Dear Mr President,
I would like to congratulate you on your well deserved election to the position of the President of the Fraternity and continuator of the noble work which originated with Fr. Chrysostomos Papasarantopoulos and to which the late Panagiotis and Elli Papadimitrakopoulos dedicated their whole life.
I want to thank you for the opportunity you gave me to visit the Fraternity on Sunday, May 10 and talk about the course of missionary work in West Africa, and also present the book dedicated to the late Patriarch Petros VII. The event was indeed magnificent and worthy of the memory of the late Patriarch.
I would like to inform you that here in Guinea we are struggling to support the victims of the Ebola virus through food distribution and medical relief. Our Holy Metropolis is the worst affected by the epidemic and the only one that has been afflicted for 1.5 years now.
One of the major problems we face in Guinea is the lack of clean and running water. This lack contributes a lot to the transmission of the deadly Ebola virus since continuous hand- washing is the best protection against the virus.
There is an urgent need for the people of at least two areas of the city of Kindia to be given God’s gift of access to clean water. I visited these places during my last pastoral visit, and needless to say, my presence in the region was regarded as a commitment for response to our desperate fellows’ request for help. Moreover, it is necessary to distribute soap and other antiseptic liquid for protection from Ebola. To achieve the above we need about 5,000 euro, and you are the only ones that are so sensitized and touched by our work and always respond positively and promptly to our requests.
Despite the difficulties, we continue the construction work of the Church of Sts. Parthenios and Charalambos in Guinea, for which your Fraternity participated in the land purchase but we are still lacking 5,000 euro. Moreover, a pending project is the construction of the Orthodox Academy on the same site. For the completion of the ground floor with 3 classrooms, staff room and library, 10,000 euro is required.
It would be a great blessing to find a noble donor who could fund and support these projects, which will be the testimony of our Orthodox faith in this Muslim country.
Metropolitan George of Guinea
