The Oak Ridge First United Methodist Church
and
The Youth of the Belkino Russian Orthodox Church
Connection

Dear friends.

Now I would like to tell you about our youth group activity in June. It was a very busy month for all of us. Almost all of youth passed their exams. Some of them finished school and now they are preparing for their entering exams to universities. However, we had our Sunday meetings and managed to do some things.

Participants from youth group - 30
Date and time – 03.06.01
Expenses – USD 2 (photos)
In kind - $100

First of all – The Trinity. It is one of the lovely Holydays in the Russian Orthodox Church. In our parish we have a tradition to celebrate this day all together. We started in the church from the Divine Liturgy and then went to the forest. We prayed together and discussed some important problems, sang songs, played games, etc. Usually we have a lot of guests for this holiday. This year two monks from Taize (France) visited us and they told a lot of interesting things about Taize misson, about their work with youth (about five thousands young people from many European countries come to Taize weekly during summer).

Concert for War Veterans
Participants from youth group - 10
Participants from veterans - 40
Date and time – 22.06.01 and 24.06/01
Expenses - $40 (travel and tea)
In kind - $20

On June, 22 our youth and other young people from our city had a meeting near the Memorial devoted The Great Patriotic War. On June, 24 (Sunday) we invited 40 war veterans to visit Borovsk. Maxim, Julia and Nikolai were responsible for this trip. After the excursion our girls were singing songs for them. It was interesting experience, when the girls sang religious songs listeners were quite indifferent to this (almost all of them are atheists), but when they started singing WWII songs they sand together. In the end of the event I asked the veterans to write their impressions and we got many very nice notes. All veterans were very thankful and some of them were surprised there were so nice young people in our group.

On the way to Borovsk.
Entrance to the monastery.	Going to monastery museum.
Going to holy spring.	Near monastery wall.
In the monastery yard.	Participants near monastery gates.
The holy spring near monastery	Concert for seniors
Singing for seniors.	Tea in Belkino after excursion.

Trip to Moscow
Participants from youth group - 12
Participants from orphanage - 23
Date and time – 25.06.01
Expenses - $85 (travel and photos)
In-kind - $50

The next trip was on June 25. It was an interesting experience. We invited our unbelieving friends to visit very a interesting Museum of Russian Icons and The Christ the Saviour Church in Moscow. We spent a very good time and our friends could see that young Christians are not boring, sad people, which helped to destroy some of their stereotypes.

Now we are preparing a performance to be shown in a village not far from Obninsk. The youth are going there in one of weekends. They are going to visit an Obninsk hospital too.

It is hard to said what will happen during the next month, because many of us are going to other places for vacation, some of youth will enter universities.

With best wishes, Natalia Latynova.

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