For eight months, the American missionaries did their best to steer clear of the Russian soldiers and police patrolling the Ukrainian city of Kherson, remaining in the outlying district where they live, and hiding when they thought they would be discovered.
"We were on the edge of the city. There weren't many Russians there," William Hunsucker, 46, of Charlotte, North Carolina, recounted on Sunday as he, his wife and two children watched ecstatic Ukrainians in Kherson's main square celebrating Moscow's retreat across the Dnipro River.
"They didn't patrol much."
