Community BBQ

Our Church Committee had organised a Community BBQ today, in financial support of our sacred project or erecting a new Church.

Many people had worked voluntarily in order to make it a success. In the first picture from left to right are: Costas, Yiannis, Giorgos and Panayiotis.

Some of the Ladies, like Androulla, had also been actively involved and offered their goods from their gardens in order to help in the fundraising.

Alexandra and Soteris are always there in all of these events and assist in many different ways. We are always very thankful to all of the above and to many more people, who contribute their money, time and good efforts for our Church and Community.

The Feast of Virgin Mary

The third most important Feast in our Orthodox Church (after Easter and Christmas) is the Feast of the Virgin Mary (15th August).

The celebrations start in our Tradition from the Eve of the Feast.

Thus, tonight we had celebrated the Great Vespers and we sung the Lamentations dedicated to the Mother of God.

We also had a procession around our temporary Church, carrying with us the holy icon of Our Lady.

Many of our parishioners had attended this special Service. Tomorrow is the actual Festival. We shall have Holy Services in the morning as well as a BBQ afterwards.

Heaven beautified

New arches have been delivered today.

A portable crane is on site helping with the moving of those arches.

Some of them go up on the Dome and they are fixed around the windows of the... heaven.

They actually look quite impressive up there.

Plastering started

The actual plastering has started in the interior of our Church. The first element one may notice is the scaffolding:

Then the tools for the work:

Then the material and their preparation:

All these go up on the walls by the good efforts of our specialist people:

August works

Today we present the proposed programme of works for August. As it is clearly visible on the pictures various works should be completed this month, such as the bricklaying, the timber roof, the placing of the roof tiles, the Bell Tower, as well as the fixing of the windows.

The weather hasn’t been very stable lately, but we anticipate to have no problems with our building works.

The arrangement, as in the previous months, is made by Mark Taylor (Managing Director), Trevor Dean (Project Manager) and Sean Webber (Commercial Manager), all working for IBEX.

Fr. Giles Pinnock

The local Anglican Priest and friend of ours, Fr. Giles Pinnock, had visited our new Church today.

He was received by Fr. Anastasios and had a good look at all parts of the building, admiring its byzantine splendour.

Our Project Manager, Mr. Trevor Dean, had explained various details of the structure.

Fr. Giles then took some pictures of the various parts of our new place of worship.

Fr. Anastasios had offered him a brick from the old Church of St. Panteleimon, which was originally part of the local Anglican Parish, as Holy Spirit Mission Church.

Photo of the week - 47

With the best ever sky (not even a cloud over our Church) the works have progressed (on the roof and elsewhere) over the last week and continue today.