In 2000, on the night of Holy Saturday, I had a dream: as if I was receiving a gift for Easter. That same day in church during confession a girl comes up to me, clings to me and, crying, says: “I feel bad in the orphanage, they beat me there, I don’t want to go back there.”
It turned out that she came to the temple with her grandmother. The grandmother put the baby in an orphanage because the girl’s mother, the grandmother’s daughter, died. And the grandmother, an elderly woman, was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to cope and would miss the child, so she put her in an orphanage and only took her granddaughter on Sunday to go to church.
I called my wife and offered to take this girl into our family. This is how Katya came to our house. Then she was 7 years old, now she is 29. We already had a daughter, Ulyana, who was 3 years old. Katya and Ulyana grew up together and are friends. I still think that Katya’s appearance in our family was a miracle.
Archpriest Konstantin Parkhomenko
Story “STAND UP AND RISE”
Holy Land Charitable Foundation
Investment in the Soul!
Orthodox stories from life
