Thanks to the fervent prayers of Vladika John, my father, Nicholas Michailovich, quickly regained his health after a third heart attack in the summer of 1962. My father had already suffered two heart attacks, in 1954 and 1958, and thereafter he spent a month each year in the Ardennes under the care of a doctor. My sister, Baroness Maria N. Apraksina, and I were at the doctor's when he told us that our father's condition was hopeless. Suddenly Vladika John appeared in our father's room and started to pray. Our father soon regained his health completely and returned home to Brussels, where he lived another four years…
Valentin Collenga Stadnitsky graduated from the Poltava Cadet Corps. Vladika John also studied there and the two became acquainted. After the Second World War, Valentin Collenga moved from Yugoslavia to Brussels, where he lived with his sister, Mme Dobrovolsky. Washing windows one day in the apartment, he fell from the second floor onto the street. This happened in 1959; he was 65 or 66 years old. So many bones were broken that the doctors held absolutely no hope for his recovery. Vladika John arrived at the hospital together with Father Chedomir Ostoichem and began to pray at the dying man's bedside. Father Chedomir later related that for the first time he heard how Vladika John conversed in prayer with God.
The next morning the doctors couldn't believe the sick man hadn't died; what's more, he began very quickly to recover. Within a month he left the hospital completely healed and lived for a long time afterwards. This was told me in detail today by Vera Alexeevna Stassen, the granddaughter of Archpriest Vassily Vinogradov, first rector of our cathedral parish in Brussels.
Philip Gering was born in Brussels in 1943. Together with his brother Dimitry, he conscientiously served Vladika as an altar boy. Philip was operated on for what was thought to be simply appendicitis, but it was found to be cancer; his condition was hopeless. However, by the fervent prayers of Vladika John, Philip soon recovered completely — something the doctors of course did not expect. He graduated as an engineer from the university in Louvain, worked in Canada, and lives now in Italy.
Reader Vladimir Kotliarevsky, Brussels, Belgium