Iryna: It’s probably the weirdest and the most strange story that has ever happened to me in my whole entire life. It was probably day three or day four of the full-scale invasion. I was super sick, super high fever, chills, I could barely go to the toilet. I lived by myself in a dormitory and I was just trying to get through the sickness, and I wake up after having this dream that felt like a vision, felt super real.
I saw this church, and I’ve never seen a church in my dream before. Never, in my entire life. And it wasn’t like I was… I believe- well I believe in God, but going to church has never been a part of my life growing up. So, I see this church in my dream and it looks so realistic. Nothing like I’ve ever seen before. Very different church that has frescas on the walls, very high ceilings and arc-shaped colourful windows with icons on them made of colourful glass, pieces of glass. And benches. Huge, very long benches and I’ve never seen benches in church before because where I come from we do not have benches, we stand throughout the entire sermon. There were benches and people sitting at these benches and the priest was saying something, was praying. There were two huge, beautiful, gorgeous chandeliers also made of wood with candles in them. Real wax candles that were burning, and that was the only source of light in that church. I saw different icons mostly of God, Jesus, and Saint Maria, and Saint Mary.
It stood out to me and when I woke up, I was like “that did not felt like a dream at all” and something told me I needed to Google it and see if it even exists. I know it’s weird, but it was the first move in the, you know, in the morning I was like “that that felt weird” and I see, oh- in my dream I spoke to somebody and asked what church is it, and they told me this is a church of three saint, saints? And also named their names. I don’t really recall, I think it was Pavlo, Petro and somebody. I’m like “okay I will Google it”, and it popped up on the Google Maps but it had a different name. It had the name, uh, it is a very old church it looked the exact same way as in my dream. I’ve never seen it before. It’s located in the city centre and it’s very visible but I’ve never been to that side of the city centre. It’s kind of behind, in the back, I’ve never been there before. Um and the name of this church is, uh, Saint St. Mary’s Church.
So I was like, I got dressed, I instantly felt better <laughs>. Like my sickness, you know, stepped away and I felt so much better. So I get dressed, I go there. I stay and listen to the priest and throughout the entire sermon. I wait until everybody leaves, and I wanted to talk to the priest because it felt so weird. Everything was the exact same as it was in my dream. Even benches! Even chandeliers! Everything was the exact same. I finally was able to speak to the priest, and I told him “hey I saw this church in my dream I’ve never heard about this before it looked exactly the same” and he’s- he was just listening to me and nodding and saying “mhmm mhmm”. I was like “well in my dream some priest told me that it’s called, it’s named after the three saints, does it have anything to do with it?” And he’s like “yeah you’re standing in the part of the church that is called this exact same way and the main part of the church is called- is named after Saint Mary, and then you also go up the stairs to the tower with the bell and it also has a different name but it’s all shut down because of the war right now.”
I was amazed. I couldn’t say a word, and he’s like “you are the third person within the past three days who came and said the exact same story that they saw this church in their dream. It means something for sure, it probably means that-” he just proceeded speaking to me, he said “it probably means that you are important and you need to come here and pray and your prayer is important.” So ever since then I started attending this church every Sunday, and praying and lighting candles. I don’t know how and- how it’s even, how to put it in the right words- I don’t know how it happened, why it happened, but I wasn’t the only one according to the priest.
Vic: What city was this?
Iryna: Lviv!
Vic: Oh, thank you.
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