It was wonderful, blessed and hopeful that three missionaries from Thessaloniki, members of the Orthodox Foreign Missionary Brotherhood, came to Fiji for 20 days and offered all of themselves for the relief and evangelization of our newly converted brothers and sisters.
Our good teacher, Mrs. Angeliki, the excellent ophthalmologist Mrs. Katerina and the well-known to all in our Mission from the old years, Mr. Prodromos, were in Fiji, in the parishes of the islands and in our orphanage during the first 20 days of August.
Each in his own way.
Mrs Angeliki taught us Greek, taught us songs, taught us good manners, taught us to say thank you and to smile, gave us a living example of true Orthodox morality, showed us with her attitude and her life what the fruits of life in Christ are.
Charming herself and her good husband Mr. Michalis who wholeheartedly approved and encouraged her decision to come to the orphanage of Agia Tavitha.
Mrs. Ekaterini, a renowned ophthalmologist of Thessaloniki, dedicated her annual professional leave to the service of our poor and empirical brothers and sisters.
She took with her three hundred pairs of glasses from Greece, of varying abilities, and set up three different eye clinics in Holy Trinity Nadi, St. Paraskevi Sabeto, and St. Nicholas and Athanasios Lampasa. He examined over 350 of our brethren and provided free glasses and gave instructions where needed. He relieved the pain and gave light to those who needed it.
Finally, the good and kind Mr. Prodromos, known to our children from the first years of the Mission, became the object of joy of the children of the Orphanage and our neighbors since he was one of the first collaborators of the elder Amphilochios at the beginning of the creation of the mission.
The children not only recognized him, not only expressed their joy, but in the end they didn’t want to let him go unless he promised to come back next year to stay with us for 6 months. Such a great emotional bond.
We thank them from the bottom of our hearts, because they acted evangelically and offered themselves, time and money to serve us, to give us joy, to give us health, to give us knowledge, but above all to give us an example and an attitude of a blessed life in Christ.
We owe many thanks to your Brotherhood, which has contributed decisively to the realization of this mission and which contributes steadily to the life of the Church in the islands of the Pacific Ocean.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the day that your late founders, inspired by the late missionary Fr Chrysostomos Papasarantopoulos, founded this missionary Brotherhood, which has since then offered the greatest possible contribution to the spread of Orthodoxy on the five continents.
But first and foremost we thank our Lord and our God, who in the darkness of human actions around the world, sends us a little light through His good children, through His angels. We beseech Him and ask Him to hear the prayer of the 3 missionaries, who expressed Him in the language of their actions and example, and to have mercy on Him a hundredfold.
Good, blessed and spiritually fruitful is the stage of the pre-Christ Nativity exercise.
†O New Zealand Myrone
