Natalya’s Miracle
The Fellowship | August 1, 2023
“The visits I receive from The Fellowship are the only company I have.”
These words are heartbreaking, especially if you’ve met sweet Natalya, a Holocaust survivor living in the southern Israeli city of Sderot. The loneliness Natalya feels only grows worse during the hot desert summers, as her tiny public housing apartment has no air conditioning. So when a Fellowship volunteer recently arrived with a food box and a fan, Natalya called us “my miracle.”
God has provided many miracles throughout Natalya’s life, beginning in her earliest years. Her father was able to flee the Nazis with 5-year-old Natalya, as well as his pregnant wife, escaping Donbas via horse and wagon, then “a train with no destination.” Somehow, Natalya’s mother was able to give birth and feed the infant, despite all of them going hungry. Sadly, the girl’s grandfather did not survive, like 6 million other Jewish people murdered during the Holocaust.
Despite living under anti-Semitic communist rule after WWII, Natalya shined in school—earning her medical degree and working as a doctor and a pharmacist. But her pension disappeared along with the Soviet Union. And now, having made aliyah (immigrated to her biblical homeland) this 86-year-old survivor has no one… except for The Fellowship.
So, when Natalya prays her prayers of thanksgiving to God, thanking Him for His help through The Fellowship, she is thanking Fellowship friends like you.