Ninety-year-old Martha Dziubenko has lived a life fraught with difficulty and challenges. She has been a servant from her childhood. Despite circumstances few people could imagine, Martha remains thankful and Christ-centered in her thoughts and countenance. A lifetime belief in Christ and of service freely given made even slavery honourable. “I was born into a Christian family in Ukraine. As a child I prayed, ‘Heavenly Father, if I can do work, I will help people.’ Father heard me. I do my very best to help people,” she says.
Martha’s family, like many Ukraine farming families during the Stalin era, was hopeful for independence from Russia. In Stalin’s attempt to prevent a Ukrainian revolution by forcing mass starvation, landowners, including Martha’s father, were arrested leaving her mother and other uneducated wives without support and forced from their homes. Martha’s mother found an abandoned home, collected her children and grandfather and settled them to sleep on beds of straw. Food was scarce. Authorities accused Martha’s grandfather, a Baptist, of spreading God’s word. The grandfather went to jail so the family could flee and escape serious persecution.
In time, Martha’s grandfather was released from jail and came to live with the family. “If asked about belief in God, you must say, 'no'! ‘Lie or die’ was the order at his release,” Martha explained. “Father and Grandpa were told to hide their Bibles and never talk to the children about religion, so they could live.”
When Martha was 12, her father died. The family separated once again. Her mother moved back to Ukraine to finish school. Alone now, Martha moved into a Russian home. As she grew older, Martha noticed people with Bibles going house to house talking about Jesus Christ. Martha stood near the door and listened to people studying and singing hymns. “I have a good memory,” she says. “Hymns are another Bible in the heart. I worked to sing the hymns in my heart.” Learning about Jesus made her happy.
Later Martha attended college and became a nurse. As World War II raged, she cared for the wounded from the Soviet Union, Poland and Ukraine alike; her only pay was some food rations and cigarettes. Still she enjoyed the blessings of serving others. Under Hitler, the Germans took slaves. In 1942, Martha was taken as a slave to a German farm. There she learned the Polish language, so she could better serve her Polish fellow slaves. She worked from 5:00 in the morning to 8:00 at night--fifteen hours a day, for 1,085 days—16,275 hours without pay. When the war ended, the slaves were slated to be killed. Many of her Polish comrades were hung. Martha felt she was protected because she still trusted in Heavenly Father. She always did her best at any task given her. In April of 1945, the United States Army freed Martha.
When Martha met a man in a Polish uniform, she asked him for advice. “Go nowhere except to Canada,” he said. “Canada is looking for people like you.” He helped her translate her medical diploma to English and German. Then in 1947, at age 23, Martha began the process of immigrating to Canada. “I had no experience, but Heavenly Father gave me the gift of boldness from the time I was a child,” she said. She moved to Quebec City in September 1948. The Canadian consulate advised her, “No matter how hard the work is, do it.” Martha found work caring for six children in Calgary. The home was filthy, the work hard. “Twenty-four hours a day, I was that mother’s slave,” Martha says. “My room was not private; I roomed with two of the children. I did not know the language and I felt stupid.” As always, Martha gave it her best and was glad to serve the children.
Looking for a better life, Martha found work at a hospital serving sick, elderly people. “At this point, the Holy Spirit changed my life. For the rest of my life, I was free!” she says. “I did not know Heavenly Father had a plan for me to stay in Canada where I would find the true Church,” she reflects.
Despite a distrust of marriage, Martha married a man who had come from the Soviet Union. He was a good worker and honest, but Martha was not happy because he made fun of her for reading the Bible. But she’d promised to stay with him and she did, for 46 years. “I could have divorced, but I had two children and nowhere else to go. I helped them as best as I could.” When her husband died, she read the Bible and spiritual books again.
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