Helen Ilia speaks of her father. Around 1920, when I was a little girl, we lived here in St. Nicholas (Cyprus). We had great poverty. My father was a shepherd and had his own herd. One day he said he was going to cut wood. Where he went he hit at a point in a tree and “lost his light (he was blinded).” People said he beat the “table outside that we saw (the devil).”
He visited several doctors and was not cured. He went to various churches. At the end, he decided to walk from St. Nicholas to St. Barbara in Zakaki. At night, in his sleep, a Saint said: “You went to all the churches and did not come near me.”
“Who are you?” asked my father. And he got the reply: “I am St. Nicholas. I want you to come like this…” and he raised his robes showing his feet were clean.
My father asked me to boil water and he bathed. We took him along the reverse path to walk him, with my brother Harry and myself. that night my father slept alone in the Chapel of St. Nicholas. The next morning we went to take him from there but we did not find him. He had become well. St. Nicholas healed his eyes and when he woke he saw as before. He had gone home to take the herd and drive it to the pasture.
We all praise God and St. Nicholas! The “old ones” had great faith you see.