It's shaping up like a great time to visit Kiev.

[Larry1]

Yeah I did too. I had several preachers in my family including my father, grandfather and in South Georgia even. None of them would handle a snake. I don't know of any church outside of Appalachia where they will handle snakes and even there it is not the norm.

This is correct: there are very few snake handling churches and none that I've ever heard of outside of the Appalachian region.  Many years ago I worked with a girl who had lived her entire life in the mountains of East Tennessee.  She claimed to be able to spot a church that handled snakes just from looking at the outside of the building.  Every once in a while I saw a news story in which snake handlers were interviewed. Invariably they would be missing some fingers or parts of fingers from bites.  Rattlesnakes, which seem to be the favorites of these people, have venom that destroys tissue.

I once had a conversation with a FSUW and the subject of snake handlers came up.  She was astonished that anyone would be so crazy as to handle venomous snakes.