Russian Version
Orthodox Tours
Pilgrimage to the Holy Land – 2010At the beginning of autumn last year, Father Miсhael gave me the following order, he said: Lena, Oksana, our former choreographer, is not in Canada. Please organize a group of girls so that they can dance. No sooner said than done. At first it was very difficult, because I had to go, ask, beg each girl. Everyone had some reason. I completely gave up then, I went to Father Miсhael and told him about it. He did not drag it out too long and said: nothing, we will make an announcement now. And he announced that everyone who can dance should sign up for Lena Deljanin’s group.
One of the participants was very doubtful that she would be able to dance. Although I knew that she had very good dancing abilities. After she took communion, Father Miсhael asked her: have you signed up for the Group? And she said yes. This was completely sufficient for our joint creativity.
I am very grateful that Father Miсhael, many years ago, decided to create a children’s dance group, and then an adult one. We used to have a wonderful choreographer in the church, professional Oksana Petrova, who danced before in Tyumen. Of course, she was a person who knew how to teach, knew how to set choreography and when it needed to be done.
Now, when creating the group, I had a lot of doubts that we would be able to do this without a professional choreographer. But thanks to the efforts of the girls, their talents, abilities and desire to have a dance group in our church, everything worked out. Many thanks to the church, Father Miсhael and all the dancing girls.
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I would also like to share that all the parishioners of our church have amazingly kind and open hearts.
My very good friend Olga Kalamkarova was paralyzed for 7 years. Unfortunately, she has already died, may she rest in peace! I visited Olga. In the last year and a half of her life, I realized that we needed help.
I simply announced once in the church that we really needed women who could come and help Olya on a regular basis, give her massages, talk to her, cook and bring food. I was surprised how many parishioners responded and until the last moment of Olya’s life they regularly visited her periodically, brightened up her last days. When Olya was in severe pain, they came, talked, helped as best they could with massages, in a word, with their love. This, of course, is worth a lot. Thank you very much for this.
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I also want to express my gratitude to Father Miсhael, thanks to his patience my disabled daughter, she is 31 years old, has started going to church for the last two years. Every month he held a private liturgy for my Pelageya so that she would get used to being in church and get used to receiving Holy Communion. This happened thanks to the patience of the priest and such work. I want to thank Father Miсhael with all my heart for this, thank you.
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I am also very grateful to the young people in our church. I am grateful to my son Kirill that he started going to our church at the age of 9. Father Miсhael initiated Kirill to help at the altar. For parents, for any parent, this is the most such thing, like honey in the heart, to see that your son is praying and there are very righteous, kind people around him. Thank you very much. Father Miсhael is always so open to our children loving God, loving their roots, the country of their parents – Russia.
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For many years, our church, with the blessing of Father Miсhael, held history lessons for young people and adults, taught by an extraordinary young man, Leonid Chizhikov. He is currently studying at the Faculty of History at the SFU. He lectured on the entire cycle of the Great Patriotic War. Almost all of our young people and many adults were present. In this way, historical education was conducted.
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For several years in a row, I was asked to represent Russia at European festivals in Vancouver. I was not sure what we should really do, but then a very good and strong idea came to me that we should represent Russia, its cultural heritage, and also that Russia is an Orthodox and traditional country. Most of our numbers at the European festival were aimed at spreading family traditions and Orthodoxy and this Russianness, which is very dear to all of us and is very important for our souls.
We took part in these festivals every year. Our children’s dance group from our church performed, and adults who could dance and sing also took part. This was a very precious and interesting experience for us.
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We also tried to participate in the official Remembrance Day ceremony on November 11th and educate Canadians about the role of the Soviet Union and Russia in the Great Patriotic War. We succeeded once, and even laid a wreath to Soviet soldiers and Soviet citizens who died during the Great Patriotic War at the memorial in Victoria Park in North Vancouver. Our desire was to bring an understanding of our people’s history into Canadian culture on behalf of our church.
Archangel Michael Orthodox Christian Mission, Kelowna
Archdiocese of Canada
Canadian Orthodox History Project
Monastery of All Saints of North America, Dewdney
Orthodox Church in America