A resident of the Transcarpathian village Iza Anna Georgievna Ruschak is 102 according to the birth certificate. But the woman claims that she is a year older. For over 80 years Anna has been in monastic tonsure.
Little Anna Ruschak didn’t attend school at all. She became a nun when she was 18, then made vows and called herself sister Theodora.
‘There was a lot of work’. There were nuns who prayed all the time in church. And working ones always prayed early in the morning and went to work. Some went to the garden, others worked in the field or with cattle,’- the nun Sister Theodore recollects.
When in 1961 the communist authorities closed the monastery, Sister Theodora went to live with her relatives in Iza. There they wove baskets for the farm. The Ruschaks left their children and grandchildren with her. In spite of life among the laity, sister Theodore, one of the oldest people, daily holds monastery order: prayers, fasting, obedience.
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