It feels like I have managed to pack a years worth of work into a few short weeks. Having traveled all over Uganda, celebrated liturgy in many different locations, hearing confessions meeting with people, interrupting pagan sacrifices to the lake gods and dodging dangerous situations all while blessing homes and people. I am filled with both exhaustion and gratitude that God has allowed me to take on this work… as unworthy of it all as I am.
Update, Nairobi, Saint Mary of Egypt Orthodox Mission and Refuge of Kenya...
The Divine Liturgy is an integral part of our school week. The curriculum and daily activities revolve around it, as once did the liturgy in the life of early Christianity- a time where the work week was secondary to the daily Christian cycle, when Christians were in prayers and in church nearly daily before engaging in labor and studies. We keep this form in our daily cycle prayers to this day, and our monasteries and convents practice the daily liturgical cycle as it has been practiced from the 1st Century after the day of Pentecost. Unbroken for 2,024 years.
Father Antipas has made the study of Church liturgics an integral part of our students' education. He teaches them Church history, reading the daily scriptures aloud from an old Greek language Gospel we received some years ago.
In this album of pictures, you will encounter the Divine Liturgy at its most humble and gentle. A lone priest in a rudimentary classroom leading the ancient and Divine Liturgy to children eager to learn and practice the faith and eager to learn everything they can in every subject, taught by our staff of loyal and committed teachers.
Our teachers deserve more credit than we can express. We have ten teachers, and we can barely pay them, if at all, for some months, yet their love for their students is so steadfast, that they remain at our school only to be with them.
There are a lot of pictures here. Pictures that include Baba's latest visit to Mama Mary and her mentally and physically handicapped daughter, Dorcas, and her brothers and sisters. These pictures, of the Divine Liturgy and delivering alms to a poor widow and her grandchildren are a mosaic of a larger portrait: Divine love.
Baba Antipas also offered an update on Mr. Sidebarrow:
"Good evening my Beloved. I was with Mr. Sidebarrow today.
He has really not been able to feed well because l could not help him. Today l met and arranged with the lady we assigned to cook for him and she told me that we need to buy him a basin.
We also engage Brian, one of the young men here to bathe him."
The last picture in the sequence attached sums up Christian virtue in its simplicity and wonder. It expresses the practice of the Christian faith in image and action. For it is not merely some philosophy or belief; it is active, productive, tangible, involving all the senses. Even in the simple act of one child tying the shoe of another child.
Please support our little school as we prepare a safer place for children to learn and grow in the faith. You can donate at either link below. Share our posts, like and love our posts, and keep us in your own daily prayers.
Thank you.
https://gofund.me/4d1ea21a
If donating through Orthodox Africa, click on: https://www.orthodoxafrica.org/support-us (be sure to specify the African mission you wish to donate to, there are any number of them)
Follow Saint Mary of Egypt on Facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/SaintMaryofEgyptKenya/
The Divine Liturgy is an integral part of our school week. The curriculum and daily activities revolve around it, as once did the liturgy in the life of early Christianity- a time where the work week was secondary to the daily Christian cycle, when Christians were in prayers and in church nearly daily before engaging in labor and studies. We keep this form in our daily cycle prayers to this day, and our monasteries and convents practice the daily liturgical cycle as it has been practiced from the 1st Century after the day of Pentecost. Unbroken for 2,024 years.
Father Antipas has made the study of Church liturgics an integral part of our students' education. He teaches them Church history, reading the daily scriptures aloud from an old Greek language Gospel we received some years ago.
In this album of pictures, you will encounter the Divine Liturgy at its most humble and gentle. A lone priest in a rudimentary classroom leading the ancient and Divine Liturgy to children eager to learn and practice the faith and eager to learn everything they can in every subject, taught by our staff of loyal and committed teachers.
Our teachers deserve more credit than we can express. We have ten teachers, and we can barely pay them, if at all, for some months, yet their love for their students is so steadfast, that they remain at our school only to be with them.
There are a lot of pictures here. Pictures that include Baba's latest visit to Mama Mary and her mentally and physically handicapped daughter, Dorcas, and her brothers and sisters. These pictures, of the Divine Liturgy and delivering alms to a poor widow and her grandchildren are a mosaic of a larger portrait: Divine love.
Baba Antipas also offered an update on Mr. Sidebarrow:
"Good evening my Beloved. I was with Mr. Sidebarrow today.
He has really not been able to feed well because l could not help him. Today l met and arranged with the lady we assigned to cook for him and she told me that we need to buy him a basin.
We also engage Brian, one of the young men here to bathe him."
The last picture in the sequence attached sums up Christian virtue in its simplicity and wonder. It expresses the practice of the Christian faith in image and action. For it is not merely some philosophy or belief; it is active, productive, tangible, involving all the senses. Even in the simple act of one child tying the shoe of another child.
Please support our little school as we prepare a safer place for children to learn and grow in the faith. You can donate at either link below. Share our posts, like and love our posts, and keep us in your own daily prayers.
Thank you.
https://gofund.me/4d1ea21a
If donating through Orthodox Africa, click on: https://www.orthodoxafrica.org/support-us (be sure to specify the African mission you wish to donate to, there are any number of them)
Follow Saint Mary of Egypt on Facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/SaintMaryofEgyptKenya/
We were blessed to celebrate a couple of baptisms today at the mission center in Kampala along with liturgy for the Nativity of the Theotokos.
Today at the mission center we are building in Kiboga we were able install two water tanks. Hopefully soon we will be able to drill a well and take the next step in preparing this new mission for our staff to live and work in the community, as we begin to introduce a whole new community to the beauty of the Orthodox faith.
Because the city water supply is not reliable and given the many people we work with we need to take a three pronged approach to providing enough water to run the mission including a city hookup, rain catchment and a well.
Because the city water supply is not reliable and given the many people we work with we need to take a three pronged approach to providing enough water to run the mission including a city hookup, rain catchment and a well.
In Uganda; We just finished a very long…exhausting but ultimately blessed day with many priests from across Eastern and Central Uganda. It truly is a beautiful thing for brethren to dwell together in unity. May the partaking of the Eucharist ever more unite us all as one body in Christ.