Pittsburgh Metropolis Fall Retreat

Jambo from all the Youth at the Pittsburgh Metropolis Fall Retreat 

Orthodox Kenya: My Journey Home

Orthodox Kenya:  My Journey Home

            My journey began when my 17 year old daughter and I were recently part of the Orthodox Christian Mission Center (OCMC) 2014 Teaching Mission to Kenya from October 27 to November 8, 2014.  Archbishop Makarios of Kenya, who is under His Beatitude Theodoros II, Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa, warmly hosted us.  From the moment our team was offered hospitality at Archbishop Makarios’s home, to our travels in and around Nairobi, I felt that I was in back home in Greece about 30+ year’s ago.  The beautiful flowers, the mountains, the genuine respect of the people for other humans, the décor of His Eminence’s home, as well as the metal blue gates of peoples’ homes, reminded me of my favorite memories of Greece that made it feel like home. The heartfelt hospitality brought me back to a time and place that warmly touched my soul so many years ago.

His Beatitude Theodoros II, Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa, His Eminence Makarios Metropolitan of Kenya, Kenyan clergy, the teaching staff and the students of the Academy.

[This picture was taken two weeks before our arrival, so these are the seminarians that we now know well.]

            We both had life shifting experiences with our fellow Orthodox brothers and sisters in Christ in Africa, and continue to be impacted by the people and our experiences with them. We were given the blessing to live, for just over a week, in an oasis or mini paradise in the middle of the largest slum in Africa - Kibera. That mini paradise, filled with beautiful flowers, plants, and people, is the Orthodox Patriarchal Ecclesiastical School: Makarios III Archbishop of Cyprus Seminary. The seminary serves students from all of Africa. Also located in this oasis is the Orthodox College of Africa, the St. Clement of Alexandria School (300 Pre-K to 8^th grade students), a Medical Clinic, a field, and an Orthodox Cathedral dedicated to All-Saints.  We also visited another school, The Child of God Academy, deeper in the slums.

            Kenya was a humbling experience because it made us realize, at a deeper level what really matters in life. God’s love is in the relationships, not in the material things. Home is where we live in CommUNITY with each other, not a building filled with stuff.

            During our time there, we focused on teaching, sharing, listening, and learning. We began our time with the Kenyan children in the Divine Liturgy, where all three hundred students sang the entire service by heart in English, Swahili, and in Greek. There were no chanters or choirs. At the primary school, we focused our time in lessons about icons, parables, sacraments, and the Holy Cross. The children were each able to make their own beaded cross to wear and protect them, from the generous donations given by some of our sponsors. Many children did not have their own cross and it was touching to see them wear it throughout the week. We had the precious opportunity to exchange thoughts, play, and be with the children.  Some students had truly inquisitive questions. They even taught Spyridoula, my daughter, some of their African dancing games and in turn she taught them the Greek Dance: hasaposeviko, which was a lot of fun to watch.

            At the seminary, we attended classes, services, meals, and peripatetic walks with the students and staff. I taught two courses and offered an after dinner reflection on how Christ and the Church teach by word and deed. Spyridoula, along with two other team members, helped lead and answer questions in a symposium that focused greatly on youth ministry and Orthodoxy in America. From these discussions, we are now jointly trying to find ways to implement youth programs, even a summer camp, at the seminary and at their local parishes. During the symposium, Father Evangelos Thiani, the Deputy Dean of the Makarios Seminary, brought me to meet the leading Mumma’s (Mother’s Union) of the Orthodox Church in Kenya, their Philoptochos, in a village west of Nairobi where they built their headquarters office.  Along with a cup of tea and homemade bread roll, they shared with me the many service projects they are working on, and the problems they are dealing with.  We shared a warm exchange of issues and possibilities.  Both these simultaneous group exchanges, further developed our relationships with our fellow community family members in this part of the world. It taught me that the better we know and help others, the better we can know and help ourselves.

Mumma’s of the Orthodox Church in Kenya, their Philoptochos in front of their headquarter building

            Each and every seminarian, representing a number of different African countries, impacted us deeply and they are our brothers or ndugu in Christ. Everything at the seminary was a blessing, especially attending church every morning and evening with the beautiful seminary choir, chanting in Swahili, English, Greek, and some other African languages, an adult baptism of a seminarian from Rwanda, and the sharing of fellowship (cultural singing, dancing, stories) at dinner and every moment of the day that created such strong and deep relationships with every single seminarian there.  We also had all the seminarians make beaded cross necklaces.  The joy they had in making their own cross and then wearing them, was inexpressible.  Many of them did not have their own cross, or even a Bible of their own.  We learned recently, that when some of the seminarians went home for Christmas and Theophany, they taught children and others in their hometowns and villages how to make their own crosses as well.

            At the Orthodox College of Africa, we met with their education and business chairs.  I offered a presentation on Learning Theories to current education students, and three other team members offered other presentations to the college students.  While at the college, we met and enjoyed a harmonic performance by the Royal Melodious Singers whose members come from a variety of Christian denominations.  Together they are committed to reaching the nations for the Lord through singing.  

            Wherever there was an Orthodox presence in Africa, we also saw the outpouring of love from the people, governments, and the churches of America, Greece, Cyprus, and around the world. Many of the icons, vestments, and Greek language books were donated by these nations to fill their churches, libraries, and schools.  Philotimo and philoxenia were found abundantly in the Kenyans and other Africans we met.  The profound respect of one human toward another, and the intricate role and responsibility toward the community, were refreshing to experience in today’s narcissistic society.  

            One Sunday morning, as we were traveling to Church here in America, we called some of our seminarian friends from Makarios III Seminary, and they were on their way to vesper services.  After that conversation, we contemplated how awesome it was that at every moment ALL the services and hours of prayer are being offered at the same time, somewhere around the world, continuously.  We are truly connected when we are in “ortho doxia”, in true worship.  We become one in Christ, in His Church, and in His CommUNITY.  Thus, when we are in true prayer, we are truly home in eternity.

Vasiliki Tsigas-Fotinis, Ph.D.

May your learning never end and your love for others weave community!

Vasiliki and Spyridoula at the OCMC Headquarters

Mother & Daughter Reflections ~ Welcome!

Powerpoint

Gallery

Global Connections

Jambo From America

From our hearts in America to yours in Kenya!! 

Royal Melodious Singers (ROMESI)

la la la

The Orthodox College of Africa

greetings

The Orthodox Church of Kenya + Africa

orthodoxy

The Limits of Language: Christ’s Divine Love Beyond Words

“You’ve changed”, my best friend tells me as we walk down the halls to our next class. “Really?” I respond, “How? “You’re just different, I don’t know, you can just tell; you’ve experienced something that has changed you forever.” I look in the mirror and I am still me, still the same, but inside there’s a whirlwind of new emotions and experiences. My senses have gone on overboard and my heart has experienced love and joy to a degree that surpasses this world. Where can I possibly begin? Every story I have read from other short term mission teams say that they can not put into words what they have racing in their minds and their hearts. Our human language has boundaries that can not possibly even scratch the surface of describing the divine.

But here I am again. Going down the same halls, into the same classes, and sitting in the same seat day, after day, after day. It is not the same; I am not the same. My eyes stare ahead at the chalkboard, but my heart is traveling back to Kenya. I am a senior in High School and it is unusual for someone my age to participate in a mission team. When I saw an email saying that team members were needed to teach English to our brothers and sisters in Kenya, there was no question, only a strong calling. I just had to go. I had no idea how to prepare, how I would be excused from school, or how I was even going to go because I was still underage. God had it in His plan. Every piece soon fell into place with my mother even joining me.

When we arrived in Nairobi, we had no idea what would await us. From the moment we stepped off the plane, we were swept into a completely new world. We came to teach, but instead we learned so much more and are still learning to this moment. During our time in Nairobi, we taught and learned at the St. Clement of Alexandria Primary School, the Orthodox College of Africa, and the Makarios III Seminary, where we spent most of our time. These schools were on the same compound, but surrounding them was the Kibera slum, the largest in Kenya and in all of Africa.

At the Primary School, my team member and I were put in charge of teaching a lesson on the cross and doing a craft. We crowded half of the three hundred children into the cafeteria and taught about the importance of the cross throughout the Old and New Testament, even teaching a song about how and why we do the sign of the cross. Then, we gave each child a cord, nine beads, and taught them how to make a beaded cross. The younger one’s struggled with a slightly more difficult step and we were bombarded with voices asking for help, “Te-cha! Te-cha! Te-cha! (Teacher), help me please!” Eventually all the crosses were done, but throughout the day the children kept coming back wanting to make even more, and to play, talk, and be with us. It was touching to see the children continuing to wear their crosses four days after making them.

Throughout our time there, we experienced genuine relationships that would take up an entire book, with a few volumes, so that every detail can be written. One experience that specifically stood out for me was when I was invited over for dinner, along with the long-term missionary, to a young woman’s home who had just finished her student teaching at St. Clement School. She lived a little deeper into the slums and we walked to her house as the sun was setting. We had to walk through hanging laundry and a narrow wet walkway to get to her door. She unlocked her simple wooden door and welcomed us in. When she plugged in her light bulb, I was at first surprised that she did not live with her parents and then at the tiny size of her home. None of that mattered when I saw all the icons adorning her walls. I was humbled in the fact that her home was smaller than my room and that she had had us over for dinner, especially me who was still a newcomer. Her prayer struck me most as she asked God to bless us her sisters, and thanked Him for her happiness in having guests for dinner. We remain sisters though we are half a globe away.

It was not the things we taught, witnessed, or learned, but the people themselves who made such a profound impact on me. Not a day passed without everyone having a smile on their faces and doing everything in their power to make us feel welcome. They would sing, dance, and share their life’s stories. In hearing those stories, it was difficult to believe that these people, in front of you, had experienced such hardships and are still smiling from ear to ear. It is because they have something we take for granted. Christ is their “strength and their song”, literally. Every breath, every word, every note, every moment is to the Glory of God. Each person was on fire for Orthodoxy. It was stunning. They had the Divine Love that you only read about in books, but it was fully alive. I will never forget the first vesper services we were blessed to experience at the Seminary Chapel. The floor was shaking from the voices that were so full of life and love, chanting the hymns of the next morning. And the children, who had very little, some even without parents, were always joyous and their smilies were contagious. They were so curious about everything; life, our Faith, and of course America. In the beginning we were strangers, but by the end of our time there, we were family. It did not matter what language we spoke, what we looked like, or where we were from. We are family because Christ is at the center of it all.  

The hardest part of the entire journey was not traveling or taking in a completely different world, it was leaving those who I had come to love so deeply and fully with the knowledge that I might not ever see them again. The relationships we created and continue to foster, were friendship I have never made so strongly and quickly before, even at all the camps I have attended. It is because they are grounded fully on our Orthodox faith and life, overflowing and full of love, that nothing can ever break.

My first week back in school, my teacher asked me if I was “back to reality.” This question bothers me still. What I experienced is a reality, truer in many ways, in addition to the life I have here. Our English language limits our boundaries of love to only one word. “Love” can not possibly define the colorful dimensions of the infinite reality of Divine Love. Words give no justice at all to this reality. With these limited words, however, we must inspire each other to go out, and experience the richness of Christ’s Divine Love in every situation, with every person that we encounter in our life’s journey. We do not always have to step out of our own community or country to enter into such a profound relationship. Every moment, every single person around us, brings an opportunity to share the awesome love that has filled our own hearts and is waiting to flow into the hearts of those around us.

The Journey Begins ~ Orientation ~ Day 1, 2, & 3

Day 1 ~ Oct. 27, 2014 ~ Monday

We started our mission at the headquarters of the Orthodox Christian Mission Center (OCMC) in Saint Augustine, Florida, for an orientation with other members of our team, and two members of another team.  This was our first time there and it was a blessing to meet the staff and see the collaborative work of all the Orthodox jurisdictions in America. 

Meeting team member Lexy after she identified Spyridoula 
as a team member because she was wearing a 
Be the Bee T-shirt at Jacksonville Airport     

The main entrance of the OCMC headquarters with the 
Great Commission etched above the front door    

The entrance hall carpet with inscription

Day 2 ~ Oct. 28, 2014 ~ Tuesday

Morning prayers with everyone in the building. Tour of OCMC offices was given by Markella. Orientation continued all day with team building activities and visit by Katerina Papaioanou, who brought us many of her icon pin buttons to bring to the Orthodox in Africa.

Day 3 ~ Oct. 29, 2014 ~ Wednesday

His Grace Bishop David of Alaska officiated the morning prayers and the service of commissioning, and then anointed us as we prepared to depart. We flew from Jacksonville, FL to Atlanta, GA, to Amsterdam to Nairobi, Kenya.

Commissioned by Bishop David of Alaska at OCMC Headquarters