They call her our mother
Heguwoman
Alexiya is warming children hearts. Eight years old Irochka was the first. This
girl with her younger brother was brought here by old distant relative in
Nerekhta from Karaganda.
- Mother, take this children. Parents disappeared, as for me I am too feeble...
Heguwoman Alexiya was confused and made a helpless gesture : "Where
can I take them? I have a convent but not an orphanage..." However she
believed that she would take Irochka. The boy took in neighbour Kovalyov
children’s house which was headed by blagochinny – f. Andrei.
Having heard in Pakhomievo-Nerekhtin convent left with warming the orphan
another girl brought to heguwoman from neighbour village...
It was the middle of 1990. The cloister had just begun to revive itself.
Sisters were not sometimes available enough food for themselves and they did
not have anything for eating, there were not forks and plates for everybody.
However they decided not to refuse from children. More over, they made even the
house of charity for old people by convent. And revived. God did not leave them
without His grace.
70 sisters are living now in cloister, as they joke - from 8 till 88. Among
them - 25 children and 12 old women. Especially for girls the whole building
was given and restored by all monastics.
Habits which children acquired in their families and children’s house mother
Alexiya insisted on giving up them immediately. It was the most difficult
for children’s recollections to forget about parent’s brutality – their
drunkards and addicts. How could child forget that he had to steal in order not
to die from hunger and often fed their awful fathers and mothers who were
lying on floor in empty flat after the next hard drinking?.. Being in convent
many children ate a lot but went on to keep pieces of bread under their
mattresses...
Sometimes occurred that "sleeping" relatives suddenly
remembered about their child and arrived in Nerekhta and insisted on taking
their kids from orphanage. Mother Alexiya is sorry so now that she gave in
pressure officials of department wardship and they took one of her girls. As a
result in a year this relative refused from this girls and she was taken
any distant relatives of husband in anywhere Azerbaijan...
- God grace and love change any fool heredity, -mother Alexiya was sure. –
Believe me, everything has happened on my eyes. Our convent is a large family –
a single whole. And our children are younger sisters. They are surrounded our
warm worry in cloister. There is no a strict typikon to them. Because we can’t
deprive them childhood. Any child wants to play, laugh and joke...
I can add myself – and clasp to mother’s breast in order she strokes on my head
kindly. They call their heguwoman Alexiya – our mother. And the youngest and
the oldest sisters.
When quantity of children became near twenty they decided to open a branch of
secondary school in Nerekhta(before they went to study in village). 7 sisters
among monastics have high pedagogical education. Except of general
education young brethrens are learning the sewing work nearly professional
level, drawing, cookery and choir singing.
- Living choice of our girls are in their future, - heguwoman Alexiya
tells. – I try they’ll live for a long time in our cloister, determine in
any kind life. We do not pursue an aim that they will become as monastics. The
main aim for us they’ll grow orthodoxy and high moral people in reality.
Andrei Viktorovich
SAMARTSEV,
RUSSKI DOM 2004(46)
BROTHERS AND SISTERS!
Will help girl convent orphanage!
Don’t get scarce a hand which always gives to somebody!
Kostrimskaya oblast.
Troice-Cipanov Pahomievo-
Nerehtckiy jenskiy monastir
157810, Kstrimskaya oblast,
gorod Nerehsta, selo Troica.
Nerehtskoe OSB №2501
Kostromskoy oblasti,
r/s 40703810229030100072,
k/s 30101810200000000623,
Sub. sch. 30301810429000602903,
BIK 043469623,
INN 4419000969, OKONH 98700,
OKPO 32495641.