Episode Description
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Host Jan sits down with her own daughter, Sidney — now Sister Mercy of the Servants of the Lord — to talk about a woman who changed both their lives:
Maria Fix, a Russian Catholic who survived Soviet arrest, a 55-day cattle-car journey, the death of her toddler sister along the way, and nearly two decades in forced labor camps, before spending the rest of her life running an underground church and finally, in her eighties, professing final vows as a religious sister.
Along the way, Sister Mercy talks about staging a four-and-a-half-hour play with 25 nuns, what four years of religious formation actually involves, and a summer of mission trips before she's sent to her next posting — wherever God sends her.
A story about tenacity, trust, and saying yes with a blank check.
Colossians 1:9–10 (NLT) — "So we have not stopped praying for you since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding. Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit."
2 Corinthians 1:3–4 (NIV) — "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God."
Proverbs 3:5–6 (NIV) — "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight."
https://uppbeat.io/t/brock-hewitt-stories-in-sound/his-destiny
License code: 7FMBR1NMETVC8EAZ
00:00 — Welcome & Introducing Sister Mercy
01:04 — The Play About Maria Fix
02:02 — A Confessor of the Faith: Maria's Childhood Desire
02:20 — Arrested in the Night: Family Taken to Siberia
02:47 — The 55-Day Cattle Car Journey
03:13 — The Death of Two-Year-Old Ekaterina
03:29 — Forced Labor: Nine Years Cutting Timber
03:39 — Escape, and a Second Arrest
04:20 — Nearly Two Decades in the Gulag
04:46 — "I Don't Know How I Lived"
04:56 — Release, Loss, and Life as a Laundress
05:32 — The Underground Church: Communion, the Sick, and the Imprisoned
05:47 — Translating Scripture by Night
06:40 — Constant Harassment by the KGB
07:08 — Priests Arrive in Russia in the Early '90s
08:04 — "Why Can't It Be Me?"
09:16 — Final Vows in Her Eighties, With Advanced Parkinson's
09:44 — The Loss of Ekaterina, Revisited
10:51 — Twenty-Five Sisters and a Four-and-a-Half-Hour Play
‘11:40 — Behind the Scenes: Props, Costumes, and Chaos
12:37 — The Curtain Incident
13:36 — A Generous Donor and the Fog Machine That Never Fired
14:38 — How Maria's Story Changed Sister Mercy
16:07 — "A Blank Check to God" 16:52 — Marti on Comfort, Scripture, and Maria's Legacy
17:26 — Marti's Trip to Russia: What the Oppression Felt Like
20:38 — Praying Colossians 1:9 Over Sister Mercy
21:46 — Four Years of Formation: Philosophy, Theology, and Bioethics
23:14 — A Summer of Mission Trips: New York, Texas, California, Suriname, Argentina
25:51 — Waiting for the Next Assignment: "The Great Unknown"
26:59 — Closing Words: "An Invitation to Trust"
Welcome to Just Talkin' About Jesus.
I'm Jan Johnson, a seasoned believer who loves relationships and, you know, just talkin' about Jesus.
Here you will find testimonies of those who God has changed through his grace.
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