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Posts Tagged ‘monastery’

Decani Monastery Helps the Poor in Occupied Kosovo

by 1389AD ( 13 Comments › )
Filed under History, Kosovo, Orthodox Christianity, Serbia at April 10th, 2011 - 11:00 am

Decani Monastery Relief Fund Now On Facebook

Tiny grey mailbox From the 1389 Blog Mailbox:

From: Reverend Archimandrite Nektarios Serfes
Date: Monday, March 28, 2011 7:29 PM
Subject: The Decani Monastery Relief Fund (38)

http://www.facebook.com/decanifund?sk=wall

Greetings in our Lord,

May our Gracious God always bless you! I pray you are having a great spiritual journey during holy Great Lent.

Thanks to God now the Decani Monastery Relief Fund is now on facebook and has it’s own facebook. See the attached. Note also the info page.

For this blessing I would like to offer deep humbly thanks to Basil Jeremy Danneholm from Denver, Colorado who offered to help set up this site for our fund. Please pray for him.

God bless you!
Peace to your soul!
Humbly in Christ our Lord,
+Archimandrite Nektarios Serfes
President of The Decani Monastery Relief Fund Inc. USA
Who prays for you!

Click for Facebook photo gallery
Click for Facebook photo gallery

Decani Monastery Relief Fund Charitable Activities

Information about the charitable activities of the Decani Monastery Relief Fund is available on their Facebook Info page:

The Decani Monastery Relief Fund (DMRF) is a completely non-profit organization. Information regarding the Fund’s financial operations may be viewed by going to the following web site: http://www.serfes.org/missionary/charter.htm

All donations made to the DMRF are forwarded as quickly as possible to volunteers in Serbia who immediately use this cash resource to distribute financial and/or material aid to persons in need of assistance. No portion of any donation is used for administrative or overhead costs– 100% of every donation is dispersed to aid recipients. Volunteers in both Serbia and in the USA donate their own funds, as well as their time, to assure that your donations in their entirety are used to address the needs the DMRF exists to alleviate.

The DMRF desires to alleviate those who are constantly in need of food, fuel, shelter, and medical attention, as well as assist the needs of the recent Orthodox Monasteries and Churches throughout the Province of Kosovo and Metohija. This fund as well seeks to help the youth and elderly in these same regions.

The fund currently supports six soup kitchens and one bakery – which produce bread loaves, a vitally important part of diet in this region. It also funds the delivery of bread and other foodstuffs to villages and provides daily lunches to four schools as well as shoes and clothing for youth of all ages.

Your fund supports 61 scholarships to the University of Northern Kosovo and also scholarship assistance for Serbian youths at Boise State University, and at Hellenic College/Holy Cross Theological Seminary, as well as financial assistance to Serbian immigrants in Boise, Idaho

Other important issues, needs and problems addressed by our Fund include: refugee centers and camps; special needs of the elderly; electricity bills; firewood during winter months (including schools!); necessary medical (and surgical) procedures; Orthodox celebrations of Christmas and Easter-Pascha; shortages of hay and farm equipment.

The Fund has also purchased pigs for 200 families annually!

The needs in Kosovo-Metohija continue to increase as events in the region continue to leaving many homeless and indigent.

The Decani Monastery in Kosovo

† Kosovo, Serbia – ” The Glory Of High Decani ” / Slava Manastira Visoki Decani 1 Of 2

† Kosovo, Serbia – ” The Glory Of High Decani ” / Slava Manastira Visoki Decani 2 Of 2

The Visoki Decani Serbian Orthodox Monastery is both a vital monastic community and a valuable and endangered historical site within occupied Kosovo.

Church at Visoki Decani: Sunday liturgy with children from Velika Hoca, October 2001
Click for photo galleries

To learn more, please visit the diocesan website:

Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Raska and Prizren: Visoki Decani Serbian Orthodox Monastery


Originally posted on 1389 Blog.


 

Mor Gabriel

by savage ( 13 Comments › )
Filed under Iraq, Islamists, Turkey at February 4th, 2009 - 5:44 pm

mor-gabriel

Mor Gabriel is a monastery dating back to the year 397 AD. It sits on the Turkish-Iraqi border. The monks and the rest of the religious order have preserved the Aramaic language and it is spoken and taught there to this day.

Unfortunately, the place is in trouble by three Muslim villages in the area. They claim that it sits on Islamic holy ground and that also say a mosque used to be there. Funny that the monastery is 200 years older than Islam.

Founded in 397, it is the oldest functioning Christian monastery in the world. It is located on the plateau of Tur Abdin, “The Mountain of the Servants of God,” on the Turkish border with Iraq. The see of the metropolitan archbishop of Tur Abdin, Mor Timotheus Samuel Aktas, with its three monks, 14 nuns, and 35 young people who live and study there, it is a religious and cultural point of reference for all Syriac Orthodox Christians, who still preserve ancient Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Every year it welcomes more than ten thousand tourists and pilgrims, many of them Syriacs of the diaspora in Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden.

Now, however, the future of the monastery and the Christian minority is threatened by a series of lawsuits against the monks and the prestigious religious institution. In August of 2008, the leaders of three Muslim villages around the monastery accused the community of proselytism, for having students to whom they can hand down the Christian faith and the Aramaic language. Their case has not yet been accepted by the Turkish court. But the village leaders are also asking that the monastery’s land be appropriated and divided among the villages; that a wall be knocked down that was built during the 1990’s (when the monastery was on the front of the conflict between the Turkish army and the Kurdish communist party (PKK)). According to the Muslim leaders, there used to be a mosque on the land where the monastery was built. “The accusation is absurd,” says David Gelen, leader of the Aramaic Foundation, “the monastery dates from 397 A.D., about 200 years before the prophet Mohammed and the construction of any mosque whatsoever. And yet the court has considered hearing the case.”

Gelen says that he thinks a “campaign of intimidation” is underway against the religious of the monastery. “Bishop, monks, and nuns,” Gelen continues, “are always threatened in the most direct way possible by the inhabitants of the village, and they do not dare present themselves at trial or defend themselves in some way. So for some time, the monks and nuns have not had the courage to leave the confines of the property.

Anyone out there listening?