On Saturday 9 December and Sunday 10 December we had services for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday after Pentecost and in honour of the Kursk-Root Icon of the Mother of God, the "Directress" of the Russian Diaspora.  At Matins on Saturday evening the faithful were anointed with oil from the lamp that burns before the original Kursk-Root Icon of the Mother of God in the Synodal Cathedral in New York, and prior to Divine Liturgy on Sunday an akathist was read in Slavonic and English before a copy of the icon.  As Sunday was the six-month anniversary of the repose of our parishioner Vadim ("Jim") Zdanowicz a memorial litia was served after Divine Liturgy.  Later in the day our parish rector visited the Russian and other Orthodox Kids' Camp being held in Toukley on the New South Wales Central Coast, there serving the customary moleben before the beginning of a good work.