A station underpass. Endless streams of people. All are caught up in their daily business. Everyone dashes about: time, as they say, will not wait. Yet, right in the midst of it all, there sits a quiet island of peace: a sister in a white, angel-like habit silently reading her prayers and crossing herself.
My son once gave Galina Buel her name: the Sister Who Always Smiles. He would tug at my sleeve for coins to drop into her donation box, waiting with ears wide open for the gentle words, "May the Lord save you for your kindness." Soon enough, I too found myself drawn to this smiling sister, and she quickly grew to be a dear friend in spirit.
Little Galya was born on 6 April 1947 in the Lyuban district of the Minsk region, in a simple earth hut built by her mother and grandmother. During the war, the Nazis had set fire to every home in their village. The residents fled to join the partisans in the nearby forest by the marsh. Her mother, still a teenager, went on scouting missions, while her grandmother cooked for the partisan unit and cared for the wounded.
Galina’s parents met at the end of the war, as they were bringing back cattle recaptured from Germany. Her father, Ivan Romanovich Khmelnitsky, guarded the train; her mother, Olga Tikhonovna, looked after the cows. They fell in love at once and soon married. After the war, her father continued to serve as a sapper. Her mother waited for him, but he never returned - he was killed by a mine. As the widow of a fallen soldier, she received a pension, and she, her mother, and her small daughter lived for several years on those modest means in the dugout. Later they built a house.
From her earliest years, her grandmother taught Galya kindness. Grandmother could neither read nor write, yet she prayed with warmth and taught her granddaughter: "Live with God, give Him thanks. Whatever happens around you, always keep God in your heart."
Once a year, before Pascha, Galya and her grandmother travelled to Minsk and went to the Church of the Holy Prince Alexander Nevsky for Confession and Holy Communion...
Galina remembers her with deep affection: "I looked after my grandmother right up to her final days. She was so tiny and frail, and always called me her dear Galya. Sometimes, when Mother wanted to tell me off, my grandmother would step in and defend me - hiding me behind her skirt, as they say. And her prayers! It was as if prayer just came pouring out of her. My mother worked very hard and grew very tired, but in her later years she too came to know God and began to pray."
Galya did well at school, received a silver medal, and entered the Institute of the National Economy.
"We went to Kazakhstan with a student building brigade and stayed there about two months," she said. "I missed my homeland so much that when the train arrived, I stepped down, knelt, and kissed the ground."
After graduating, she built a successful career: the motor-and-bicycle plant, a research institute for computer engineering, even the Institute of National Security. Galina married and had a son, Dmitry. Her life seemed a model Soviet path.
Awards
When she heard that a monastery would be built in Minsk, and that its spiritual father, Father Andrey - "a priest full of kindness and straight from God" - served at the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, she went to speak with him. She had family difficulties and was looking for support.
After that meeting, something deep within her came alive. She realised she had missed out on something truly important, yet she also felt a bright spark of hope that all could still be set right. Galina began attending all the talks. Even a glance from Father Andrey she took as a blessing, and the questions she brought to him seemed to resolve themselves.
Where she had once gone to services only on great feasts, she now came often. In the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul she looked at the first sisters as if they were angels and thought, "My God, could I ever be like that?"
When Sister Galina visited Zalit Island, Elder Nikolai (Guryanov) approached her, holding slips of paper, and unexpectedly said: "You will steal these notes from me." She was startled. Later she asked Father Andrey if she could join the Sisterhood. He answered, "Elder Nikolai already blessed you long ago."
Her first obedience was visiting the sick in a care home. Bright and cheerful by nature, she quickly became friends with the residents. They looked forward to her visits every day, treating her like family.
One day, she mentioned to the residents that she had felt quite unwell and almost passed away. Hearing this, all the unwell patients sitting nearby burst into tears. Nowhere else, outside those walls, would you see care like that.
Sisters of mercy in the residential facility
She felt heart-deep warmth from them. Her patients - mostly women - gave her a part of their cash allowance to buy their favourite foods. Her husband, puzzled by her evening absences, went with her once. What he saw left its mark forever.
When she was given the obedience of standing with a collection box at the station, she felt she could fly, kissing her habit even as a feeling of her own unworthiness came over her. And who was the very first to put a large sum of money in? It was Galina’s own mother-in-law, a Catholic, with whom they had lived for eighteen years. This wise woman treated the changes in her daughter-in-law's life with respect, and when her son complained about his wife, she took Galina's side.
The station is a hub to which people bring their pain and their hope in God. Many travellers would come up to her, asking about the monastery. The sister would tell them about it, about God, about faith. The station became like a second home to her.
"My world changed. I understood that my obedience was my whole life. So many souls walked past me in a single day! A good number of the police officers on duty down there even took up the Orthodox faith. We would help them out, you know, ring them if anything happened," Sister Galina says, her eyes resting thoughtfully on the photographs.
At first her husband complained that he had lost his wife - but then he would come to see her at the station, bringing food and warm clothes, and at home he helped count the donations…
Her son and husband were Catholics. Once her son asked to become Orthodox, saying he did not understand anything in the Catholic church. Father Andrey set a day. Her husband took their son to the sacrament - and ended up entering Orthodoxy himself. From then on, they went together to services and received Holy Communion.
Gradually the monastery became part of her being. To those passing through the underpass, Sister Galina seemed to push back the shadow with her own light. Even when there was not a minute to stop and talk, the sight of her gave people hope and brought them joy. She herself could not imagine life without this obedience.
Dmitry grew up, became a doctor, married, and had a son and a daughter. Sister Galina loved her grandchildren dearly, took them to church, and tried to support the young family.
After thirty years of marriage, her husband agreed to a church wedding and the blessing of their flat. In 2007 he fell asleep in the Lord. Later she lost her beloved grandson. It was a great grief for the family and for all who had been close to them.
"My grandson Seryozha prays for us in the Kingdom of Heaven," Sister Galina says with a sigh. "He was eighteen when he died. He entered the physics and mathematics faculty at Belarusian State University. Six months later, doctors diagnosed cancer. He went through three operations, but the illness did not retreat. I believe my mother Olga and my grandmother Darya also pray for us - for peace on our land and that the Lord may not leave us without His mercy."
The station is busy, as ever, but here and there someone will stop before the woman in white in the underpass. She receives prayer requests, answers questions, and quietly bids farewell in her heart to her flock: it is now hard for her to get to the station, and her eyesight is failing. She will now carry out her obedience in a small shop near her home. For the time being, she waits for the younger sisters in this place filled with prayer.
I look at her and see someone dear: kind eyes, and within them - faith. She smiles as always, rejoices that people are giving to the monastery, coming to God. She has done this, day in and day out, for twenty-eight years.
Twenty-eight years of life and labour for Christ. May the Lord save you, Sister Galina!
Sister of mercy Galina
Interview by Elena Romanenkova
Photographs by novice Iulia and Maxim Chernogolov
