News and Photos from Orthodox Church in Alaska
and Guatemala.
Κάθε καλοκαίρι, δεκάδες Ορθόδοξοι της Αμερικής, από όλες τις δικαιοδοσίες, διακονούν την ορθόδοξη ιεραποστολή. Παρακάτω θα δείτε εικόνες από την ιεραποστολική τους δράση στην Αλάσκα και την Γουατεμάλα. Αυτός ο θεσμός δεν έχει καθιερωθεί, δυστυχώς, ως τώρα, επίσημα από την Εκκλησία της Ελλάδας και της Κύπρου, πλην εξαιρέσεων ορισμένων Μητροπόλεων, ενοριών και ιεραποστολικών συλλόγων. Στην Αμερική οι ενορίες καλύπτουν ένα μέρος από τα έξοδα των ανθρώπων αυτών, ώστε να διακονήσουν την Ιεραποστολή.
OCMC
Board Member Betty Slanta joined an OCMC Mission Team to Alaska that
helped teach the youth from Pilot Station and Marshall about the Faith
and living a life in Christ.
The Orthodox Christian Mission Center
(OCMC) had a great need for mission team members for the youth camp in
Pilot Station, Alaska; I heard a calling to participate in this capacity
for my second-ever mission trip.
We were part of a youth teaching trip in July 2015, serving the youth
of Pilot Station and Marshall, in the southwestern Alaska wilderness.
We camped under the stars along the Yukon Delta National Wildlife
Refuge, on the Atchuelinguk River (Ecuilnguq in the Yup’ik language,
which means «clear water»). The river is a tributary of the Yukon River.
God gave us good weather, in the upper 60s during the day and the 40s
at night, and no rain!
Our mission team of four assisted with the Ss. Yakov and Vladimir
Summer Camp, which is always held the week of July 26 (St. Yakov’s feast
day on the Julian calendar used by churches under the Orthodox Church
in America within the Diocese of Alaska).
There were 55 youth and 14 adults, including four of us mission team
members, on the youth teaching wilderness camping trip. We incorporated
lessons about the Church, the Faith, living as an Orthodox Christian,
arts and crafts, and music. The children, ages four through college age,
learned about bullying, which could lead to depression and suicide,
about rules for living, and developed their own «Yu’pik Maximums for
Living», based on the late Fr. Thomas Hopko’s «55 Maxims for Life as an
Orthodox Christian».
After receiving an orientation on life in Alaska and on missions, we
attended a two-year Trisagion (Memorial) service for a woman in the
village. Afterwards, lunch was served, consisting of Alaskan ice cream-
salmon berries (which look like giant raspberries, only orange),
blueberries and salmon in Crisco- as well as moose and moose nose soup
and beluga whale, in addition to rice, dried salmon (a staple in some
Alaskan villages), and freshly-picked blueberries.
Not all children attend church, so we emphasized church attendance in
our lessons. We developed different arts and crafts to go along with
lessons. For a lesson on icons, a team member drew a six-panel
Transfiguration icon. Each child had the opportunity to color different
sections of the icon, which was then put together, and is now mounted in
the vestibule of the church.
Another team member told the story of Zacchaeus, and introduced the
song «Zacchaeus was a wee man». The Zacchaeus story of Christ always
forgiving our sins was especially touching to many of the older children
and the mothers who accompanied their small children for the session.
Next, a timeline presentation of the Church was developed, laying out
major events in history, e.g. Pentecost and 988 AD Baptism of Russia.
Another lesson was finding verses in the Bible. After a brief overview,
we felt confident the students could succeed in finding the verses. They
were given several to look up, and the first group to find the verse
and read it aloud was offered a Rice Krispy Treat.
We taught about Orthodox saints, mounted icons, made stained glass
crosses from construction paper, crayon shavings, and wax paper, we
created bead and icon pins, and fashioned beaded icon bracelets and
necklaces, which were a big hit in the village. Our team members led a
parade, singing, «When the Saints Go Marching In» while the children
gleefully marched with their icons.
Our tour of the local parish in Pilot Station, Transfiguration of Our
Lord, took us to the church cemetery, where we viewed the location and
cupola of the old church from the early 1900’s. Orthodox Church history
credits St. Yakov (Jacob) Netsvetov for sailing up and down the Yukon
River, communing Orthodox Christian faithful along the way.
We heard about the many customs and traditions of the Yu’pik people
when walking outside. Fr Stephen called our attention to loons (birds)
calling in the late evening air, meaning that cold weather was soon
coming. There was a Yu’pik Dance on Saturday evening which also served
as a practice for the Potlash festival (a dance competition between
Yu’pik Eskimo villages). The festival is held every February. Young
people dance in honor of those after whom they are named.
After the Divine Liturgy on Sunday morning, we readied our packs for
the wilderness camping experience with the youth of the village. An
afternoon push-off was planned, but finally at 6:00 pm, the skiffs
(motor boat large enough for about 12) set sail for the Saints Yakov and
Vladimir Wilderness Camp. Children as young as four and five years old
waved good-bye to their mothers, which seemed alright for them to camp
alone because, as the Matushka put it, «everyone knows each other and
their children.»
After a scenic 45-minute boat ride, passing coastal marshland,
charcoal ash-colored cliffs, and coastline of aging birch and fir trees,
we arrived at the camp atop a grassy clearance dotted by more birch and
fir trees and weathered cabins.
After reaching camp and with lots of daylight left (sunset was 11:25
pm, with twilight well after the next morning), water was fetched from
an underground spring and driftwood logs hauled from their sandy
riverside graveyards and repurposed for firewood. Our mission team
counted off groups of children and untangled a «human chain» icebreaker
game. We next divided the children into younger and older groups (ten
and below; 11 and up) discussing the Church (ecclesiastical), «the
people as the bride of Christ», read books on saints who led exemplary
lives, discussed confession, described the Orthodox church building, and
had the children design and draw their own church building.
Our mission team taught lessons and answered questions from the 3×5
cards on anything the children wanted to know about; one especially
poignant question related to the «difference between God and the devil».
Other lessons were on how to stay committed to Christ, the value of
confession, regular church attendance, and one team member’s personal
story of how the church members helped her after the loss of her
husband.
Following morning prayers on our last day at camp, a team member gave
a homily on bullying at school, which seemed to resonate with several
children. As clean up progressed, another team member strummed on the
guitar around the slowly dying embers of the campfire. Our wilderness
adventure in honor of Saints Yakov and Vladimir was ending; through
their prayers, our camping experience was safe and full of joyful
excitement.
http://ocmc.org/resources/view_article.aspx?ArticleId=2174
During Vespers in the village parish at
Kasigluk, a young girl named Heather came into church, looking for our
mission team. She ran up to me and began to hang off the pockets of my
cassock. Now, in Holy Trinity, as with many parishes in Alaska, the
faithful are separated with men on the right side of the church and
women on the left side. So here I was, trying to focus on Vespers with a
child hanging off of me, and worse yet, she was on the «wrong» side of
the church! What if she got in trouble? What if I got in trouble? Order
was broken, and in my mind the sky was falling. So I did what any
order-loving Orthodox would do, and I pointed her to the proper side of
the church. That was where all the young women were standing, right near
the door. Unfortunately, Heather got the wrong message and thought I
was showing her the door. She left immediately.
In the Orthodox Church we have rubrics and rules for almost
everything. Unfortunately, sometimes these rules shift from an outward
display of piety into making sure all Christians are «good soldiers» who
«play by the rules». Stand up here, sit down there, kneel here, eat
this but not that. There is a reason for this order in maintaining holy
tradition, but there’s no “magic formula” that makes a service a
service. In the lower 48, we can obsess about these things to the point
at which they become a superstition, and correction for breaking a
rubric can often be more concerned with the fact that the rule was
broken than with the fact that there is an underlying spiritual reason
for the rules. It’s almost as if having water before receiving Holy
Communion is a greater transgression than forgetting you are about to
receive the Body and Blood of the Jesus Christ later in the morning. In
Alaska, I was immediately struck by the fact that they do not obsess
over rules like we often do. I was served moose on nearly every fasting
day I was there. If you are practicing subsistence living, you have to
eat what you catch. At the same time, they exhibited a care for one
another and a humility unlike anything I’d ever seen.
Kasigluk is a small subsistence village along a spot where two rivers
meet. Kasigluk literally means “the meeting place” in Yup’ik, their
native language. They live off fish, berries, and moose, which have to
be hunted during the summer. Very few things are purchased like the rest
of the United States. But they understand what it means to be a part of
the body of Christ. As Saint Paul tells the Corinthians, “If one part
suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part
rejoices with it.” If you don’t forage, you don’t eat. Worse yet, if you
don’t forage, those around you suffer as well. Fr. Larsen, the village
priest, constantly preached against laziness, because if it doesn’t get
done now, he would say, it won’t get done later. The villagers of
Kasigluk rely on one another to survive, and if one part suffers, the
whole village suffers. There is a single village police officer, but
other than that, they are all responsible for one another’s safety and
survival. Their lives are in one another’s hands.
Back to where we began, with accidentally asking a child to leave the
church building. I thought about how a lot of correction in the Church
happens this way. We think we’re showing people the right way, but we’re
actually showing them to the door. We forget that our lives are in one
another’s hands and that we are all in God’s hands. In the Gospel of
Mark, Christ tells us if we drive someone out of the Church for not
being like us, we’d be better off having a millstone hung around our
neck and being thrown into the sea. When we forget that we lack
compassion and say “Your way is wrong, you’re not one of us, we don’t
need you unless you can learn to be like us,” that’s essentially what
the Pharisees said to Christ, and whatever we do unto the least of us we
do unto Christ.
Maybe when I corrected Heather, it would have been more appropriate
to use the tone Saint Paul used with his problem parish in Corinth when
he said, “Let me show you a more excellent way.” Your way isn’t wrong,
but I have a more excellent one, and then maybe we can incorporate it
into your already excellent way together. There is no other way to
approach instruction in the Church when we realize that correcting
someone during worship is taking their salvation, their life, in our
hands.
I kept an eye out for Heather for the rest of our stay in Kasigluk.
She always enjoyed when our team did arts and crafts with her, so I made
sure to give her some leftover crafting supplies I had found as we
cleaned up. I tossed them into a bag and set them aside in case I ran
into her. I only saw her briefly before leaving, just enough time to
hand her the bag of yarn and styrofoam shapes. Unfortunately we were off
to somewhere else, and I didn’t get to speak to her about my mistake.
On my way to catch up with the team, I looked back and saw Heather
running around the playground hugging the gift bag close to her chest.
Hopefully she’ll remember the Christian missionaries that helped her
make Spongebob characters, and not me telling her what to do during
worship.
In hindsight, I realize that when people are aware we are Christians,
the majority know who we are, what we’re about, and what we think is
right and wrong. We don’t really have to worry about people or things
that they have certainly already heard. If they know who we are, then
all we need to do is be a good and loving ambassador for Christ. Christ
is as good an argument as there ever was, and He will teach and speak
for Himself in His own time.
http://ocmc.org/resources/view_article.aspx?ArticleId=2172
Orthodox mission team in Guatemala
Our mission team is hard at work in Nueva Concepcion! We welcomed this OCMC team on Tuesday, we worshipped together in the chapel, and then they started renovating a building that we hope to use as a second clinic in Guatemala. They’re a wonderful team!
Reaching children in Guatemala:
The OCMC mission team is spending time with lots of children here, both
in the Orthodox parishes and also in a special school run by the
Orthodox clergy. In order to help people overcome the poverty and
violence on the Pacific Coast, the Orthodox priests teach at the Centro
Pedagógico Guatemala Lideres en Educación. The mission team presented to
hundreds of students in this excellent school! The kids loved it!
Baptisms in Guatemala: at almost every liturgy in the mountains there are multiple children who get baptized. Sometimes more than a dozen people are born into Christ during a single liturgy. The Church is growing! And so are the needs for more catechists, missionaries, and priests who can disciple these new Christians. How are you called to help?
Μικρά της Γουατεμάλας, μετά το βάπτισμά τους στην Ορθόδοξη Εκκλησία.
http://www.ocmc.org/donate/index.aspx
Find an Orthodox Church in Alaska.Discover Ancient Christian Faith in Alaska.
https://ierapostoli.wordpress.com/2015/03/25/find-an-orthodox-church-in-alaska-discover-ancient-christian-faith-in-alaska/πηγή: ierapostoli.wordpress.com
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