January 21, 2011
Interfax
A Muslim woman in the Russian Republic of Bashkiria, who was unsuccessfully treated for infertility for 14 years, gave birth to a son after praying before the icon of St. Nicholas in an Orthodox church.
"I'm a Muslim, but for some reason I believed that it (the icon - IF) would help me," the happy mother is quoted as saying by Ufa edition of the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily.
Her friends advised her to go to the church: her marriage had almost failed and the diagnosis sounded as a death verdict to family happiness - it is impossible to give birth with such stress.
It was the first time the woman came to the church, she was a little bit scared and did not know how to pray. Parishioners told her "sincerely, from the heart" to ask St. Nicholas.
Then she invented a simple prayer: "Nicholas the Wonderworker help me, give us a son, please..." Finally, the woman took off her favorite golden chain and left it near the icon - there is a belief that such gifts make a prayer more effective.
She received news that she was pregnant a month later. Her son Tamerlan makes his parents happy: he is so cheerful and clever.