Vũng Tàu, Vietnam, September 4, 2017

The newly-baptized Anna is seated in the picture. Photo: facebook.com

Fr. George Maximov, a Moscow priest who often serves on missionary trips throughout Asia, has posted on his Facebook page the words of a Vietnamese woman who converted to Orthodoxy after the Mother of God appeared to her.

The woman, Nguyen Thi Mai Anh, a former Buddhist living and working in Vũng Tàu, Vietnam, was baptized into Holy Orthodoxy on Holy Saturday this year.

She writes of “something incredible” happening in her life about a year ago: “I was lying in a coma in the hospital. During this time I saw a radiance, a bright light, and directly in front of me appeared the Virgin Mary Theotokos. She handed me a bottle of water and gave me to drink. As soon as I drank the water, the light and the Theotokos disappeared.”

“In the morning the next day,” she continues, “I suddenly came out of the coma after being unconscious for so long.” Nguyen survived, and she began to pray to the Lord Jesus Christ and His Mother for a speedy recovery, and decided she would become a Christian when she returned home.

“A few days later, another vision appeared to me in a dream, that there would be a man who would lead me to the Church, and that I would eat Bread there and drink Holy Water together with everyone, and walk around the church,” she continues.

After she was released and returned home, a friend came to her, bearing an icon of the Mother of God with the Savior. “I was incredibly happy, because it was the same image I had seen in my dream. I was very happy, and I told my friend about what I had seen in the dream, and he took me to an Orthodox Church where Russians pray in the 5th district of the city of Vũng Tàu, to meet the Lord and the Theotokos there,” Nguyen recalls.

The woman was later baptized in the same church and “born again under the protection of the Most-Holy Theotokos and by the grace of the Lord.”

“I am infinitely happy!” she exclaims, continuing, “Thanks to Thee, O Lord and to thee, O Theotokos, for my ‘second birth’ and the gift of the Fountain of Life!”

Fr. George notes that she broke her leg just before her Baptism, but this did not deter her. She was baptized with the name of Anna, and now reads prayers in the Vietnamese language during the services.