Mutual Encouragement's, Inc. |
November 1999 update |
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November update |
At the beginning of this month we visited and established contact with the five Orthodox nuns and the orphanage that they run in Guatemala City, Guatemala. Five years ago three nuns, all of them converts, founded a monastery in Guatemala under the jurisdiction of the Antiochian Church. Three years ago the government of Guatemala asked them to take over a state managed orphanage where the care had deteriorated. Today they are a community of five nuns, and manage the orphanage of 156 children with a staff of 78. The work they have accomplished in restoring the buildings, building a church, and securing a financial base, is second only to the awesome climate of prayerful joy that they have created in what has ceased to be an orphanage and has become a childrens monastery. Dumitru Oaches from Romania, with our assistance, arrived there in early October to serve for seven months as a volunteer. He is swiftly learning Spanish and is already the big brother to all the boys. At the end of November we will make a short visit to Romania to explore the possibility of sending more volunteers, especially nuns, for a half year term of service with the sisters in Central America. The English edition of the Romanian oral tradition of "How the monastery came to be on top of the mountain" is being printed even as I write and is offered in the Conciliar Press Christmas catalogue. Nadia Glazunova is finishing her tweleve illustrations for the book on the life of St. Sergius of Radonez and we will travel to Russia in January to pick up the illustrations and lay more groundwork for pilgrimages to Russia. |