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Aziza Usmanova
Freshman

Aziza Usmanova (19 years old) was born in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. Living in a Muslim country, Aziza’s family practiced neither Islam nor Christianity. No members of Aziza’s family were believers, except her uncle. He witnessed about his faith to his own family and other relatives, and he was the one who brought Aziza to the Lord at the age of 11. “I remember,” Aziza says, “I visited my uncle’s family and he asked me and my cousins to read the Bible before we went out to play. When I opened the Scripture, I came across the story of Saul. I got so interested in Saul’s story that I couldn’t stop reading. My uncle told me how God takes care of His children and I liked this idea. That was the day when I started to seek God.”

When Aziza was a child, one of her dreams was to get higher education. Together with her cousin, she was planning to move from Tashkent to find a good university. “We didn’t know exactly what we wanted to study, but we realized the necessity and importance of good education,” Aziza says. In November 2002, Aziza moved to Moscow to live with her mom, who had left Uzbekistan six months earlier. For a year, Aziza studied at a high school in Moscow. After graduation, she tried to enter Russian Peoples’ Friendship University as a business major, but she failed the essay portion of the entrance exam. To improve her Russian writing skills, she began attending Russian language and literature classes offered by RACU after learning about the university from some friends at her church. “I didn’t think about undertaking the four-year program at RACU,” Aziza reflects. “I only wanted to work on my Russian. But while attending classes there, I became infected with the ‘RACU spirit.’ I liked the atmosphere at school and the relationships between students and professors. So I changed my mind and applied my documents!”

Today, Aziza looks forward to completing her degree in economics and becoming a successful business woman. “I want to raise a lot of money to build and support churches and missions,” she says. “In Tashkent, I attended The Word of Life church, which was planted and pastored by missionaries from Moscow. When I moved to Moscow, I started to attend another church of the same mission. The life I have now is a result of my relationship with God, who brought me to His family several years ago. He gave me new friends and a wonderful church family -- and I don’t want to lose it.”