Memory Verse

“A day in Your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.” —Psalm 84:10 (ESV)

Dear Grandchildren,

Remember the story that I told you of how I began to live in the orphanage in Poland? Maybe after you read that story you thought that my mother didn’t love my sister and me and wanted to get rid of us. That is the farthest thing from the truth. It was because she loved us so very much and she wanted us to remain alive. If she had kept us with her we would have died, because we had no food. I had a little baby sister whose name was Vyera, which in Russian means “Faith.” She was only six months old when she died of starvation. Poland was a war-torn country when we came to live there.

Shortly after I came to live in the orphanage, I was pointed out as a little girl who liked to sing. On one occasion, we had quite a few people visiting the orphanage. Mamochka put me on top of a table and asked me to sing for a roomful of people. One song I remember so well was, “Where He Leads Me I Will Follow.” I heard my mother sing that song a lot and I could easily memorize any song that I heard. By that time, I was accustomed to singing before a crowd, because I always had to perform for anyone who asked me to sing.

My mother loved to sing too. In fact, when she was young and before she was married, she sang in a Russian Orthodox Church as a soloist. So I learned from her how to sing many songs. After the day they made me sing before the audience, I kept on singing for the rest of my life. I sang for school programs, in church choruses, and mainly in our orphanage. How I used to love singing!

I’ll tell you why my mother took us away from Russia, when we had a very good life there. While my father was still living, he had a very good job, and we had a nice house and never suffered from hunger. But my father was also a Communist. All those who became Communist could not believe in God. Only Communists were favored with good positions in the government and could have anything that they wanted. My father was a plainclothes policeman in Moscow. His job paid well, but it also was very dangerous work and his life was never safe.

One day my father was shot while he was crossing a small river that ran right through the city of Moscow. He fell off his horse into the river. It was a bitterly cold day in November, and while he wasn’t killed by the bullet, he caught pneumonia and stayed in the hospital until he died.

After his death, the Communist government wanted to place us children into their institution, so that my mother could go to work. She could not have any more claim on us and would lose us to the state forever. She herself had never become a Communist in her philosophy. She loved God and later she learned to believe in Jesus Christ whom she took as her personal Savior. Therefore, she decided to leave Russia before anyone could take her children away from her. She said, “I’d rather see my children die of starvation than to see them grow up without God.” My mother ran away so that no one would see her. She boarded a train with her three small children and left for Poland without anything but the clothes that we wore.

We went to the village where my father was born. She thought that her brother-in-law and her other in-laws would be glad to help us. But they were very angry that she came to them. They knew that part of the land should have gone to my father after it was divided between the children of my grandfather. So they did everything they could to see that my mother did not get any land that rightly belonged to my father. It’s a long story, but after many years of working on this project, my mother was able to repossess some of the land and later she lived on it for several years. The family was very cruel to her and she suffered a lot, but at the same time, she did not give up.

Questions & Activities

• Think about what Nadzia’s mother gave up to make sure her children knew God. What would you give up? (See memory verse.)

• Why were Nadzia’s mother’s in-laws so cruel? How did God help them anyway?

• Nadzia had a talent for singing. Do you have any talents you can use to glorify God?

• Ask your parents about Communism in Russia and how Communists persecuted Christians and the church. Ask them to help you find Moscow on the map.

–compiled by Melissa Hindman