Olga Alexandrovna Kharabarova at work as an accountant
One summer day in 2009, I was called to meet some pilgrims passing through. A man and a bent-over old woman were waiting for me on the porch. Getting acquainted, it turned out that it was Schemanun Vassa (Kharabarova), ninety-five years old, who had come from Perm to live with us. This was completely unexpected, as there had been no prior agreement. But the schemanun authoritatively declared: “I’m not leaving here! I came here to work and pray!” And she repeated it several times for greater emphasis. So she remained in our monastery.
The life of this eldress turned out to be quite complicated: She was born into a religious family before the revolution, in 1914. It was already a communist country when she was growing up, but she didn’t lose her faith. She got married before the war, and they had a daughter. In the first half of World War II, Olga (Mother Vassa’s name in the world) had to bury her husband. After the war, she got married again, and this marriage produced a second daughter. But her family life didn’t go well, and Olga had to raise her daughters alone. They always had icons in their home. Olga went to the Holy Trinity Cathedral on Sludskaya Hill in Perm. She always took her daughters with her and put them closer to the altar so they could see how the services go, and she regularly received Communion.
Olga and her daughters
At first, Olga lived in Perm, working as an accountant, then she moved to a timber enterprise in Talitsa. During breaks, she would visit holy places, but her main place of pilgrimage was the Pskov Caves Monastery, where she received spiritual guidance from the elders.
By the age of fifty, Olga had the irresistible desire to enter a monastery. There were only two convents in the Soviet Union: 
The Amazing and Beautiful Holy Dormition-Pukhtitsa MonasteryPukhtitsa Monastery in Estonia is a special place of pilgrimage not only for Orthodox Christians from Russia and the Baltic States, but from many other countries as well.
“>Holy Dormition Pukhtitsa Monastery in Estonia, and the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery in Riga. Then during her pilgrimages, Olga learned about the existence of an Orthodox women’s community in Georgia. It was from the Orthodox convent in Khujabi, founded in 1905 and closed in 1935. The sisters who were driven out settled in the neighboring village of Akhkerpi, in the private sector. They had Divine services in the prayer house where Abbess Maria lived, celebrated by the community’s spiritual father who lived near the sisters (his name has not been preserved). Olga’s heart was drawn to this secret monastery.
Archimandrite Miron (Pepelyaev)
As soon as she retired in the late 1960s, despite her daughters’ pleas, she left for Akhkerpi. She bought a small house and lived next to the nuns, laboring in obediences and prayer. And if we consider that Khruschev’s persecution of the Church had only just ended, this can be considered the asceticism of confession.
At her house in Akhkerpi In 1970, Olga was tonsured a nun in Akhkerpi with the name Onuphria, and she spent twenty years there. In the late 1980s, most of the nuns of the community reposed due to old age, and the Divine services stopped. Mother Onuphria tried to go to church in Tbilisi, but it became hard to get there, as she was already over seventy by then. So she had to return to Perm. But the draw of monasteries didn’t stop. As before, the eldress quenched her thirst for spiritual guidance at the 
Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos at Pskov Caves Monastery8,000 people traveled to the Pskov Caves Monastery on its patronal feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God.
“>Pskov Caves Monastery, where she mainly spoke with Archimandrite Miron (Pepelyaev) and would go see him every summer.
The Lord didn’t leave her without His help and sent His saints to strengthen her monastic spirit. Fr. Miron was an experienced spiritual father, full of grace. Additionally, Archimandrite Miron himself was from the Perm Province. He grew spiritually there, and at the age of twenty he left for the Glinsk Hermitage, then he lived on the Holy Mountain; he was tonsured and labored ascetically in the Pskov Caves Monastery, and at the end of his life, the great abbot of the Pskov Caves Monastery Archimandrite Alypy (Voronov)Alypy (Voronov), Archimandrite
“>Archimandrite Alipy (Voronov) blessed him for the heavy labor of foolishness for Christ. In 1991, Mother Onuphria was tonsured into the great schema in honor of St. Vassa of the Pskov Caves.
Schemanun Savva was chosen as her spiritual mother. Archimandrite Miron respected his spiritual daughter. He signed one photo : “To my beloved eldress Schemanun Vassa, in prayerful memory.”
In 2000, with the blessing of her spiritual father, the eldress moved to Pechory for good, because she could no longer live outside a monastery.
Schemanun Vassa is second from the right in the back row
But the eldress’ wanderings didn’t end there. Soon her spiritual father Archimandrite Miron got very sick and left for Moscow, where he continued receiving his spiritual children, and there were a great many of them—bishops, priests, and monastics. Schemanun Vassa didn’t want to remain alone without spiritual care, and it wasn’t possible to move to Moscow, but her soul was still drawn to a monastery, so she returned to Perm and continued her search for a monastery. Her attempts to enter one weren’t immediately crowned with success.
Mother Vassa The monasteries needed young hands; there were many and mostly difficult obediences, and the eldress wasn’t accepted. Then she went to her spiritual father in Moscow, and he gave her a written blessing to move to a monastery in the Perm Region. Many of Fr. Miron’s spiritual children living in Perm came to her aid. And the choice fell to the Kazan-St. Tryphon Hermitage in Verkhnechusovskie Gorodki, as there had previously been an almshouse there.
Mother Vassa lived with us for a little more than three years. Her main obedience was reading the Psalter. And we were amazed that the eldress, who was already more than ninety-five years old, read without glasses! We assigned an energetic cell attendant to her—a young novice named Elena. Some time after Schemanun Vassa reposed, Lena left the monastery some time later and got married. The sisters asked many times if she regretted leaving the monastery, and Lena would say that Schemanun Vassa had foretold her entire bitter life in advance, and all her predictions came true.
Schemanun Vassa reposed “full of years,” at ninety-eight. She labored as a monastic for forty-two years. Memory eternal!
Source: Orthodox Christianity
