“Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid.” —Isaiah 12:2

My name is Melissa. I have been sharing a precious gift with my children. Would you like to hear it too? When I was 10 years old my grandmother, Nadzia (pronounced NAD-zee-ah), gave me a story about her life.

When we drove back east to attend my grandfather’s funeral, I climbed up into my parents’ attic and searched a trunk until I found the letters that my mom’s mother wrote to her grandchildren in 1979 and the early 1980s, telling her life story.

I have been reading her letters to my children each morning. Grandma’s story is so interesting that my children want to hear more than one letter each day! Hers is a story of her faith like a child in Jesus Christ, and God’s faithfulness in all things. Now, I will share her gift with you too. I pray that her story will be a blessing to those who read it.

Fleeing Russia

Dear Grandchildren,

You are growing so fast that very often I stop and say: “It’s not possible that our oldest grandchildren are 10 years old already.” We can’t stop the time from passing, but at the same time, we don’t want to pass the opportunities that come our way daily. Your parents, when they were your age, that is, our children, always asked me to tell them stories from my childhood. My childhood was very different from yours. So maybe I should start telling some of those stories to you, too, before time passes all too fast and I will get to be too old to remember them.

Today I’ll begin by telling you how my sister Olga and I felt on the first day in the orphanage. As I’ve mentioned already, my childhood was much different from yours. In the first place, I was born in Moscow, Russia, which is neither Canada, nor the United States. It is in Europe, which is across the Atlantic Ocean. I lived with my father and mother until I was five years old and after that I lived for many years in the orphanage. That orphanage was located in Poland, another country also in Europe. When my mother was left with three children after my father died, she could not support them all by herself. She had no place to live and had no food to feed us. That was the reason why she had to place Olga and me in a place where they cared for orphans and very destitute children.

Now, it was not easy for my mother to part with us, and she dreaded to think that she had to give us up. But in order that she might save us from starvation, she had no other choice than to send us to an orphanage. She never mentioned to us that we would not be living together, so my sister and I looked forward to the place where we would have a nice warm place to live, where we would have enough food to eat, and where each one would have their own bed to sleep in.

After we left Russia, we lived in an underground place for a while, where our bed was made of several boards, some straw, and anything that was available for our covering made our blankets. So the orphanage was very attractive to us when we thought how nice and different it would be from what we had at that moment. Being only five, I thought it meant that we were going to move to another nice house, just like we had in Russia.

It was on March 26, 1924, when we arrived in Konstancin, the place where the orphanage was located. The day was fairly warm, because I remember playing outdoors with other children and not wearing a coat. While we were playing, our mother left us without saying goodbye. She didn’t want us to see her cry. And besides, that was also the orphanage’s policy for the mother to leave as soon as possible to avoid any scene while saying goodbyes.

After a short time, my sister and I noticed that our mother was no place to be found. We decided to go back to the train station and bring her back. We left, not being noticed by anybody. The station was not very far; it was a little bit over a city block. We held hands together, and each time that the train arrived, we ran to it to see if our mother had come back. Every time some woman got off the train, we looked into her face, and disappointedly would say, “No, this is not our mother.”

We did this for the rest of the afternoon, until someone discovered that the two new girls, Nadzia and Olga, were missing from the orphanage and nowhere to be found. They called the police to come and help find us. It was dark then, and when the police came to the station, they found us sitting dejectedly on the bench, holding hands and waiting for the next train to come. The train came every half hour, and we were so sure that sooner or later one of them would return our mother to us.

That night I couldn’t go to sleep, and most of the night I cried for my mother. I was frightened to think that I might never see my mother again, and nothing as nice as a clean bed, warm clean house, nor good food could replace my mother to me. I felt lost and forsaken. I hope no one of you will need to experience that kind of feeling as long as you live.

Next time I will tell you some of the stories from my new home to which I slowly began to be accustomed.

Questions

1. Can you find where the orphanage was on the map?

2. How would you feel if you had to go live in an orphanage too?

3. Can you think of a time you were afraid and decided to trust God?