With the blessing of Bishop George, our parish rector will be making a sixth pastoral visit to the New South Wales Mid North Coast on the weekend of Saturday-Sunday 30-31 January. A new home will be blessed near Port Macquarie on Saturday, and on Sunday, the Thirty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost and the day of commemoration of Saints Athanasius the Great (+373 AD) and Cyril, archbishops of Alexandria (+444), Divine Liturgy with the Great Blessing of Water will be served in Barraganyatti. The Russian Orthodox community on the Mid North Coast is under the heavenly protection of Saint Symeon of Verkhoturye. Those interested are welcome to contact us.

On Saturday 13 February and Sunday 14 February we will have services for the Thirty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Zaccheus Sunday; the Forefeast of the Great Feast of the Meeting of the Lord in the Temple; and in honour of Martyr Tryphon (+250 AD).   Matins will be served at 6.00pm on Saturday evening and Divine Liturgy  will be served at 9.00am on Sunday morning.  Provided numbers in church do not exceed 65, all are welcome to attend.

On Saturday 23 January and Sunday 24 January we had services for the Thirty-Third Sunday after Pentecost and for the Sunday after Theophany.   Matins was served on Saturday evening and Divine Liturgy with the Great Blessing of Water was served on Sunday morning.  Following the blessing of water a moleben with prayers of thanksgiving was served for the founders, benefactors and parishioners of the former Theophany church (1994-2009), all of whom joined our parish in 2009.

On Saturday 9 January and Sunday 10 January we had services for the Thirty-First Sunday after Pentecost and for the Sunday after the Nativity of Christ.  Matins was served on Saturday evening and Divine Liturgy was served on Sunday morning.  In place of a sermon at Divine Liturgy, the parish rector read aloud the Nativity Epistle of Metropolitan Hilarion of Eastern America and New York, First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia.

On Tuesday 5 January, our parish rector served the funeral of 97-year-old Anna Morhun, our long serving Head Sister and a tireless worker for our church.  In view of concern about the COVID-19 pandemic, the funeral was a small gathering of close family and friends.  Following the service, the newly reposed Anna was laid to rest in Sandgate Cemetery beside her beloved husband Ivan (+1998).

For us as for everyone, 2020 was dominated by the spread of the coronavirus COVID-19 and the public health measures implemented to manage it.  Our parish had no services from Monday 23 March until Thursday 21 May and restrictions on attendance were in place from Saturday 21 March until the end of the year.  We had four baptisms: Thea Yakimov, Timothy Martin, and Sophia and Katie Edwards.  Funerals were served for Nicholas Markatcheff and Olga Osadczuk.  Our long-serving Head Sister, Anna Pavlova Morhun, departed this life.  Litanies and prayers were offered to mark the Centenary of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, and together with the Gosford parish we provided an English-Russian wall calendar commemorating this milestone in the life of the Russian Orthodox Church.  Our website provided information to help with the planning of weddings and instructive material about Sunday commemorations and readings, certain Great Feasts, and the system of tones used for singing in the Russian Orthodox Church.  The extension to our sanctuary was effectively completed and work to renovate the sacristy commenced.  Our beautiful new icon case was received and blessed, and we purchased a set of new white vestments for our church.  Our parish rector made pastoral visits to the Mid North Coast of New South Wales in August and November.  All the news from 2020 can be read here.  Glory be to God for all things!

On Saturday 26 December and Sunday 27 December we had services for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday after Pentecost and in honour of the Holy Forefathers, the ancestors of Christ according to the flesh and all the great fathers, mothers and prophets of the Old Testament.   Matins was served on Saturday evening and Divine Liturgy was served on Sunday morning.  Following Divine Liturgy a memorial litia was served for the newly-reposed handmaiden of God Anna and for Patriarch Irinej of Serbia, Metropolitan Amfilohije (Radovic) of Montenegro and the Littoral, and more than one hundred hierarchs and clergymen of the Russian Orthodox Church who have departed this life in 2020 as a result of the coronavirus.  A comprehensive list of the departed clergy is available in Russian here, and a shorter list in English that includes monastics is available here.  These were our final services for 2020.

Updated: On Monday 21 December we learned with deep sadness of the repose, early that morning, of Anna Pavlovna Morhun.  Anna Pavlovna was active in the life of our parish from the time of its foundation in 1952.  She was a member of the Parish Council and active in the Ladies' Auxiliary for most of that period, filling the role of Head Sister for over fifty years.  She continued to be actively involved in church life well into her nineties, cooking, cleaning the church, and changing the vestments.  She received a gramota from Archbishop Sava (Raevsky) in 1964, a medal from then Archbishop Hilarion in 1998 on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the establishment of the Australian-New Zealand Diocese, and in 2017 Bishop George awarded her the prestigious Diocesan Cross.  May God grant this good and faithful servant of our parish rest with the saints, and make her memory to be eternal!  

On Friday 18 December and Saturday 19 December we had services in honour of Saint Nicholas, the Wonderworker of Myra in Lycia.  All-night vigil was served on Friday evening and Divine Liturgy was served on Saturday morning.  Immediately after Divine Liturgy a moleben was served to Saint Nicholas, following which the parish rector congratulated two parish members on their name-day: our warden, Nikolai Goura, and Parish Council member Dean (Nicholas) Crawford.  Many years was then sung for them both.  This commemoration of Saint Nicholas is the "lesser" patronal feast of our church, the main feast-day for us being that of the Translation of the relics of Saint Nicholas from Myra to Bari, commemorated on 22 May. 

On Saturday 12 December and Sunday 13 December we had services for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday after Pentecost and in honour of the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called.   Matins was served on Saturday evening and Divine Liturgy was served on Sunday morning.  In his sermon at Divine Liturgy on Sunday the parish rector spoke about Christ's healing of the infirm woman on the Sabbath (Luke 13:10-17) and the importance of not weaponising spiritual disciplines against one another, and about the life and Christian example of the Holy Apostle Andrew.  As from 7 December we were allowed 65 people in church, these were the first services since the beginning of March at which attendance was essentially unrestricted.

With the blessing of Bishop George, on Saturday 28 November and Sunday 29 November our parish rector undertook a further pastoral visit to the Mid North Coast of New South Wales. On Saturday Evan Cotton was baptised, and on Sunday, the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost and the commemoration of the Apostle and Evangelist Matthew, Divine Liturgy was served in Boambee, a suburb of Coffs Harbour, in a temporary chapel at the home of Ashish Sinha and Evgenia Biryukova. At Divine Liturgy the newly-baptised Evan received Holy Communion for the first time, and in place of a sermon the parish rector read aloud the Jubilee Epistle of His Eminence Metropolitan Hilarion of Eastern America and New York, First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. 

The December 2020 issue of “Word of the Church” (“Церковное Слово”), the official journal of the Australian-New Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, has recently become available in our parishes. This edition commemorates the centenary of the foundation, in 1920, of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, and is in a beautiful new format that includes colour photographs and QR codes with links to further information.  Content includes details of ordinations, clergy awards, and appointments; reports on feast-day celebrations in Geelong and at the Kazan Convent in Kentlyn, NSW; an extensive report marking the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of Saint John the Baptist Skete in Kentlyn, together with an appeals for funds to assist with the rebuilding of the skete; an obituary of His Holiness Irenej, Patriarch of Serbia, who reposed this year as a result of the coronavirus; the Jubilee Epistle of Metropolitan Hilarion; a beautiful colour reproduction of the Kursk-Root Icon of the Mother of God, suitable for framing; materials on globalisation from the perspective of the Russian Orthodox Church; and more.  Copies are $5.00.