Absence

The Parish Priest, Fr. Anastasios, who is the administrator of this blog, will be away from tomorrow Sunday 25th October up to Friday 6th November.

Please be patient and on his return he will continue informing the viewers of this blog of the progress in regard to the erection of our new Church, by uploading many photos and explaining the various stages of the works.

Columns like arms

In our Orthodox Divine Liturgy we say: “Let us lift up our hearts”. And at that moment we lift up our arms as a visible sign of the lifting of our hearts unto the Lord.

This is exactly what all these columns remind us today.

They look exactly like arms being lifted up in prayer.

What is being build here is certainly a house of prayer, a place which our Holy God will bless as His own place of worship.

Annual Dinner & Dance

A busy beehive

Our building site reminds us today of a very busy beehive.

Many people are working hard and speedily in order to erect as many columns as possible.

It seems like the walls will be in place soon.

More columns

One more column is being erected today on the Sanctuary side.

Some more column reinforcement is also being prepared and will be in place soon.

The crane is working today and it lifts some heavy materials.

A really great assistance to the workers.

A meeting is at the moment in progress at the Community premises with specialists of IBEX, which is part of the John Doyle Company, in order to finalise arrangements for the second phase of the project.

Photo of the week - 12

This is the first working week with the crane on site. But there was a problem today and it will have to be reroped again tomorrow in order to be ready for use.

Fr. Anastasios' Interviews

On the day of the Foundation Ceremony for our new Church (13th September 2009) our Parish Priest Fr. Anastasios was interviewed by Dr. Constantinos Athanasopoulos, Director of Distance Learning at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge, about this project.

Fr. Anastasios offered his views as well as the aspiration of our progressive Community on this sacred work. Actually, there was two interviews, one in Greek and one in English.

The Crane

The permanent crane which is to facilitate the erection of our new Church's walls was set up and put in place today.

Well, it's really huge!!!

The first columns!!!

The first columns have started today being erected.

In actual fact it is the reinforcement of the columns that are being prepared on site and then put in place.

Soon the actual columns will be erected on our new Church's floor.

Activities

Various activities were taking place on our new Church's floor today.

Walking into the new Church

Today we had the opportunity to actually walk on the floor of the new Church.

Getting into the Church from the “front door” was amazing.

We could walk for the very first time all the length and the width of the building.

Here is the Sanctuary, there is the Church Office, up there will be the balcony...

The columns’ moulds were delivered today.

Full plan

The full plan of the new Church was made today visible.

Concrete, concrete, concrete, concrete......

We lost count of the many lorries that brought today so much cement.

Many people worked today well into the night, in order to finalise the laying of the slab.

Tomorrow we hope to be able to walk on the new Church's floor.

That will be quite an experience.

Photo of the week - 11

Today the full plan of the new Church became very visible, as the concrete was laid on the floor.

Archbishop’s visit

His Eminence the Archbishop Gregorios of Thyateira and Great Britain has visited our Church today.

He presided at the Pontifical Mass and at the end he granted spiritual gifts to our Parish Priest Fr. Anastasios by offering him the title and the officium of “Protopresbyter”, the highest title a married Priest can get, and then he blessed 4 Altar Servers and made them "Readers" of our Church. These are Alexandros Mateides, Stefanos Pouros, Nicholas Charalambous and Alexandros Charalambous.

Everyone was made to feel very happy today.

Our congregation was honoured to received His Eminence and to witness the granting of those important byzantine titles.