Monday, April 06, 2009

Videos of St. John's First Services

This is Saturday evening. We had just completed the iconostasis and a dozen people had been working all day cleaning, moving everything from the old space to here and setting everything up. At Vespers we still had hours of work left, so Fr. Damian told a skeleton crew choir to do reader's vespers while we kept working. The last people left at 10:30 pm. and returned early in the morning to get everything functional.



The Great Doxology and beginning of our first Divine Liturgy (and a video tour of the Church). We still have to put all the icons on the walls and a few more details, but this is basically it.



At our announcements, we gave tribute to Xavier my helper for his work on the Church. We invited him to Church this morning and this is his first time to join us for worship. He has worked on the Church with me every minute I've been there. He knew it was not "paying work" but has never acted like he was put out, doing anything grudgingly nor asked for a penny (although I've been able to give him a few dollars here and there as I've been able to afford to.) He is very proud of what we've done for God. He is a good man. He stayed for coffee hour and before he left he said to me, "I like how you "convivo" (live together), I think I'll come here on Sundays." Glory to God.

7 comments:

Elizabeth @ The Garden Window said...

I felt such joy on watching your videos. Thank you for sharing them !

Glory to God that your mission now has a permanent church home.

Jessie said...

Not that I needed a reason to...but this post made me homesick for ya'll at St John's (thanks a lot, SP ;-P )
How wonderful!!!! and as always we Fillars love and miss you guys!
Jessie

Athanasia said...

This has moved me to tears s-p. All of you gave Xavier the gift of life at a time in his life when life had handed him 'death' in the loss of his job. This is the kind of parish I wish I belonged to...one that truly loved one another in such a dramatic way.

God bless you all and may the seeds planted bring forth fruit in abundance.

By your dear prayers Fr.Dcn. Stephen

Unknown said...

Great videos, Steve! Thanks for sharing. You have a beautiful building and beautiful people. The spirit of community and love was evident, even from the short videos.

May God grant you ALL many years!

BTW, where was Bill?

Steve Robinson said...

We miss you guys too, Jessie. Philippa, Javier is a gem of a human being, his humility is evident even in the short video. I was blessed to have him handed off to me. BTW, I'm just a subdeacon, but I pray for you anyway. :) Fr. James, we have a beautiful community indeed, unfortunately Bill got ill last Thursday and was still in bad shape Sunday, it must have been really bad for him to miss our inaugural Liturgy. Pray for him, please.

James the Thickheaded said...

Looks like a great worship space. I like it a lot. Would love to have one like it.

Did you guys also do the floors? Nice work. Really... the whole thing turned out nice. I think I confused this space with the monastery... but I think I get it now.

Steve Robinson said...

Hi James, Yep, we did the floor too. Mission members did about 90% of the work on the building (I know it helps that I'm a contractor with a lot of time on my hands lately, but still, we did most of it in house). It is a great space and the acoustics are amazing (another pleasant suprise). All in all, a great blessing for sure.