as my heart was pounding.”

The two heard the car drive away. They counted as one minute crept by. Propst yelled to Tuttle: “One minute, baby!” The second minute passed.

Propst ripped off the tape covering his eyes and mouth. The snow, glistening in the sun, blinded him; he hadn’t seen light in four days. But it was a beautiful sight. They were free.

“We got up, and I just started running because I did not want them to change their minds and come back for us,” Propst said.

The two walked for about 20 minutes in knee-deep snow to a road and started hitchhiking.

“We just walked slowly down the road with our thumb out enjoying freedom,” Propst said. “I felt so good inside. I felt free. I never realized how wonderful freedom was until then. Probably one of the greatest gifts I have ever been given but never realized it.”

Propst and Tuttle were interviewed by Russian, U.S. Embassy and church officials, then reassigned to different missionary posts in England to complete their program.

In August both returned to Russia to identify and testify against the kidnappers. A court in the city of Saratov in August sentenced local businessman Sergei Yemtsov, 44, to four years in prison. His accomplice, Alexei Shkryabin, 19, was convicted but given a suspended sentence.

The court ruled that Shkryabin was unaware of Yemtsov’s intentions until the moment of the abduction. Yemtsov told the court he had decided to kidnap the Mormon missionaries to repay a $100,000 debt.

Propst said he now plans to spend time with his family before applying to college.

“It was hard getting off the plane because I was leaving behind the best experience of my life,” he said. “I strengthened my own faith. I believe we’re here to be tested and tried. Now I feel I have my own messages: Don’t take things for granted. Love thy mother and father.”

END BERNSTEIN