Photos from open sources of
This story was told by Vasily Stepanovich Ivanov, a resident of the village Kremenki in the Nizhny Novgorod region.
She happened a long time ago, when he returned from the front to his collective farm Vasily began to work as the personal driver of the chairman. According to at times it was a very good position. Ivanov went on little American “Willis.” He worked on it a few years.
Snowy road heralded a clear death
… It was a cold winter night when the collective farm chairman was called on party affairs in the district center. In those post-war years, nothing there was no extraordinary trip, and Vasily took his chief to the area. When they came back, the chairman ordered the driver to call on one of the farms: he wanted to take honey from beekeeper.
A photo from open sources
However, it was not possible to get to the farm; the road was too swept. Then Vasily decided not to circle, wasting gas in vain, but to go straight forward. But then the blizzard turned into a real blizzard. Outside the windows there was total darkness, there was no way to see the road. The chairman, having ripped off on what the light stands, scolded this night a trip, and reeling in bad weather, and his driver. Vasily led the car in impenetrable darkness and mentally prayed, although it was a party: “Lord, lead us out, don’t let us stiffen in the field for eating to the wolves! .. I will return the icons to the hut from the closet, in the church a candle I’ll put it … ”
Mysterious old man in the field
But the car still got up, it was very shallow outside. What was left do? Gasoline almost ran out, there was a dog cold in the cockpit. All of a sudden the men saw an old man come out of the thick snow short and stooped. Chair and driver in they looked at each other in perplexity: where did this grandfather come from in a blizzard? A he, meanwhile, went to the car and said:
– Won’t you get lost? Well, never mind, follow me slowly. I although he didn’t go to Kremenki, but I’ll bring you out.
The old man moved forward, and Vasily began to steer after him: deeply snow-covered field, along the potholes – and nowhere is his “Willis” stalled. It’s time to run out of gas, but the car is on and is coming. So they got out, the chairman immediately became cheerful, yells:
– Look, our church!
The mysterious old man turned out to be Seraphim of Sarov
And rightly so, the outskirts of their village appeared. Vasily stopped the car, got out to thank the old man. He looks – but there’s no strick, as as if it weren’t at all. Surprised, climbed into the cab again. A chairman and says:
– Strange some kind of this grandfather, suspicious. Should report it … to competent comrades.
Basil said nothing about it, drove the chairman home, and himself in the church hastened to fulfill its promise. I went there, and what’s next he doesn’t know what to do, he was an unbeliever, non-church person. Later approached the priest and said:
– I want to put a candle, the most expensive, but I do not know where.
Father led Vasily to some old image. Looked at the driver was stunned by him: the icon is the same old man who met they are now on the road. From excitement, Vasily will shout:
– Why, it is he!
– Who? – the father was surprised.
– The old man, the one who brought us out of the snowstorm!
And Vasily told what happened to him last night. Upon hearing this story, the priest knelt before the icon and set about to pray fervently. Basil sank down next to him and, not knowing any prayers, only silently laid crosses upon himself.
A photo from open sources
In the morning the whole village was already buzzing about the incident. Chair too He went into the church and, seeing the icon, went with purple spots. Some time later, the church in Kremenki was closed – not without the help of all that same chairman. But he, too, did not stay in the village, he felt like people squint at him. He soon transferred to another collective farm.
And the driver Ivanov remained in his native village. From paria Vasily Stepanovich did not go out, but in his hut hung an image on the wall, with whom the same night guide looked at him – a saint Seraphim of Sarov.
