Dear Brothers and sisters,Christ is Risen / Hristos Voskrese!This 3 days sorrounding the Orthodox Easter celebrations or Passover was one of the most spiritually rich and joyful in my life so far.God’s grace peace and joy was abundant, the church services we had here in the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad was so realistic,I felt like really being on our Lord and saviour Jesus burial, the shround in which he was wrapped and the holy liturgies, I alsogot some nice explanations from the priest who was there from moscow especially for that bright celebration. There are 3 Church servicesday after another. This was quite refreshing to me, since I’m not feeling spiritually here as I have blogged in my previous post.I cannot describe the joy I experienced, Also the Lord game me the chance to share the good news of the gospel with a couple of peoplehere. On the 2nd day the Bulgarians has organized a feast to celebrate the celebration, what was pity was that they were not really celebrating the resurrection of our Lord but was enjoying themselves 🙁 Anyways. The Liturgy on the first day of the resurrection of Christ was actually two liturgies combined in one and was the longest church service I have ever attended in my life, it lasted for around 5 years, and right after the priest did a food blessing service (not sure about the english name) in Bulgarian we call it “vodosvet”. Then all the people who stayed until the end of the Church service sat together prayed and started eating, I ated a lot there! The food was so delicious. The relations between me and the rest especially Rob was so nice, we were exactly like kids who just has received their gifts (the food). I have to mention that on the previous day I also has confessed infront of the priest and he explained me the difference between this church and ours and also blamed our church for taking part of the ecomenism (well he had a point about that). On the Church service on a couple of times I felt my legs really weak so I had to sit every now and then. We went out of the church and singed Christ is Risen from the Dead Trampling up death by death and to those in tombs bestowing life! The priest proclaimed the resurrection in around 6 languages! in which all type of lenguages were answered the equivalent words for “Truely is Risen!”. I went out of the Church in 7:00 (in the morning!) 🙂 overfilled with joy and happiness and The Lord’s grace. It was exactly like I’ve spend hours out of the world for quite some time, I would say an unbelievable experience. I did the dishes right before I left the Church in the morning, Svetla decided to give me some food for home 🙂 Which was quite nice, food in the Church seems like from a different substance from the normal food here in the Netherlands, more or less I feel it like the Bulgarian food. I had also the oportunity to test a lot of Russian food, like for example a sort of soar cake named right after the celebration “Pasha”, there was a long interesting cakes as well I forgot how they used to call them. There was a lot of russian food, many of which was quite similar to ours in Bulgaria! :)Everything I experienced their and the joy and peace cannot be simple explained in a text, just have to went through it. I should be amazingly thankful to God for bringing me in the true source of faith the Orthodoxy! Glory be to you Almightly Lord (Glory be to the Father, The Son and The holy Spirit!) now and forever and ever! AmenEND—–
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Tags: Christ, indeed, Risen, truly
