Although she died alone, in voluntary poverty and obscurity, the richness and warmth of her spiritual life is yet felt in the hearts of many persons, including members of our Parish. It is for this reason, even though she is deceased, the next few issues of this column "Faces in the Congregation" will be devoted to our beloved Sister Nina.

"I met Sister Nina in 1969" begins Abbess Seraphima. "I was just out of High School and was studying Russian at the University of California in Riverside. I had become interested in Russian by seeing the movie, Doctor Zhivago. Admittedly, it was not a good time, politically, to be interested in things Russian, but, more than anything, I saw the Russians as a suffering people."

"My Russian Instructor planned a Class field trip to Los Angeles -to a section of Hollywood near Fountain and Western Avenues where there was a Russian bookstore and a Russian restaurant. I drove there with a girlfriend. We parked down a side street, unwittingly next to the Russian Cathedral, and hurried to meet our class."

"Later in the day, when we returned to our car we paused to look at the Cathedral. We were fascinated at the sight of a man with a long white beard wearing a black robe walking into the Cathedral."

‘Would you like to see inside the Church?’ chirped a voice. We were a little startled. We had not seen the gentle woman clothed entirely in black, approach us."

"We are not Orthodox’ I responded hesitantly."

‘Do you believe in Jesus Christ?’ she asked."

"We responded that we did."

‘Well, that’s a beginning!’ she concluded, introducing herself as Sister Nina."

"Just then the bells began to ring. I commented that I was afraid Services were starting and we would disturb someone if we went inside."

‘Oh no, there’s time’ she responded."

"With that, we followed her into the Cathedral."

"Once inside, I was awestruck by the sight I beheld. I cannot begin to describe how beautiful it appeared. The interior of the Cathedral was so huge and, yet, it as all golden. I placed a hibiscus flower that I had picked on an Icon of Saint George."

"Then we spoke briefly with Sister Nina. She mentioned that in a few days there would be a Memorial Service for her departed mother and aunt. She wished to give alms to the poor in their memory. Did we have any used clothing that we might bring her?"

"Returning to the College I set about gathering the clothing. I had friends who had a large family. That made the job easier. Within a few days my friend and I were on our way back to Sister Nina’s, with 18 Bags stuffed into the back of a station wagon. She was so very pleased."

"We took the bags to her tiny apartment in a complex across the street from the Cathedral." "Once again I was awestruck, now, not by grandeur but by humility.

She lived so simply and humbly, voluntarily enduring poverty in her love for our Lord."

"I saw her only a few more times. Once, with her encouragement, I came to the Cathedral to venerate the miracle-working Kursk Icon of the Mother of God. Then I had to move with my family to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As I left she told me contact Archbishop Seraphim in Chicago, saying ‘He’ll teach you about Orthodoxy".

"Over the years, up until the time of her death, I corresponded regularly with 

Sister Nina. She had a funny childlike habit of reusing unused potions of old greeting cards, sometimes for example, cutting out flowers and gluing them onto her paper and envelopes. Even when I sent her pretty stationary I felt she would enjoy, to my knowledge she never used it."

"Always in my contact and correspondence with Sister Nina she was so loving and encouraging. It was very evident that she had a profound devotion to prayer."

"There is a passage in the lives of Saints Barsanufius and John, from the Sixth Century", concludes Abbess Seraphima. "The passage says that, at that time, the prayers of only three people were holding up and supporting the whole world."

"While I’m not saying that Sister Nina was this type of person, it is a fact that there are so few people left like her. There are so few people left who, by their prayers, hold back the evil which threatens to engulf us."