Dear brothers,
Rejoice in the Lord, for Christ is Risen.
With the blessing of His Eminence our Archbishop Joachim, we spent the Easter period in Malawi this year as well. Through the splendid and full of reverence services of the Holy Week, we are glad to find out that this Easter, the joy of the Resurrection touched and filled with light and hope a lot of African hearts.
We are also very glad to see the newly-established Resurrection parish be granted God’s blessing and spiritual joys.
The parishioners’ gratitude is growing day by day and is manifested in several ways, and as the Primary School has been operating for quite some time now, the number of pupils is increasing!
This parish as well as the Primary School next to the Church, is a clear confession of faith, as parents, passers-by and pupils ask about our faith and seem to be getting more and more interested and aware of the truth and uniqueness of Orthodoxy!
This is why we are taking very good care of the school curriculum.So,
apart from the official state curriculum, our School offers at the same time an Orthodox one, so that little by little, we will be able to sow the seed of Orthodoxy into the hearts not only of the children but also of the teachers.
For this reason within the school premises we have established a lending library with Orthodox books in English and Chichewa, from which pupils and teachers can borrow books.
Lessons start with all the pupils saying the Trisagion prayer and the Creed in both languages on a daily basis.
Every Friday our parish priest speaks to the whole school about Orthodoxy and our faith for an hour, and also, once a month a Blessing takes place along with a Divine Liturgy, with the participation of the whole school. Therefore, we can say that some people from the new generation are brought up within Orthodoxy!
In the state exams, our school was ranked 20th in order of merit among 700,000 pupils! This is a great miracle and blessing of Jesus Christ and of our Blessed Virgin Mary. Given the fact that the school has only been operating for two years now, the grace and blessing of the Most Merciful God is evident.
This might be the reason why some people felt hatred for us and tried to cast magic spells on us, and generally tried to defame us unfairly. However, this great success has already had a big impact, and everybody speaks well about Orthodoxy now.
We have been so greatly strengthened by the Resurrection Primary School that we pray that God grants us a High School as well in the same city as the Primary School, i.e., in Blantyre. This will conduce to our providing a complete education along with manners and principles, where faith will be offered to them pure and unadulterated.
Dear brothers, we thank you so much for always standing by our side; once more, listen to this noble wish of ours and help us, to the extent that you can, of course. This project is urgent because the children who are about to finish the last grade of Primary School should immediately continue their studies in a High School. We pray to God that a noble donor will be found for the High School.
Finally, we should not forget to thank our beloved brothers who gave our Mission the possibility to drill another seven wells and bring the most precious good, water, to our much-afflicted Malawian brothers.
May the joy of the Resurrection accompany us all every day and shed light on all sorts of difficulties that we have to face.
Amen.
Fr Ermolaos Iatrou
