Ritva Romanowsky is a native of Finland. She came to the USA in 1953 with her husband, Arkady, a former officer in the Russian army, who now works as an auto mechanic in Southern California. She studied music at Helsinki Conservatory and is a devout Roman Catholic. They are parents often children and live in Tarzana, a suburb of Los Angeles.

It was spring in Finland in 1945 and the gay sounds of Helsinki and the smell of approaching summer were in the air. The long war was finally over. The girls in our Mission High School divided their time between witnessing of Christ on the street and normal girlish pranks.

But all was not so gay in other quarters. Hundreds of tired, anxious men were returning from the war, released from prison camps and discharged from the military. There was no employment and many were living desperate lives in the modem catacombs of the church basements.

After graduation, I found myself at my grand-aunt’s seventy-fifth birthday party and was introduced to Arkady, a young Russian officer who had been captured, had turned his back on communism and was now assisting the Finns with their anti-communist propaganda broadcasts. He was one of those victims of war, mystically misplaced in a strange land.

We were living in the same neighborhood and began seeing each other on a regular basis. I was a believer while he was of the world, but we were still drawn to each other. That fall, before I entered Helsinki Conservatory to study voice and piano, we announced our engagement. Nine months later, we were married before a Lutheran and an Orthodox pastor, neither of whom would speak to each other aside from their official duties. Yet they both claimed to love the same Jesus.

Politically, times were getting difficult for little Finland. Stalin’s agents were in every city and the communists were desperately seeking to gain control. Our neighbors were disappearing during the night as the communists would make night arrests. Arkady warned me that it could happen to us at any time.

Then it did happen. They came for Arkady late one night when I was preparing the bassinet for our soon to be born child. However, he dramatically escaped and we fled into the night on our long journey to freedom and eventually to America. But first there was a seven month hideout with the underground, then an escape to Sweden and finally a tragic shipwreck in the English Channel that landed us in Ireland. It took six years before we finally reached the shores of freedom in America.

But merely having political freedom did not release us from the bond-age of tyranny of sin and self. We had four boys by now and were living in a cramped New York apartment Arkady heard of an opportunity to become an auto mechanic in Los Angeles, so we moved all the way across the country — still seeking that freedom for which we had dreamed so long.

I remembered my days in the Mission High School and that wonderful feeling I’d had when I knelt at the altar during an evangelistic meeting and accepted Christ as my personal Saviour. I remembered the good feeling I’d had attending the morning, noon and evening prayer meetings, as well as the Sunday services. Perhaps a return to organized religion would give me the release I needed, I thought.

While in Ireland, I’d been drawn to the Catholic services. I had attended both Finnish and Russian Orthodox churches in America, but was not satisfied. Failing to find satisfaction in any of the known institutions, I finally joined a Roman Catholic church in Los Angeles.

Then a tragedy hit. Arkady was in a car accident and one leg was placed in a cast for six months. He was left with a stiff knee, too crippled to continue his job. He gave up his work as an auto mechanic and bought a bar in Los Angeles. The bar soon failed financially, leaving us nothing but a bunch of beer drinking friends who helped make our home a squalid assortment of parties. I was miserable.

Then my ninth child was born. It was in 1961 and when I returned home from the hospital, I knew at once that something was wrong with me. I had received a spinal injection that somehow affected my entire nervous system. I was an emotional wreck.

The year before, when our eighth child was born, my spine had been accidentally damaged in a spinal anesthesia. I had gradually recovered, but the second spinal renewed the entire ordeal with all the accompanying symptoms — unbearable pain and headaches, dizziness, blackouts, loss of memory, and along with it, the depression. It was as if the lights had been turned out and the technicolor world had moved into black and white.

I had always been a strong, healthy woman. My Scandinavian background left little room for me to play the part of the sickly housewife who was run ragged by a houseful of little children. I loved my children and had always commenced each day with an energetic enthusiasm.

But now I was afraid to face the morning and cried throughout the day for no reason. The dark house haunted me with thoughts of death.

The gynecologist sent me to a specialist in internal medicine, who sent me to a neurosurgeon, who referred me to a psychiatrist. They loaded me down with pills, but nothing helped. At least the pills did not seem to do much good, although I was taking them by the handful.

Then I tried liquor. Although I had never drunk heavily, now I began to drink early in the morning as soon as Arkady left the house. By the time the older children got home from school, I was almost useless to help. And no one warned me that a combination of pills, which were both stimulants and depressants, and the liquor could be fatal. It was not long before I was in horrible shape.

Night after night, I lay on the couch and watched Arkady come in from work and put an apron around his waist to begin cooking dinner. The house stayed a wreck and the children needed attention since they received none from me during the day.

Five children under six can try the patience of any man. Yet he was the kindest, gentlest man I had ever seen. I often wonder if his disciplined patience was the result of those long years as a Russian army officer and subsequent years in a Finnish prison.

It was hopeless to help Arkady. All I could do was lie on the sofa and watch him with glazed eyes while he changed the baby’s diaper and washed dishes. Our money for pills had run out and cheap wine was all the medication I could afford.

Good friends brought water from Lourdes for me to drink in hopes I could be healed of the spine condition, the arthritis which had set in or perhaps my diabetic condition, But nothing happened. I even visited a Catholic priest who had the gift of healing in his ministry, but it was not in God’s timetable for me to be healed yet.

We sold the house and moved to the country and I thought for a while that I was improving, but the pain and depression returned with devastating regularity. How I wished to be dead! God seemed to hear my every prayer, but not this one. Somehow I knew that God wanted me to walk closer with Him, and then He would heal me.

We moved back to Los Angeles. I knew I had to find something to regain the joy of living. I could not go on like this. Even suicide seemed more attractive than the prospect of another tomorrow.

I thought if I could get out of the house, it would ignite a spark of interest in life. But even getting out was a chore. Los Angeles used to be such a beautiful city, but on that first day out, it seemed dark and dull—just like everything else in my life.

Browsing through a market, I absently picked up a book from the shelf, Tell No Man, by Adela Rogers St. Johns. Maybe this would help, I thought. Something compelled me to dig into my purse for the price. We could not afford it, but at least it would help keep my mind off myself.

Once into its pages I could not put it aside. If only God can touch my life again, I thought. Finishing the book, I knew one thing: Jesus Christ was the only way for my life.

I renewed my vows to the Catholic church and tried to be faithful at Mass. But my physical condition grew steadily worse. The pain started at the bottom of my spine and ran up across my shoulders and into the back of my head. The only way I could move around the house was in a bent-over position.

The misery grew worse. And then I discovered I was pregnant again. “I don’t think I can stand another baby.” I cried. But it was not another—it was two. When the doctor told me I was carrying twins, I almost lost control. The old depression returned and I found myself facing a despairingly hopeless future.

The babies were born in September, 1967, after fourteen hours of hard labor, but one of them died at birth. I had begged the doctors not to give me another spinal, but since I was a charity patient the warnings were disregarded and a spinal anesthesia was administered. When I returned home from the hospital, the horrid spinal pain returned. The doctors told me to stay home and get plenty of rest. With ten children, they prescribed rest!

It wasn’t a pretty picture. We were foreigners in a strange land. Neither of us could speak the language very well. Arkady was struggling to bring home enough money to keep a roof over our heads and buy food. My body was wracked with intense pain as I tried futilely to claw my way up from the black pit of depression. I even felt cut off from God. What could I do? Where could I go?

While lying on the couch one afternoon, the phone rang. It was a lovely Welsh lady, Mrs. Ivy Thompson, whom I had met a year earlier. She wanted to come over and see the babies. I remembered her as afflicted with multiple sclerosis, but when she entered the house, she was a different woman. She looked wonderfully well — twenty years younger.

“What has happened to you?” I exclaimed.

“I found Jesus and He healed me,” she said simply as she smiled. “I now sing in the Kathryn Kuhlman choir at the Shrine. Why don’t you come to the next meeting with me?”

I was touched by her concern, but far less than enthusiastic over the idea of attending a healing service. “You know I am Catholic,” I said. “I’ll never let a non-Catholic lay hands on me.”

But I pondered the invitation for almost two months. Then one rainy Sunday morning in November, I got up and attended early Mass. I had just returned home when Mrs. Thompson called. “Miss Kuhlman is at the Shrine Auditorium today. We will be leaving here at 11:30 A.M. Why not come with us?”

“No, Ivy,” I said. “I just don’t care to go. I can’t bring myself to believe in this kind of thing. Besides, it is raining.”

“Nonsense,” she said, “come on over here. I’ve been preparing you for this time.” I found later she meant she had been praying for me.

I finally agreed, just to be polite. My back was hurting dreadfully and I was glad I had an appointment with the doctor the next morning. But I got in my car and drove around to the Thompson’s house. They were waiting for me when I pulled up in the driveway.

I painfully climbed into the back seat and we started our drive across the city to the Shrine. As we sped along the Hollywood Freeway, the tires of the car singing against the wet pavement, Mrs. Thompson began to sing softly, too. I listened to her words, “Spirit of the living God....”

I started to hum along when suddenly I had a strange sensation in my back. It was a mysterious, tingling sensation that started in my head and ran down my spine. I actually heard a crackling noise in my backbone.

I was scared and confused and looked up to see if either of the Thompsons had noticed anything. Obviously not, for Mrs. Thompson continued to sing as the rain peppered the windshield.

I gingerly sat back in the seat and closed my eyes. Something had definitely touched my body—something supernatural. The pain had left. It had vanished completely. On the outside everything seemed the same, but inside I felt as if I were a different person. I had no way of knowing, but this was the beginning of a series of events so remarkable that even I would have difficulty believing them.

We pulled off the freeway and drove the two blocks to the huge Shrine Auditorium. Mr. Thompson let us out and went on to park the car. Mrs. Thompson went through the side door to the choir and I told her I would meet them in front of the auditorium when the service was over.

Since it was still raining, the front doors had been opened early and I went in. I couldn’t get over the vastness and beauty of the great auditorium. People were streaming in by the hundreds, trying to get the choice seats. I stood in the great lobby, looking around at the intense faces of those who were coming in out of the rain and hurrying through the little tunnels that led to the main auditorium.

I followed them into an entrance tunnel which led inside. I only took a step or two into the awesome auditorium when I felt a strange sensation come over me. My legs began to buckle. I wasn’t fainting, because I had complete control of my mind, but I simply could not stand. Before I could grab hold of anything, I was on my knees in the aisle. “Heavens!” I said out loud. “What’s wrong with me?”

People were streaming past, heading for the few seats that were still available in the front of the auditorium. I guess they thought I was praying, but I just could not stand up.

I grasped the arm of a seat and pulled myself to my feet, still shaking and unsteady. An usher approached and I asked him if I could sit down in one of the seats in a roped-off section. “I don’t know what has happened to me,” I told him. “My legs just gave out and I fell forward.”

I found a seat and rested until the service began, trying desperately to understand what was transpiring in my life and body. First that strange feeling in the car — now this.

Kathryn Kuhlman called six young Marines to the stage for recognition. Many of us in the balcony stood, watching as she prayed for them. They all fell to the floor and I wondered what kind of hypnotism this was.

Suddenly and without warning, my own legs buckled again and I collapsed backward into my seat. I tried to get back to my feet, but the muscles in my legs refused to respond. What is this, I kept asking myself, my mind in a turmoil as I tried to figure out what was happening.

The service continued and she moved into her sermon. This is blasphemy, I thought. How can this woman claim that God is speaking through her? She is no priest. She is not even a nun.

At the close of her sermon, when she asked us to bow our heads, I did. “The Holy Spirit is here and He will give you your heart’s desire if it is asked in Jesus’ name,” she said. “Just make your petition.”

The least I can do is cooperate, I thought. I put my hands to my face and then it happened. Suddenly I was aware of the literal presence of Jesus Christ standing before me. It was so strong, I wanted to raise my head or peek through my fingers. I knew He was standing right there in front of me.

The thoughts raced through my mind like the cars whizzing by on the freeway. What should I pray for? What does He want me to say? What is the greatest need in my life? I opened my mouth and the words came tumbling out unexpectedly, “Forgive me my sins!”

I had no sooner uttered these words than I felt I was being literally immersed in the love of God. It was as though He were bathing me and baptizing me in His love.

The tears came then. I was not really crying, just overflowing with tears. I still had my hands over my face and the tears were streaming through my fingers. I knew I had to get to the front of the auditorium to tell Miss Kuhlman something wonderful had happened to me.

Again I was blocked by an usher. “Have you been healed?” he asked.

I was so caught up by the spiritual experience that I completely forgot about the experience in the car. “I don’t think so,” I replied. “I just want to tell Miss Kuhlman about this wonderful feeling in my heart.”

No doubt the usher thought I was a crank. He kindly suggested that I take my seat and wait until the service was over. But I could not stay seated and tried twice more to get to the front. Each time, my way was blocked.

At last Miss Kuhlman gave an altar call and the aisles were filled with people streaming toward the stage. This is my chance, I thought, and I joined the procession heading for the platform.

We were ushered to a side room and after the service Miss Kuhlman herself came through the door where we were all waiting. Now is my time to tell her, I thought again. But instead I found myself shrinking back toward the far door.

Then came the time when Miss Kuhlman said, “There is a miracle far greater than the healing of the physical body; it is the spiritual healing for the soul. Jesus said, ’Ye must be born again.’ The one thing we all have in common is the first birth (the birth in the flesh), but to be born of the Spirit, you must accept what Jesus Christ did for you on the cross.”

I was suddenly afraid. I didn’t understand and I opened the back door and made my way out to the street. I should have stayed, I thought, but my footsteps carried me farther and farther away from the place where she was.

The Thompsons picked me up in front of the auditorium and we began the long drive back across the city. They wanted to know all about my sensations and I told them of my final fears in letting Miss Kuhlman pray for me. When we got home, Mrs. Thompson insisted I come in for awhile. Once inside the house, she turned to me and said, “Ritva, let me pray for you.”

I looked up and saw her coming toward me, her hands extended to put them on my head. “No!” I screamed as I jumped to my feet. “No!” And I literally ran from the house, down the steps to my car, and hurriedly backed into the street. A great wave of remorse swept over me. That was a poor way to treat a friend, I reproved myself, especially after that wonderful experience at the Shrine. But I headed down the street toward home.

My mind flashed back to the cleansing, baptizing sensations that had been mine in the balcony at the Shrine. Suddenly I felt a wonderful song of praise and adoration bubbling up in my heart. I began to sing. Even though I often sang in my native Finnish tongue, this time the words and music were totally unfamiliar. It was a strange, unknown tongue. I had no idea what I was singing, but I knew it was a song of praise and I didn’t want to stop. I continued down the street, singing from the bottom of my heart—but letting the Holy Spirit supply both the music and the lyrics.

I stopped at the market to pick up some bread and milk for the children and I was scarcely able to control the indescribable happiness I was feeling. Once back in the car, I was again singing in the strange, unknown tongue. It was so wonderful!

As I pulled up and stopped in front of the house, I wondered what I would tell Arkady and the children. I didn’t even know what had happened. How could I tell them? I decided I would say nothing. If this was real, they would soon find it out. If it was not real, then I wouldn’t have made a fool of myself in front of them.

I did not have to wait long to find out. The children could tell the difference the moment I walked into the house. “Mama, something has happened to you. Your eyes — they sparkle!”

I bent down and pulled them to me. How wonderful it was to be able to bend over and not be in pain. How wonderful it was to feel the happiness that surged from their hearts to mine! How wonderful it was to be alive.

It was not many days before Arkady said in his quiet way, “Something has changed about you, Ritva.”

“You notice?” I said.

“I cannot help but notice. You are healthy. But even more important, you are happy. What has happened?”

That was all I had been waiting for, and that evening I poured out my heart to my kind and gentle husband. “There has been a change,” I said. “I have been healed. Not only is the pain in my back gone, but the arthritis has disappeared. And the last medical check showed all the diabetes has vanished, too. And, Arkady, there’s no more depression. Do you realize that I have not cried a single time since that Sunday?” He nodded, although his own eyes were moist at the time.

“And besides, Arkady, I have stopped taking medicine. I have not had anything, not even an aspirin, since that day. And no more liquor either.”

“I know,” he said softly, smiling, “I know.”

Arkady’s background was far different from mine. He was born in Warsaw, Poland, but at an early age moved to Minsk in White Russia. When he was thirteen, his parents were thrown into a political concentration camp from which they never returned. He and his young brothers and sisters were forced to beg in the streets for scraps of bread until he found a job that enabled him to finish high school.

Having been raised under the communist government, he had always despised the church and organized religion. His father had been an outspoken atheist who had engaged in public debates with Russian priests during the Czarist regime. After leaving Ireland, he had been sympathetic to the Catholic church, but had never made any outward signs about joining. Therefore, I was afraid he might be hostile toward my new found faith in God. However, when he noticed the change that had taken place in my body and life, he became interested, too.

Something else had happened to me. For the first time in my life, I had a burning desire to read my Bible. I could not get enough of it. After I got the children to bed, I read far into the night. And many times I woke at 2 or 3 A.M. and got up and read and prayed some more. I had boundless energy and strength. It was an amazing transformation.

Mrs. Thompson asked me to write Miss Kuhlman and tell her what had happened to me. I objected, saying, “She must get mail from a million people. She would not be interested in me.” But Mrs. Thompson was remarkably insistent and a month later, I wrote Miss Kuhlman a note.

So much had happened, but all of our problems had not been settled. Our eighteen-year old son, Peter, was still living 450 miles north in San Rafael, rebelling against home and society. It had been five months since we had heard from him, although I learned from some friends that he had been smoking marijuana. Many hours were spent in prayer for him.

Two months after my experience at the Shrine, my prayer time was interrupted by the ringing phone. It was Peter. For some mysterious reason he had decided to come home for a weekend visit.

I redoubled my prayer efforts and asked Arkady if he would go with me to the Shrine service that coming Sunday. “If we take Michael (our next oldest son), perhaps Peter will consent to go also.” Arkady agreed, not only to get Peter to attend, but because he wanted to go. We both knew it would take a miracle to change Peter’s life.

But the miracle happened before Peter got home. He was hitchhiking outside San Francisco when a businessman from New Jersey stopped and picked him up. Once Peter was in the car, the man told him he had never picked up a hitchhiker before, much less one dressed like a hippie. The man was a Christian and began to witness to Peter about the Lord. As they sped along the coastal highway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, the Holy Spirit used the man’s personal testimony and by the time they reached the outskirts of the city, Peter had accepted Jesus Christ as his Saviour. When the businessman let him out, he gave Peter his Bible, telling him to keep it and read it. Peter arrived home a changed person.

And so the four of us sat in the balcony that January Sunday in 1967. My heart was overflowing with praise to God, but when the service started, Miss Kuhlman said something that shocked me upright in my seat.

“I want to share a letter I received from a woman living in Southern California,” she said as she began to read:

Dear Kathryn Kuhlman,

I am much late in writing to you that I was miraculously healed at the November meeting in the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. A mother of ten living children, I am a Catholic, thirty-nine years old, and have been ill for the past six and a half years....

I could scarcely believe my ears. It was my letter. When she finished reading, she said, “I have no idea whether the writer of this letter is here or not. If she is here, I want her to come forward.”

I do not know how it happened, but suddenly I was standing beside the woman that just two months before I had called a blasphemer. I blurted out, “My husband is up there in the balcony, too. He is from Russia. He served in the Red Army. Do you think Jesus can help him, too?”

“Certainly,” she answered. “You call him.”

“Arkady,” I called into the microphone, scanning the vast sea of indistinguishable faces in the high balconies. “Come, come.”

Moments later he was standing beside me professing his faith in the Christ who had changed my life and healed my body.

“I have two sons up there, also, Peter and Michael. Can they come to Jesus, too?” I asked.

“Why, of course,” Miss Kuhlman answered.

“Peter, Michael, come ... you come,” I called out. There was not a dry eye in the auditorium as my two sons joined us on the platform. It was a glorious day for us all.

Since that healing experience in the back seat of Mrs. Thompson’s car, I have never taken another pill, and the liquor is still a thing of the past. Our family life is happier than it has ever been. The children are growing spiritually as we read our Bible in the home and pray.

God is so good. Now I know it makes no difference whether you are Finnish, Russian, or American—God knows no such thing as nationality.”