Annunciation

Chronia polla! Yesterday we celebrated the Feast of the Annunciation here at our home parish in Panorama.

Here are a few photos Pelagia took from the balcony.

The top one shows the chanters, while the second is of Fr. Panayiotis and Fr. Nicholas during the short service commemorating Greek Independence Day. You can see some of the flags and various groups--the Boy Scouts, etc--who were there. The Church was absolutely packed.

As for me, I was hiding during that part. :)

Just kidding, I was busy in the altar.

Here is a very short video of Communion. It's not terribly interesting, but I had it, so I put it on here.

Finally, this photo of Pelagia is from today, March 26. She's still working hard, although she has to take more breaks to rest. Here she's salvaging a piece of furniture she found in the hopes of using at as part of a crib for the babies' room.

On a babies note, here is a link for a wishlist of baby things that Pelagia has put together. I will also try to add this to the list of links of the right-hand column of the blog.

Visit to Elder Paisios and Souroti

This morning I served the Presanctified Liturgy at our parish of St. George's, and then we took our guest, Sarah Lantz, to visit Elder Paisios' tomb at the women's monastery he founded in Souroti.

Sarah is Pelagia's sister's goddaughter from Kansas, and she came over with OCF Real Break for some work at a monastery in Thebes. She then extended her stay to come here for a few days and see a bit more of Greece.

The top photo is just outside the monastery. The photos immediately above and below are of Pelagia and Sarah at the elder's grave, and the last photo is of Sarah and me just outside the monastery again, with a view in the background. In the very left-hand corner of the last photo is Panorama in the background. To the left of that (not pictured) is Thessaloniki.

The Babies' Room

These photos were taken about 2 weeks ago. Pelagia was and is still working on transforming what was formerly my office into the babies' room. You can see her in action in the photos above, and below you can see where things stood after repainting.

Ordination: The Greatest Hits

Well, I compiled a "greatest hits" album of photos (96 in all) from all six different photographers, and posted it here. I've put here three photos that I didn't post previously. Above, Fr. Joseph and I waiting for the bishop to arrive. Below, Fr. Alexios and I greeting Bishop Maxim just outside the church, as it starts to snow.

Above, you can see Fr. Joseph and me during the Little Entrance. Finally, below, I edited the videos that one of my friends (who had the best position) took during the actual ordination and posted it. It's about 9 minutes long.

That should be about it for photos and so on. Now I'll have to find something else to blog about. Good Lent to all!

After the Liturgy

At the end of the Liturgy, I got to hand out antidoron to a surprisingly well-behaved crowd of Greeks -- I'm happy to report that no one was injured in the mad rush for antidoron. : )

Afterward, we went downstairs to the parish hall where we had invited about 50 people for a coffee hour-type reception for the bishop. The photo above was taken at the end -- it is, from left to right, Fr. Alexios, Fr. Joseph, me, Pelagia, and Fr. Spyridon. (The photo at the very top is of our parish, at around 8:00 that morning.)

After the coffee hour, we all had about an hour or so to rest before we met up a local hotel for a very, very nice lunch. Fr. Alexios and the parish had arranged for a room for us on the top floor of the hotel, which had a great view of the whole area. It was particularly beautiful since it was snowing on Sunday, one of the few days in the year it snows here. The photo above is of me with Fr. Alexios and Bishop Maxim, taken inside the hotel's lobby.

The photo below is of the whole group of about 20 that were at lunch, just after the beautiful meal which included lamb!

I've been slowly collecting photos from Sunday from friends all week. I now have from six different cameras. I posted a few days ago the very nice photos from our friend Job here, and now I've posted the photos I've just received from our friend Paris here. Check them out. Paris also took quite a bit of video, which I'm hoping to edit together soon and post on here. I also would like to organize all the photos from all the different cameras into a "best-of" album, which I'll also post here. Keep checking in!