Published: August 02, 2007 02:48 pm      

A journey of faith

In some ways Olga Bostic’s childhood home is much like Pauls Valley.

“People are mostly very nice and hospitable,” she recalled.

And in many ways the two geographical spots on the globe are worlds apart.

Zvenigorodka, Ukraine, said Bostic, is more slow paced and very few people own cars.

“Everybody mostly walks every where or uses public transportation,” she said.

“People in the Ukraine villages live off of the land, but even in larger towns they have open air markets where they buy most of their groceries and clothes.

“There are very few fast food places and people eat mostly of their meals at home, which are made from scratch, no TV dinners.”

Ukrainians eat lots of soups, meat and potatoes, Bostic said. “However, there are some strange foods like fish jerky, blood sausage, meat jello and caviar during the holidays, which is a delicacy.”

Growing up in Zvenigorodka, which has a population of around 20,000, Bostic’s family would sit around the kitchen table and “talk about everything.”

“My family is very close. It’s hard having them so far away,” Bostic said.

When Bostic was in high school she was like most students her age and wanted to get out and see the world.

She applied for and was accepted as a foreign exchange student to Texas. She spent a year in the Lone Star state and then went back home to finish school.

Then at 17-years old, Bostic made a bold move, coming back to America to attend college.

She attended college first in Missouri and then transferred to East Central University in Ada.

“I worked and paid my own way through school while maintaining a 4.0 grade point average,” she says proudly.

It was there at ECU where she met her husband, J.D., and soon they were married.

J.D. and Olga have been married for three years and because he was from Pauls Valley, the couple made PV their home after college.

Today Olga is the Branch Office Administrator for the Edward Jones office in Pauls Valley. She loves meeting and getting to know people from the community.

In looking back on her life, Olga has had several accomplishments. She’s left her home and family half a world away to make a new home in America; she overcame the cultural differences in making that move; and she and her husband are currently building a new home six miles east of Pauls Valley.

“It is going to be totally surrounded by the woods. The place looks magical, it’s just beautiful.”

Recently, she and her husband traveled back to Zvenigorodka to see her family and friends.

“A lot of people my husband met were very happy to meet a real American,” she said.

Other achievements are those small ones most people tend to take for granted.

“I learned to ride a bike two months ago and went for a 40 mile ride last weekend,” she said.

But when you ask her what her biggest accomplishment is, she quickly admits “having faith in God” as her most prestigious achievement.

“I believe that is the reason I got to come to the U.S.”