In the village of Kefalochori, located in the region of Nicaea in Asia Minor, before the population exchange, lived a revered and graceful young woman, Eleni. She was called Elenaba, which combines Eleni with Abba, due to the fact that she had the wisdom, discernment and spoke like an Abba of the Desert.
She was orphaned of her parents and worked as a servant for a compassionate Turk. At night Elenaba would pray for many hours. The Turk would hear her say in her prayer: "Let me take the sins of such and such." In other words, she was praying for others. The Turk would see many people come to her for advice and understood that she had a special gift. He held her in great honor and felt that God helped him because of Elenaba. He himself recorded the events and prophecies related to her, because he was convinced that Elenaba had the gift of clairvoyance.
At that time many Greeks were being enlisted into the Turkish army in the Labor Battalions for five to ten years with the aim of exterminating them. They would no longer show signs that they were among the living and the families worried. Women would go and ask Elenaba if they were alive or had been killed. She, in order to not be questioned for whatever she would say to them, would first describe the man. For example, she would say: "Your husband is tall and blonde with a mustache." To this she would add on additional features, and then she would tell them if they were dead or alive or when they would return.
She also said: "There will come a time when people will be confused." (By this she meant spiritual or national confusion. Today both exist.)
One day she told her relatives: "You will leave, but leave me here behind. You will return, but these areas will be changed."
Before she died she asked to be clothed in the black clothing of a nun.
Everyone in the village revered Elenaba for her virtues and gifts. They believed that she was a saint. More details from her life were not preserved. Only that she reposed at the age of less than fourteen, around 1920, before the population exchange, as she had prophesied. At the place she was buried there gushed forth a spring of holy water which healed all those who were sick that drank it.
With the population exchange, her relatives and her fellow villagers came to Greece and settled in the prefecture of Serres, thus creating Neo Kefalochori. The relatives of Elenaba brought her clothes and some of her personal belongings as a blessing and an amulet to the new village. To this day, a perpetually lit lamp and candles are lit in the house where her personal belongings are kept. They invoke her in their needs and in their difficulties and she, having boldness before God, helps them.
During the civil war, the guerrillas (communists) repeatedly came to burn the village, but as soon as they entered the village they changed their disposition, took food and when they left they said: "Some Saint is protecting you, because we came to burn your village and as soon as we entered our disposition changed."
Source: From the book Ασκητές μέσα στον κόσμο Α’. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
She was orphaned of her parents and worked as a servant for a compassionate Turk. At night Elenaba would pray for many hours. The Turk would hear her say in her prayer: "Let me take the sins of such and such." In other words, she was praying for others. The Turk would see many people come to her for advice and understood that she had a special gift. He held her in great honor and felt that God helped him because of Elenaba. He himself recorded the events and prophecies related to her, because he was convinced that Elenaba had the gift of clairvoyance.
At that time many Greeks were being enlisted into the Turkish army in the Labor Battalions for five to ten years with the aim of exterminating them. They would no longer show signs that they were among the living and the families worried. Women would go and ask Elenaba if they were alive or had been killed. She, in order to not be questioned for whatever she would say to them, would first describe the man. For example, she would say: "Your husband is tall and blonde with a mustache." To this she would add on additional features, and then she would tell them if they were dead or alive or when they would return.
She also said: "There will come a time when people will be confused." (By this she meant spiritual or national confusion. Today both exist.)
One day she told her relatives: "You will leave, but leave me here behind. You will return, but these areas will be changed."
Before she died she asked to be clothed in the black clothing of a nun.
Everyone in the village revered Elenaba for her virtues and gifts. They believed that she was a saint. More details from her life were not preserved. Only that she reposed at the age of less than fourteen, around 1920, before the population exchange, as she had prophesied. At the place she was buried there gushed forth a spring of holy water which healed all those who were sick that drank it.
With the population exchange, her relatives and her fellow villagers came to Greece and settled in the prefecture of Serres, thus creating Neo Kefalochori. The relatives of Elenaba brought her clothes and some of her personal belongings as a blessing and an amulet to the new village. To this day, a perpetually lit lamp and candles are lit in the house where her personal belongings are kept. They invoke her in their needs and in their difficulties and she, having boldness before God, helps them.
During the civil war, the guerrillas (communists) repeatedly came to burn the village, but as soon as they entered the village they changed their disposition, took food and when they left they said: "Some Saint is protecting you, because we came to burn your village and as soon as we entered our disposition changed."
Source: From the book Ασκητές μέσα στον κόσμο Α’. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.