2008
On November 16, 2008 our parish sponsors Russian Family Days at the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester.
November 2008 – Visit by Seminarians Holy Trinity Seminary Quartet at the beginning of an outreach program performs at the parish of the Protection of the Mother of God and the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester.
October 2008 – New Garage Project: Our parish was in great need of some place to store our outdoor equipment. A new garage was designed and paid for by our Starosta Mr. Andy Babish. It was completed by the time of our Parish Feast and was blessed on that day. It is a beautiful structure which matches our Church with its blue roof and white walls. Thank you very much Andy!
October 2008 – Out Parish Feast: Bishop Metropolitan Hilarion visited our parish on October 12, 2008 to join in the celebration of our parish feast, Protection of the Mother of God.
July 2008 – Iconography update: The beautification of our church continues. In July, our iconographers came for three weeks and put up frescoes in the main dome of our church.
February 2008 – Iconography continues: Our Iconographers arrived to continue work on the frescoing of our church. Fr. Andrei(Erasov) flew in from France, while Fr. Theophan and Fr. Evgeney drove in from Holy Trinity Monastery. Fr. Andrei does the bulk of the work on canvas at his studio in France and then these canvases are applied to the walls and ceilings of our church. The application requires many workers. On Saturday Feb. 2, 2008 a group of our parish volunteers helped the Fathers put up the canvases of the Holy Ascension Icon above the Altar. After the application the Iconographers worked for 5 days putting on finishing touches and ornaments.
Our parish celebrated our parish feast, Protection of the Mother of God, on October 14, 2007.
2007
On the feast day of the image of Christ not made by Hands (August 16/29, 2007), with the blessing of our rector, Father Gregory Naumenko, we selected a patron, St. Theodosius, Wonderworker of Chernigov, for our choir. This holy man lived in the 17th century in Russia, and had a special love for church music. In the account of St. Theodosius’ life, we read: In his earnest efforts to beautify the church services, he organized an excellent choir, which was famous not only in the Ukraine but in Moscow, where the St. Theodosius sent his singers in 1685. It was our great fortune to receive a beautiful wonderworking icon of this saint from a generous emigrant living in San Francisco shortly before our new church was built. She related a story of how this icon saved her family from an enemy boat as they were traversing the Sea of Japan. It seems that the icon, on board with the escaping family, had rendered all of them invisible, for the their would be captors passed right by them without notice. On September 10, 2007 we served a moleben before St. Theodosius’ icon before our first choir practice for the academic year. Practices have been held monthly since. Because St. Theodosius’ commemoration day is February 5/18, we again had a moleben service this past Sunday, followed by a plentiful Pot Luck Dinner at the church rectory. Since many choir members are new, it was a good opportunity to get to know each other better. Thank you to all who came and participated. By the prayers of St. Theodosius and our own humble efforts, may our choir continue to improve and beautify our church services. m. M. Naumenko
2002-05
