Irina Soboleva shared this miracle of St. Nicholas. In 1942 our family was evacuated from Leningrad to the Yaroslavl Region. We bought a tiny hut there. My mother was sick by this time, but we had to live somehow. We were starving, and herded livestock to make enough money to scantily feed ourselves.
One winter day my youngest sister began to plead to my mother for a small dried bagel, a sushechka. We had no flour in the house, let alone anything else, but the girl insisted. Then my mother, losing her patience, turned her to the icon of St Nicholas and said: “Stand here and ask St Nicholas to send you а sushechka.”
After that conversation there was a terrible snow storm for two days. Huge piles of snow surrounded the entrance to our hut. On the morning of the second day, when the sun finally came out, mother heard someone softly knocking on our front door. She sent me to open it, thinking that it was our neighbor. From our door I could see a large bundle of freshly baked bagels hanging on our fence. I ran to my mother and told her of the miracle. Mother was not convinced. She had us put on our overcoats, and we went to the village to see if someone had forgotten them.
The snow was fresh, and there were no footprints anywhere. Our neighbor knew nothing. No one in the village had any idea about them. We did not find the owner of the bagels and came home.
This was truly a miracle, because no one in the village could have given us such a gift: everyone there was starving. Once we got home, my mother placed us before the icon of the blessed saint and said: “Give thanks to St Nicholas the Wonderworker,” and gave us each a bagel. That bundle lasted us a long time.