GRACE TO YOU

By Nadia Konik

GRACE TO YOU unfolds to reveal a true spiritual awakening.It is a factual biography though many won't believe it. Follow Nadia and Robert as they run from religion and battle inexplicable, supernatural forces. Their story demonstrates God's Grace working through ordinary, imperfect people and it begins with a childhood dream and culminates with an epiphany on the Mount of Olives in Israel. God leads them to encounter genuine faith and Salvation through Christ. Allow this declaration to inspire and encourage you as Jesus reveals your spiritual potential, including a one on one relationship with Him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tablo Publishing
• Release date: Oct 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781685830168

Book preview

Prologue

I was not raised religious. I was raised to question everything because in Australia, we have the freedom to do so.  We are not forced to follow anyone's ideology. It was one of the freedoms my father loved about his adopted country. The following background history will explain more.

My mother was raised in the rural community of Kuldiga, Latvia. The local Lutheran and Baptist pastors were frequent visitors and personal family friends so young Helene attended regular Sunday School and church functions. Life was good until World War 2 and the Communist invasion of Latvia in 1940. At the age of 15 she was separated from her adoptive parents and sent to her birth mother. Together, as Baltic Germans, they escaped to Nazi occupied Poland. It was a fearful time.

My father Gregori was raised in a rural village on the outskirts of Buryn near Sumy in north-eastern Ukraine. His family of seven survived the famine (Holodomor) of 1932-1933 by secluding a cow in their home. Had they not, the cow would have been confiscated by Communist officials. The milk from the cow and bartering with milk enabled the family and extended family to survive a period during which approximately 7 million Ukrainians perished. My grandfather had been an elder in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church but Communism suppressed Christianity and closed the churches. The children were schooled under the Soviet State's atheistic system. Some family members eventually joined the Underground Church movement but this was well after Gregori was forced to depart for Germany as a P.O.W./slave labourer.

Helene and Gregori met after W.W.2 in Hamburg through mutual friends. Both were displaced persons without family contact and unable to return to their homelands in safety. Mum spoke Latvian, German and Russian. Dad spoke Ukrainian, Russian and basic German. In Germany, working for the English army, he began to study English. The languages they could mutually converse in were Russian and German. They both endured deep heartbreak but with the end of the war came renewed optimism for a new life. They married at a Registrar in Hamburg on 25/9/1948 and decided to  venture out to Australia.

It was not an easy decision as neither knew anything about life in Australia except the misinformation spread by rumors in the D.P. camps. Snakes and wild horses run rampant in the dirty, dusty streets. No one was sure if potatoes could grow in the desert like conditions. It took courage mixed with desperation to follow through with their decision to immigrate. Their story is recorded in my book A Home Somewhere.

When I was born in Hamburg, Germany (5/7/1949), my parents decided I should be christened as was customary but the family unit should be affiliated with only one Christian denomination. For traditions sake, I was christened Ukrainian Orthodox as my father and paternal grandparents had been. What little faith my father had, was doused by the Communist school system and the horrors endured during the war years. He merely succumbed to mum's entreaties and she may well have hoped attending his denomination might rekindle Papa's faith. However, christenings and weddings were the only occasions he ever ventured into church of any denomination. Mum was forbidden to take us into Lutheran/Baptist services and neither did she go alone. Mum found the Ukrainian Orthodox services very unsettling and difficult to understand. Men and women were segregated, it was mandatory to remain standing for the duration, the incense irritated eyes and throat and so mum chose not to embrace the Orthodox church. Needless to say, I grew up without any formal church affiliation and attended only on a few occasions when family friends took me to a traditional all night Easter service. I found the experience strange and bewildering.

Mum taught us Bible stories at bedtime, stories remembered from her childhood; from Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark to the Nativity. I was taught the Lord's Prayer and from age four would kneel by my bed each night before sleep and recite the prayer in Russian. This met with Papa's approval. Later at St. Albans East Primary School, the Bible stories were reinforced during the weekly Religious Education program and I learned the Lord's Prayer in English.

During my childhood there are two events that stand out as remarkable. The first is a recurring dream that goes back as far as I can remember. It was always the same, several times each year and sometimes I would still be awake when I began the dream. I remember thinking, oh no, not that dream again. As I grew into my teens I was less troubled by it because it was so familiar. The second event was when my mother was given six months to live. Her only hope was experimental kidney surgery without any guarantees. It was the time before kidney transplants and everyone was terrified of ‘going under the knife’.

CHAPTER 1 - THE DREAM.

It always began with noise, tumult, of people fleeing in panic and running into each other. I saw people scrambling over large hewn stone blocks that once were buildings and shelter, but now lay scattered in disarray; impeding flight. The noise is made up of people weeping, gasping, fearful, and desperate. They are searching for safety and escape from the threat to their lives, which I can sense but not see. I too am confused and not sure in which direction to run and I search for my family fearful of being separated from them. Is it war? I cannot see an enemy or any army. I stop my aimless running to catch my breath and I see a narrow, almost indistinct path beyond the toppled and crumbling building stones (larger than our usual building bricks and of a pale sandstone colour). Sometimes a person heads in that direction. I decide to follow and catch up with someone unknown to me.

Where are you going? I call.

To safety, but hurry. You must be at the top of the mountain before the sky opens up. The person turns away to run up the path. Sure enough the path goes up and up and it is a mountain with vegetation almost concealing the route. I see my mother and little sister and point to the path.

Go that way it’s safe but hurry! They turn to go but gather other people I do not yet recognize.

Nadia said we will be safe if we go up the mountain, my mother pleads with my father.

What does Nadia know, she is only a child, my father scoffs but reluctantly turns to follow my mother. In the meantime I am directing people.

Please go that way for safety. Some people go. Some people do not. I plead and point the way. Some people are special to me but I do not know why. Their faces are indistinct. Then I know I must get up the mountain myself; people above me on the path are calling to me to hurry. I scurry past some bushes and the prickly branches scratch me. My arm bleeds a little. The path is gravel and pebbles, not smooth and not easy to travel upon. Then I come across my father. He is standing still and his breath is laboured.

I am too old Nadia; I cannot make it to the top. You go save yourself.

Papa I will push you up! I get behind him and push with all my strength.

Slowly we struggle up the incline and progress a few metres but then Papa’s feet falter on the gravel and slide backwards pushing me backwards also. However I am determined, I will not leave him alone. We make slow progress and then I hear loud, low timbre sounds (unlike the pitch of herald trumpets depicted in Hollywood movies) and I know the sky is beginning to open up. Clouds pull apart and the trumpeting draws closer, louder. The air vibrates with the sound. The sky is lit with brilliant, dazzling light and from within the light, shapes begin to form in hazy silhouette and gradually I see human shapes in flowing white attire slowly descending and giving way to a central figure seated on a white horse. The luminescence around him is so bright I cannot see his face, yet I know it is a him. Now all the figures give voice to glorious, ethereal singing as they approach the summit of the mountain above me. There are many thousands of figures in white following the central figure.

The dream ends abruptly while I am staring and listening. Over the years I either marvel at the strange dream wanting it to continue so I can find answers to my questions or I continue on with dreamless sleep to wake in the morning knowing I’ve had ‘that dream’ again.

On occasions I told my mother about my strange dream and she’d say it was nothing to worry about, it was