God Answered Maria's Prayers

By Val Grant

When I was born in the Ukraine, my parents were not Christians. At fifteen years of age, I moved about three hundred miles away from my home and began attending a civilian naval academy on the Black Sea. The people there knew nothing about God. My friends and I were a group of boys without the supervision of parents, and we did many bad things such as fighting and drinking. When I was eighteen years old, we had a big fight among us, and a couple of the fellows ended up in the hospital. After a few days, the principal called me in and said some of the parents were going to have me arrested and put into jail for starting this fight. Although the principal knew I was not guilty, there was nothing he could do, since the parents of two of the boys held high offices in the government somewhere. I asked the principal, “What can I do? How can I escape?” He suggested that I go into the army, so to avoid getting arrested for these false charges, I joined the Soviet Army.

I was twenty years old before I went back to the Ukraine for a vacation. There I saw Maria, who later became my wife. It was the first time I had seen her in five years. When I was a boy, my grandparents lived across the fence from her family. Our fathers were friends, and our families were close. We played together when we were young and knew each other very well.

During my vacation, I asked Maria if she would like to attend a party with me, saying that several families were going and it would be nice. She said, “I cannot.” When I asked why, she said it was because she was a Christian. I told her that I was a Christian too, that I had been to church and placed a candle in the holder, which was a
procedure followed in the Russian Orthodox Church. However, Maria had been saved, and she knew Christ in a different way than I did. She still refused to go with me, and I told her that she was stupid. I had been taught that Christianity was only for old people and the stupid, sort of like a drug.

The next year when I was home on vacation, I asked Maria if she would like to marry me. She said, “I cannot.” I asked, “Why?” She replied again, “Because I am a Christian and you are not.” This pattern went on for five years.

Maria became concerned about my soul. I lived with bad people, and I thought I had to be bad to survive, so I was strong and tough. Maria wondered if God was telling her to pray for me. One time when I was at home on vacation, she told God, “If You will put him in bed on this certain day, so that I know he is sick, then I will pray for him.”

On the appointed day, she walked by my parents’ home and saw my mother. When she asked how I was doing, my mother said I was not home. However, the window was open, and Maria heard my voice. She asked my mother, “Is Valeriy home?” She said, “Yes, but I am not supposed to tell anyone because he is sick, and he does not want anybody to know.” I had never been sick enough to be in bed before.

Maria knew then that God wanted her to pray for me, so she fasted and prayed three times a week for a year. The next year when I came back on vacation, I was in the hospital for a month. Maria came to see me, and I asked her to bring some clothes to me from my parents’ home. She said that she would if I would promise to go to church with her when I was better.

I found the services at Maria’s church boring, and often I fell asleep. Maria was ashamed of me, and I was ashamed also, but I just did not understand. When a person wanted to be saved, it was the custom in her church to go to the front and ask the people to pray for you. I wanted to marry Maria, but I did not want to lie and pretend I was a Christian, so I would not go forward.

It seemed that no one could answer my questions satisfactorily. I thought I was smart, but when I read the New Testament, I felt stupid at my lack of understanding. Eventually I told Maria I wanted to talk with the head of that group of churches. He did not live in our village, so Maria got his address for me. Then I showed Maria a revolver I had, and I told her that if he could not explain Christianity to me, I was going to kill him. Of course, Maria began to pray.

When I showed up at the man’s house, he was working in his yard, and he invited me into his home. His wife was not there, so no one was with us. As we talked, he tried to prove Christianity to me, but it did not make sense. Eventually I just tried to make fun and laugh. I said, “I know what Heaven means. What does Hell mean?” He explained that it was a place of pain and torment that lasted forever. I thought if a person died, then the pain would be over.

He asked if anyone had ever hurt my feelings. I remembered the time when the police had arrested me and tied me to a chair, even though I was not guilty. While I was tied to that chair, a man spit in my face. I told this pastor that yes, I knew about that pain. He asked if it was pain in my body, and I said it was not. He asked where the pain was, and I said it was something inside. He told me, “That thing inside is not going to be burned up. It is not going to die, but it is going to last forever.” That statement made sense to me.

That pastor never knew I had a gun or what my intentions were. From that point, I decided that there really was something to Christianity, and I purposed in my heart to commit my life to God. When I got back to Maria’s church, I went to the front and asked them to pray for me. That was my open confession of faith, and my life was changed. In six months, Maria and I were married. Because I had been associating with such a rough crowd prior to my salvation, our minister advised us to relocate and begin life away from my previous friends. A friend of Maria’s brother lived in Siberia, and he offered me a job.

I went ahead of Maria to Siberia, where I was able to buy a little place to live. Then Maria joined me. After some research, we learned there had been a small group of Christian people in the area, but they had all disappeared, and no one knew anything about them. Perhaps they had been killed.

One lady who lived there had known those people, although she became a Christian after they were gone. For twenty years, she had prayed that God would send some Christian people to her. God put us in touch with her, and the three of us started worshiping in our home. We were in Siberia for five years, and during that time our little group grew to nineteen members. In the last year, we heard that there are now two churches with two hundred people each that have grown from that original group.

Our three children were born while we were in Siberia. At the hospitals there, it was not possible for me to be with Maria during the births. There was a small window where I could ask a secretary how my wife and child were doing. When our youngest child, Eduard, was born, the secretary told me that we had a son, but not to be excited. She said, “He is going to die. You should pray for your wife because she could die too.” It was so painful. We had two small girls at home. I went home and prayed hard.

In the hospital, they put Eduard in another room and just left him there for three days without feeding him because they thought he was going to die. Finally, they brought him to Maria, although by then he was black and blue. Both of us kept praying, and she fed him. He started getting better, and in two weeks, God had undertaken enough that both of them came home.

Maria was not well for six months after Eduard’s birth. The doctor said if I wanted to have a wife, I needed to move to a milder climate. So we moved back to the Ukraine and lived there for five years. Then through another series of miracles, God allowed us to receive a visa to come to America. Now we have the privilege of living here where we can worship God in freedom as we desire. We thank God for all He has done for us, and most of all for His mercy to save our souls.

Valeriy Grizhuk is a member of the Apostolic Faith Church in Portland, Oregon. He and his family recently became citizens of the United States, and he changed his name to Val Grant.