For a New Pentecost: A Family Responds to the Call of Mission

Beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ

Christ is Risen!

With great joy and gratitude to our All-Good God, we announce to you that on Wednesday of Mid-Pentecost, May 14, 2025, Deacon Fr. Timothy Triantafyllou was ordained priest at the Holy Church of the Holy Trinity in Suva, Fiji. The Divine Liturgy was celebrated with the participation of Fathers Archim. Meletios, Bartholomew, and Alexios, while the chanting was led by Father Damaskin from the Monastery of St. Gregory on Mount Athos together with the children of our orphanage choir. Father Damaskin, a faithful worker of the Gospel, is also dedicated to translating the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom from Greek into the Fijian language and composing ecclesiastical hymns in English, offering invaluable work for the spiritual development of the local faithful.

The newly ordained Father Timothy and his family—Presbytera Dimitra and their two school-age children—have recently moved from Melbourne to Nadi, Fiji, leaving behind the comfort of city life and culture, and will serve our local Orthodox Church on a voluntary basis. We warmly ask all our brothers to pray for his missionary ministry, as well as to support financially or in whatever other way they can this priestly family, so that their presence and residence there may be established and the ministry of the Orthodox Church in the vast expanses of the Pacific may be strengthened. Their decisions, actions, and self-sacrifice constitute an example and lesson of practical love for all of us.

Meanwhile, three Greek craftsmen are in Tonga at the Church of St. George, where they are soon completing the construction of the church and its courtyard. What remains now is to furnish the interior of the holy church with appropriate furniture and decoration. At the same time, Father Meletios continues zealously with the iconography of the chapel of the Holy Apostles in the same area, transmitting through the icons the light of the Resurrection Message.

Brothers, the Orthodox Mission in the Pacific faces challenges, but also blessings. In a world that has never ceased to long for Truth, our witness must reach to the “ends of the earth.” We earnestly ask you to pray for the workers of the Gospel, for our newly illumined brothers, and for those who dedicate themselves to translation, construction, and catechesis. Only through the unity of our prayer and the practical expression of our love will the seed of faith bear fruit.

Gratefully to all,
Myron of New Zealand