Ianovskaia Tatiana

Here are the words of Tatiana Ianovskaia from the video interview - please see at Life stories about Vladyka Seraphim
October 2010

In 1998, I immigrated to Canada. And that for me was like falling through a “rabbit hole,” because the question “who am I now?” stood before me. In one moment I lost all my contacts, my friends, my status, and Vladyka was the person who gave me my first job. And that meant everything to me in that moment. Thanks to Vladyka, thanks to his faith and belief in me and his faith in my ability to write the iconostasis, even though I had never done it before... even when he believed in me, I didn’t have faith in myself. But he did, he gave me this responsibility, and thanks to his prayers, thanks to his spiritual help, the iconostasis was completed.

After that, our friendship continued. Vladyka would visit our home and the influence that he had on my family is priceless. He was truly a “kind shepherd” and we, as a family, became cleaner, kinder, and wiser. We would wait for his visits and he would unify and bring together our family and, without him, I can’t even begin to imagine my life in Canada.

Host: “He wrote out cheques to you from his personal account?”
Yes. Vladyka would always pay for the work I did for him from his own pocket, and the money would not always be consistent – when he could pay me, he would. My take on this was that we arrived in Canada, a completely new place to us. Just as when building villages in the old days, the first thing that would be built would be a church, because it was believed that God would grant the people everything else that they needed. And that viewpoint was in my soul – that’s to say, I believed that if we were to build the church first, after that, God would give us everything. And in truth, that’s what happened. When he could, Vladyka would send me personal cheques taken from his own pocket. It was completely, by the Grace of God, his gift to the Diocese of Canada.