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Valerie Lysenko was born on September 27, 1925, the feast day of the Nativity of the Theotokos by the Old Calendar. Through the storms, trials, and struggles of her century-long journey, Valerie and her family were shielded by the intercessions of the Theotokos—giving her the strength to endure, the hope to rebuild many times, and the faith to continue forward. She was born in Odessa, Ukraine, into a family of educators and landowners. Her grandparents and parents were highly educated, teachers by profession, and prosperous farmers by livelihood. They lived well—until the brutal years of Stalin’s regime, when Ukraine’s educated and landowning classes were targeted as kurkuli. Her father was blacklisted for marrying into a family condemned as kurkuli, forcing them to move many times—from Odessa to Mykolaiv, Kherson, Yampil, and Marbuda—before finally fleeing the oncoming Russian forces. READ MORE ЧИТАТИ ДАЛІ
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