Venerable Alexandra of Diveyevo (Melgunova)

Saint Alexandra, born Agafia Semyonovna into a Ryazan noble family around 1720–1730, was widowed young when her husband, Lieutenant Yakov Melgunov, died about 1755, leaving her with a small daughter and a large fortune. She went to Kiev and entered the Florovsky convent, where she was secretly tonsured with the name Alexandra.

According to tradition, the Mother of God appeared to her and sent her north to find the place of a future convent; in 1760, resting in the village of Diveyevo on her way to Sarov, she again saw the Theotokos, who pointed out this place. On the advice of the Sarov elders she settled nearby; after her daughter's death she sold her estates, gave generously to churches and the poor and lived for about twenty years in a cell in the yard of the parish priest. She rebuilt the parish church and built a stone church of the Kazan Icon on the site of the apparition, and her donations largely completed the Dormition cathedral of Sarov.

In 1788 she received land next to the church, built three cells and settled novices there, the beginning of the Diveyevo convent. Tonsured into the schema in June 1789, she entrusted the sisters to the Sarov monks, among them the young Seraphim of Sarov, and died on 13 June 1789. Her relics were found in 2000; she was glorified locally in 2000 and for the whole Russian Church in 2004. Feast: 13 (26) June.