How much has Russia been through?

Yesterday was the 65th anniversary of the lifting of the German blockade against Leningrad. The blockade lasted nearly 900 day4s during WW2. On an average 42 people died every day during that time [Some estimates are much higher - Lyle]. Yesterday I went to hear a lady who lived during that time. She was 11 when it started and 14 when it ended.  

Interesting fact: they only got 125 grams of food a day. The used metal cups to put hot water inside. There was no t

ea or coffee. She said she very much respected these kinds of cups, because they would warm your hand as you drank. There was no electricity, and there were no candles, because they all ate them. She had a window overlooking the place where the city stored their sugar, butter, and flower to be distributed. But she watched it all burn up over a two-week period. There was no oil, but one amazing story she told was about her father, who collapsed on the sidewalk from hunger one day. A worker, dressed in workers clothes, came over, picked up her father, and dropped a drop of oil in his mouth. Her father was a preacher, and he said he believed it was an angel. Anything edible in the city was eaten. 

Last year, when my grandmother was here, I went to the Bread Museum,

 which explains the history of bread in Russia. One part of it was for the blockade. They had a small glass case with a piece of bread in it. It was made of dust specs, the wrong parts of wheat that you grind to make bread, and

 all sorts of yucky types of dust. Also with my grandmother, I went to the Leningrad cemetery. 

It had a small museum there, and we went inside. The most interesting thing about the museum was a little diary, made up of three or four pages, of a little girl's diary. On the first day, it said, "Mother is dead." On the second day, "Father and Uncle died." On the last day, it read, "All are dead; only I am left." No one knows what happened to the little girl, but one sad thing is that she might have died too. 

There were pictures at the Bread Museum of children looking skin and bone, barely any skin. You wonder if they ate the dead. One more thing the lady said: She was once at the train station; she was there with her mother and an older friend, when all of a sudden the Germans were firing upon them. Her older friend threw her into a ditch and covered her so that the Germans would not see her and shoot her. When it was all over, and the Germans had left, her friend got her out of the ditch and covered her eyes so that she would not see all the dead people. When her mother saw that her friend had kept her daughter safe, she knelt down and kissed her friend's feet. 

It hurts me to know that my country has been through so much. It makes me want to go back in time and help fight. But since I can't, all I can do is pray for Russia. My prayer is that Russia would grow to be a strong Christian nation, and that everybody who is depressed now would have hope.