On the next day, I set out to find a cross. I was a kid but I wasn’t an idiot. I knew that accosting adults and asking to be provided with a cross was a dangerous thing to do. So I saved my lunch money for weeks and approached the gypsies who always hung out next to my school selling outlandish things like bright red lipstick and chewing gum. I had always heard they had things nobody else did, so it made sense to ask them. I was terrified of the gypsies because they used very bad words but they were my only option.
The gypsies were perplexed to see an 8-year-old clutching a handful of coins and asking for a cross. They told me to come back the next day, and when I got there, they had a cross for me. I couldn’t wear it around my neck because if anybody saw it, my parents would be in a sea of trouble. So I put it in the pocket of my school uniform, right on my chest.
Prayer was harder. How do you find out how to pray? I wracked my brain but came up with nothing. Then my father took me to Moscow to visit a friend who was a dissident. While my father and his friend were chatting in the kitchen, I browsed through a voluminous book collection in the bedroom. Hidden behind a row of books and wrapped in a newspaper, I found a copy of the Bible.
“Hah!” I thought. “There’s got to be instructions in here on how to pray.”
It so happened that when I opened the Bible, it opened directly on the text of the Lord’s prayer. “Our Father, who art in heaven…” It was clearly meant to be that I’d find it.
I knew I had struck the motherload. I copied the prayer on a sheet of paper, memorized it, and destroyed the paper. Since then, I prayed every single day of my life.
Years later, my father revealed to me that he was always secretly Christian and also prayed every day. We prayed in secret from each other to protect each other. That’s what the USSR was.
I don’t tell this story often because it’s a very strange story but it happened to me and it changed the entire course of my life. I don’t know why or how but this is a huge part of my journey.
Clarissa's Blog 
Gypsies! This is a great story!
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Thank you for this and the preceding story of your visit from the Mother of God. Apparently Jesus and/or Mary visit Muslims in this way too. I once read an entire book of such anecdotes from Muslims who became Christian. Makes sense that Jesus and Mary would do this in countries where people have no other way to hear about them.
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As a cradle Catholic who is finding their way back to the faith recently, thank you for this wonderful story.
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At what point did you get baptized and make it official? Is that something your dad did secretly when you were a baby, or did you have to seek it out as an adult?
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I only got baptized in 2018. I was a catechumen for 6 months or so. Klara got baptized before I did!
I literally attended a full Orthodox service that was not a baptism for the very first time in my life in 2017. And immediately decided I was never coming back because it was very long. Next Sunday, I was back.
When COVID hit, I’d only had two Easters under my belt in church. Missing the entire Holy Week of services on Easter 2020 felt like a terrible deprivation. We still did the nighttime procession but not much beyond that was possible.
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