Did you know that our festival committee meets at the church every Wednesday evening after the akathist for the ill? The akathist starts at 6:00 p.m. and usually ends around 6:45 p.m. After that we begin the festival meeting. We welcome everyone to get involved in helping us to plan and execute this year's festival! This is a FUN activity! :) And it brings so many people to our parish and introduces them to the Orthodox Faith. This is our biggest missionary activity of the year. Please join us! And if you can't be there, please remember us in your prayers, that the Lord will bless us with a festival that brings more and more people to our parish family!

Thank you to all who participated in our annual meeting yesterday! The meeting was marked by a tenor of peace, mutual interest in the success of our parish, and cooperation. At the meeting we heard reports from Fr. Gregory, our Starosta Nathaniel Longan, our Head Sister Ksenia Nikulshina, our Head Brother Konstantin Poplavsky, and several other of our parishioners that head up key parish ministries. Fr. Gregory's report was posted on Blogtushka yesterday, and the other reports and the minutes of the meeting will be available sometime during the first week of Great Lent, once the editing committee has reviewed them. Elections were held and the parish family members listed below were chosen to fill the roles noted this coming year. We thank them for their willingness to serve our community, and we thank all those that served in these positions during the past year!

Starosta: Nathaniel Longan (3rd year of 3-year term)
Treasurer: Marina Edwards
Secretary: Alexandre Alexandrov

Parish Council Trustees:

Mikhail Fisenkov
Dimitry Knysh
Jack (Alexey) Mitchell
Igor Obertas
Natalia Veniaminova

Auditing Committee:

Elena Kashchenko
Gleb Obertas
Donald Skalitzky

Russian with Love Representatives:

Alexandre Alexandrov
Nicholas McLarnan

Editing Committee:

Subdeacon Methodius Chwastek
Subdeacon Andrei Rodzianko

Fr. Gregory's report to the annual meeting has been posted on the Blogtushka blog. You can find it here:

http://blogtushka.blogspot.com/2016/03/ ... eport.html

Please join us this Sunday for our annual Blini Dinner! This wonderful and delicious tradition has helped support our parish and its ministries for many years - as long as anyone can remember! We ask a donation of $15 for adults, $7 for students, and as always - children eat free! This is a donation - if you can afford it we will most certainly use your donation for good. If you cannot - that is perfectly fine too. The most important thing is that you join us for this great event! All are welcome - see you Sunday!

Flyer to share can be found here:

http://stvladimiraami.org/flyers/blini16.pdf

Last year we had a small committee help Fr. Gregory and Nathan plan our St. Vladimir's day festivities. That worked very well! This year is our 35th anniversary as a parish and we'd like to form another smallish committee to help plan. We will have a lot of guests this year, including at least one bishop visiting from Russia with Bishop Peter's blessing (of course Vladyka Peter will be here too!). Please contact Fr. Gregory or Nathan if you can help. We would like to form the committee before Great Lent, which begins on March 14.

Please note that Great Lent begins this year on March 14. The week previous to this is a week where all foods are allowed except for meat. 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 date of the 2015 Annual Parish Assembly has been set for March 6, 2016. To participate in the meeting via voting or running for parish office one must be a member of the parish. To become a member of our parish please contact one of our membership coordinators: Vasiliy Krivtsov (vasiliy.krivtsov@gmail.com or 734-669-8712) or Dmitry Knysh (dmitriknysh@hotmail.com or 734-358-5996). We cordially invite you to join our parish family!

The letter calling the meeting, the agenda, and the addendum to the agenda can be found at the link below:

http://stvladimiraami.org/flyers/annualmeeting2016.pdf

We ask all to review this information before the meeting. We look forward to seeing you on March 6!

P.S. Please note - our Sisterhood's annual Blini Dinner will also be on March 6. Please join us for blini and our annual meeting!

Each year following the feast of the Theophany (the Lord’s Baptism – January 19) it is a traditional and pious custom to have one’s home blessed by the priest. Homes are blessed at St. Vladimir’s until the beginning of Great Lent. Please consult the link below to see the times available for house blessings. Please contact Fr. Gregory to schedule a house blessing or if the times listed do not work for you. If you live far from St. Vladimir’s please consult with those other parishioners of St. Vladimir’s who live near you so that you can all have your homes blessed on the same evening. Congratulations to all with the feast of our Lord’s Baptism!

http://stvladimiraami.org/flyers/houseblessing2016.pdf

Today marks the beginning of the last week in which we eat meat before Great Lent begins. We do not provide this announcement to promote gluttony, but rather, to alert you to use the remainder of the meat products in your home this week, and if you cannot, to freeze the rest to save them for after Pascha. Next week we will do the same with dairy products - use them up so that they are not wasted when we begin Great Lent on March 14. Please contact Fr. Gregory with questions about fasting, or any aspect of Orthodox life.

This year Youth Choir will be held each Saturday at 4:00 p.m. at the church. Altar Server training will take place the first Sunday of the month after the Divine Liturgy. Young boys who are six and above are welcome to participate in the Altar Server Training. Please see Subdeacon John Zroika or Fr. Gregory to assure that your child participates. Generally young boys begin to serve in the altar at about seven years of age (or whenever they begin to confess regularly).