Please note that Great Lent began this year on March 14. During Great Lent we abstain from meat and dairy products including fish (although fish is allowed on the Annunciation – April 7, and Palm Sunday – April 24). Let us recall that fasting is a tool given to us by God to aid us spiritually. For some it is easy to fast, for others it is difficult. However, what is most important is that we make a sincere effort to follow the fast. Why? Simply because the fast helps us to see our sins by helping us to focus spiritually. Eating “light” foods, or perhaps rather, abstaining from “heavy” foods such as meats and cheeses, allows us to be less focused on our stomachs and more focused on our souls, and of course, in this season when we undergo our journey to the Resurrection of our Lord we dearly wish to improve ourselves spiritually that we might meet the risen Christ better than we were when we began Great Lent. St. John Chrysostom writes that we abstain from meats that we might abstain from our sins. This nicely sums up the reason the Holy Church, as a loving mother, gives us the gift of fasting. Pascha is May 1 – may God grant us all a spiritually profitable Great Lent!

The Holy Church appoints several special Saturdays throughout the year on which we especially commemorate our departed friends and loved ones. At St. Vladimir’s we will serve the following memorial services on the following dates this Great Lent:

March 5: Divine Liturgy 8:00 a.m. (Vespers and Matins for the departed the evening prior at 6:00 p.m.)
March 26: Divine Liturgy 9:00 a.m. (Matins for the departed the evening prior at 6:00 p.m.) - All English Cycle
April 2: Divine Liturgy 8:00 a.m. (Matins for the departed the evening prior at 6:00 p.m.)
April 9: Divine Liturgy 8:00 a.m. (Matins for the departed the evening prior at 6:00 p.m.)

Please join us for those services that you are able to and for those you are not: please assure the commemoration of your friends and loved ones at the services by emailing their names (please distinguish between Orthodox and non-Orthodox departed) to info@stvladimiraami.org or by otherwise contacting Fr. Gregory.

Please find the April schedule of services and activities (and yes - Bright Week is there too!) at this link:

http://www.stvladimiraami.org/calendars ... lendar.pdf

Please find the April Vladcast at this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldcvCsEibU0

Happy April! Please make this month spiritually profitable for you and your family by joining us for as many of the Divine Services as your personal schedule allows!

Starosta's Corner

Volume 3, issue 1
April 2, 2016

(there are fewer than 1,700 words in this installment--read it three minutes a day and you’ll be done by the end of the week)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

First and foremost--an incentive to read this: there is a small piece of information hidden in this installment that you very likely did not know about me before. If you find it please send your answer to me (starosta@stvladimiraami.org) and you will be entered into a drawing to win a $20 gift certificate for an item from the kiosk. There are two other smaller, $5, prizes that will also be drawn for that day. One is for showing me you know what I write should be the first and foremost thing the parish should do if our OARS grow as much in 2016 as they did in 2015. The second $5 drawing will be from the right answers to my wrong math (it isn’t much, but it isn’t right. Helping hint, just copy and paste the tables into an Excel sheet and compare). We’ll do the drawing on Doubting Thomas Sunday, so you have some time.

So, on to the bulk of this quarter’s “Starosta’s corner”

If you are surprised to see this first quarter 2016 issue of “Starosta’s Corner” coming out so shortly after the end of the quarter, imagine how surprised I am. Getting something done on schedule is so out of character for me that I wonder if maybe I shouldn’t just postpone this for a few weeks.

No, I shouldn’t just postpone this for a few weeks. Our parish is tremendously busy and there is every advantage to getting everyone as up to date as possible.

First things first, please keep engaged. Please help get “everyone as up to date as possible.” After services ask your friends if they have read this quarter’s “Starosta’s corner”. If they haven’t, and you have read past this sentence, please share its basic message and suggest your friends read it, too.

This quarter the basic message is just slightly more complex than “please increase your offering.” It is “We are going to take on some debt to ramp up the pace. Please be engaged.”

At the March 6, 2016 annual parish meeting the starosta’s report provided a short list of our 2016 hopes and plans. I’ll copy them here:

http://stvladimiraami.org/pamphlets/starostascorner.pdf

Please join us this Satuday at 4:00 PM at St. Vladimir's as we compile International Orthodox Christian Chatities' emergency hygiene kits. For those who are suffering from war, famine, and other natural and man-made disasters these kits are a huge help. Please join us to help others much less fortunate than ourselves by making these kits! Children and other young people are especially urged to participate but all are welcome!

Please join us for the Great Feast of the Annunciation on Wednesday evening at 6:00 p.m. for Vigil and Thursday morning at 8:00 a.m. for the Divine Liturgy. This is one of the two days this Great Lent when fish is allowed. Learn more about this important date in the Church Calendar at the links below and please join us at St. Vladimir's for the Divine Services in person, or if that is not possible, on our live stream!

English:

http://oca.org/saints/lives/2016/03/25/ ... nd-ever-vi

Russian:

http://days.pravoslavie.ru/Life/life707.htm

With the blessing of His Eminence, Metropolitan Hilarion of Eastern America & New York, First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, and our ruling Hierarch, Bishop Peter of Cleveland, the Kursk Icon will visit St. Vladimir Church on the following dates and times:

Friday, April 8: 8:00 a.m – 12:00 p.m.
Saturday, April 9: 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. (perhaps over night – see below)
Sunday, April 10: 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Note that these dates and times correspond to Divine Services at St. Vladimir's. It would be ideal to organize the icon to stay at St. Vladimir's overnight from April 9 to April 10. We have managed that the last few times the icon has visited and we will try to do that again this time. According to the established rule, two men must be present at all times with the icon. In past years there have been many more people than that who took part in the reading of the akathist and the singing of hymns before the icon overnight of course, but we cannot assume that will just work out. Thus, we have established a sign up sheet for the hours the icon would need to be at St. Vladimir's overnight. You can find that sheet at this link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QDwgcgB597qtmbKxmvZOnqQkSnj2RDunAsYjDEZ1jek/edit?usp=sharing

Please sign up as soon as possible. Please contact Fr. Gregory with questions.

Several folks noted that they could not sign up to stay overnight with the Kursk Icon from April 9 to 10 at St. Vladimir's. Well - that is because the sign up sheet was not created correctly! But - it has been repaired and there are still a few spaces that need to be filled. Please visit the sign up right now and take a few spots - thank you:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QDwgcgB597qtmbKxmvZOnqQkSnj2RDunAsYjDEZ1jek/edit?usp=sharing

Did you know that some (in fact many) companies offer matching funds for donations made to non-profit organizations such as our parish? To find out more please contact your Human Resources department at you place of employment. Did you know that if you donate your used car to Charity Motors you can direct that the proceeds from the sale of the car go to our own St. Vladimir parish? You can find out more at their web site: http://www.charitymotors.org Please consider these options to support your parish!

Please find a sign up sheet for our Alpha House efforts at this link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZYD3jC1XHNclUu33kX7w-3GpyAMazGgmdDQJ2nvaxI4/edit?usp=sharing

YOU MUST reach out to Addie Lanterman (her information is at that link) if you have not volunteered at Alpha House previously.

Learn more about Alpha House here:

http://alphahouse-ihn.org/