BOSTON -- A Melrose woman says her faith and prayers were answered recently when an image of Mother Teresa appeared to her in a coffee shop cutting board.

Wendy Golini, 43, said she knows the story sounds "surreal" but swears that she saw the image of the Roman Catholic nun Nov. 4 after praying to her.

"Like most people lately, this economy has taken it’s toll on me financially, causing much need for faith and prayer (I’m very spiritual, but do not practice organized religion) and I was praying to Mother Teresa every day," Golini wrote to NewsCenter 5 in an e-mail.

Survey: What Do You Think?

"Anyway, I was at my coffee shop, stressing out about bills and I started to pray to her and when I wiped down the cutting board, she appeared on the board," Golini wrote.

"I was pretty much saying I was at my wit's end," Golini said, when she looked down and saw what appeared to be a face on the cutting board at her family's coffee shop on W. Emerson Street in Melrose.

"I have witnesses who were there, and I’m not crazy, and this isn’t a hoax," she said.

Golini said she had not said much about the discovery to anyone but friends and family, but thought she would share the news once word began to get out.

"Nobody wants to be the crazy person who sees a divine entity," she said.

Golini, a mother of three boys, said when she first saw the image she was elated for about a half-hour, then "sat on the floor and cried, I was so moved."

Asked if any of her problems have resolved themselves since she first saw the image, Golini, who describes herself as a someone who just likes to help other people, said, "Some started to work themselves out and some I've started to look at them differently."

Mother Teresa, an Albanian woman born Agnesë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in 1910, was the founder of the Sisters of Charity in Calcutta, India, in 1950. She started a school for slum children there and eventually the religious order was officially recognized by the Vatican in 1965.

The order now numbers 4,000 sisters and exists in 123 countries across the world. Its main mission is to minister to "the poorest of the poor."

She won the Nobel Peace prize in 1979 and died in 1997. Less than two years after her death, Pope John Paul II opened her case for consideration of canonization, a step toward sainthood. She was beatified in 2003, which means she was recognized by the church as "blessed."

In order to be beatified, the church has to determine that one miracle happened through the candidate’s intercession. Canonization requires a second miracle after beatification, though a pope may waive the requirement.