Vera is a brave young student who was expelled from her university in Russia because of her faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. She tells the story of how God answered her family’s prayer for food when she was twelve years old: “Father had been taken away to a prison camp when I was ten because of his Christian activities. We never stopped hoping that one day he would come home. But he did not come, and Mother could not possibly support us with the few rubles she earned cleaning the railroad station.
“I was the oldest in the family, and I remember how helpless I felt the day Mother cut the last piece of bread into five slices. She herself nibbled on the smallest piece.
“Before going to bed Mother prayed with us. She asked God to supply us with some food—and she prayed as if she expected an answer. Then we crawled on top of the old brick stove where we slept in the winter and tried to forget our hunger.
“That night, a prosperous Christian lady who lived across town had a dream. In her dream she heard a voice saying distinctly: ‘Paraska, you have everything. You have bread and heat in your house. But Anya, your neighbor, is hungry and her children are starving.’
“The voice in her dream was so persistent that Paraska awakened. She didn’t stop to consider that it could be anything but true. Even though it was past midnight, she got dressed and packed a basket of bread, sausage, and cheese.
“She hurried to our house as fast as she could move through the snow, and pounded frantically on our door.
" ‘Are you alive, Anya?’ she cried.
“My mother opened the door. We children, who were awake by then, watched in sleepy wonder as the snowy figure walked through the door and placed the basket on our wooden table.”
ML-10/01/1978