My name is Ruvim Kondratyev (pronounced: ru-VEEM kon-DRA-tyev). I live in Erie, Colorado, and I like being creative and making a difference in the community. For my job, I am a software engineer writing C++ code, but outside of work, I enjoy the arts. In my free time, I am learning ballet dance, translating songs from Ukrainian to English, doing videography for fun, and programming computers to help me and others do creative work more efficiently. I would also like to resume learning the violin, but that’s been in the backlog of things for me to do.

Here today, I wanted to also share my happiness with others. Wouldn’t it be great if all people found fulfillment in life? The truth is, they can! To share my own source of happiness with anyone reading this, I quote: “God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness, freely created people to make them share in his own blessed life” (the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1; I added a comma and replaced “man/him” with “people/them”). This one sentence summarizes the entire purpose of us humans: where we came from, why we’re here, and where we’re going. Of course, there is a lot more to learn, and I highly recommend the Catechism as a reading because it reveals the Church’s teachings, and Jesus Christ stands behind his Church. However, for the purpose of what I feel the need to share here: God is the first principle and the end goal of every person. People would be much happier if only they loved God with all their being.

As you can tell, I believe in the Catholic faith. Jesus founded the Catholic Church, and he intended for Christians to be in this Church. I grew up in a Russian Pentecostal community, and, for a long time, that was all I ever knew. Later as an adult, when I prayed to the Holy Spirit to show me the Truth and when I read about the history and when I had realized that the Protestant leaders disobeyed the religious authorities of that day and started their own denominations, the Holy Spirit convicted me. Sure, the Church leaders of the time were corrupt, but such division was still not warranted. My conviction was that, by continuing to be a part of the Protestant faith, I was effectively participating in that disobedience that the founders of Protestantism committed. Reading in the Holy Bible about God’s view of pride and disobedience vs humility and obedience, how the former is equivalent to sorcery and witchcraft and how God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble, I knew that I was wrong, and I felt like a hypocrite continuing to attend the Protestant church. Furthermore, to add to the Holy Spirit’s call to me to change, in the Catholic Church, Jesus Christ really is present in the Eucharist, body, blood, soul, and divinity, so the Holy Spirit revealed to me that I am closer to Jesus when I am at the Catholic Church. It should be understood that Jesus wants to be friends with us and wants to draw us near to himself, which means that we are called to give ourselves to Jesus when we receive him in the Eucharist. Thus, the Holy Spirit led me to the Catholic faith. The Catholic faith rightly teaches that Jesus Christ will forgive us if we repent, and he will give us the grace to do all that he has commanded us to do – it’s not just an empty promise on paper, but he really does empower us in our fight against sin. Jesus’ power is real, and it will change our life if we believe that God’s power is real and if we sincerely ask him to empower us. With this transformation of faith, God has begun to change me into a completely different person: through the Holy Spirit, he has begun to conform me to God the Son, Jesus Christ.

To my reader, I won’t condemn you one way or another. If you’re Protestant (Baptist, Pentecostal, Adventist, etc.), but if you’re genuinely seeking God and loving him with all your heart and obeying him, building up his kingdom here on earth, then that’s great! I’m happy for you. When the disciples told Jesus that they have prohibited a person from casting out demons in Jesus’ name because that person did not follow Jesus with the disciples, Jesus told them not to forbid such people: who is not against you is for you. Every person of Christ is our brother or sister.

However, if you’re lukewarm with your faith or if you allow yourself to live for yourself, thinking that just because you accepted Jesus means that you don’t have to do anything else anymore, I encourage you to reconsider your spiritual position. To these people, I recommend the book, The Devil in the City of Angels: My Encounters with the Diabolical , by Jesse Romero. Romero used to be a lukewarm Christian, but, after having all the encounters with the evil and supernatural, he changed to being on fire for Jesus. I wish everyone would be on fire for Jesus. As Ephesians chapter 6 discusses, we really do have a spiritual battle to fight. Yes, as Jesus was dying on the cross, he said, “it is finished.” But Ephesians 6 was written *after* Jesus said this, yet it’s still talking about a spiritual battle despite the fact that Jesus rose from the dead already. That means we are still to fight in the spiritual battle every day of our life until we are done with this life. Only after all the trials and tribulations, when Christ returns and all is set straight, as written in Revelation 21, God will announce the words: it is done!

Let us return to the topic of this website: I don’t mean for this website to be a sermon series or even anything religious. I just wanted to share my happiness and inspiration with others – take it or leave it. In future posts, I hope to try to stay with sharing artwork, video projects, writing pieces, music, etc. Some of it will be religious because that’s a huge part of me. But overall, the intention is to make a difference in the community by sharing my creativity. Be they religious or not, I hope to inspire others to also be creative and do art of their own – it’s what makes us human.

Photo: 26 May 2025. Garden of the Gods. Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA.