Send me a text and let me know your thoughts! 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://mariafix.org https://uppbeat.io/t/brock-hewitt-stories-in-sound/his-destiny License code: 7FMBR1NMETVC8EAZ https://youtu.be/jcfwpj1vMvk 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. Stories of feeling unworthy because of being sex trafficked, or of radical redemption of a woman who grew up with abuse, neglect, abandonment and drugs. A story of an abortion survivor. This and more. Lean in now. Consider subscribing to this podcast, YouTube and Substack- all with the same name: Just Talkin' About Jesus! https://www.youtube.com/@JustTalkinAboutJesus https://jan-johnson.com/ https://justtalkingaboutjesus.com/ https://janjohnsonauthor.substack.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@JustTalkinAboutJesus Thanks for listening! If you have a story to tell, check out the form on my website- justtalkingaboutjesus.com. I'd love to connect with you! No, really.... hit me up!
