Posts Tagged ‘brother in christ’

40 Days since our beloved brother in Christ (ipodeacon Georgi Nedev) has presented himself in God

Thursday, June 23rd, 2011

Holy Mount Athos st. Georgi the Glory Bringer - Zographus Monastic main Church
Holy Mount Athos st. Georgi the Glory Bringer – Zographus Monastic main Church

I start this post with the St. George Zographus Monastery’s main Church as the Zographus Monastery on Holy Mount Athos was our brother Georgi last eartly place he wanted to spend the remaining of his eartly life.

Today it’s the 40th day since our brother in Christ (ipodeacon) Georgi Nedev has presented his humble soul to our Saviour Jesus.

ipodeacon Georgi Nedev on a Bishop Church service holding the metropolitan sceptre

This is the only picture I have of our brother Georgi

His living was as humble as his departure from this life and his passing I believe in the eternal life with God.
Georgi had the severe desire to become a monk in Holy Mount Athos and has multiple friends in there which loved him and often prayed for him.
Now on this 40 day in our Bulgarian monastery in Holy Mount Athos, Saint George – The GloryBringer (Zographus) monks will be serving a requiem service (Panihida – as we say in Slavonic)

His departure was striking and sudden for of us in the Church community here in Dobrich’s Holy Trinity Church, as well as not less shocking for the Holy Mount Athos Zographus monks Christian community who loved our brother sincerely.

Some short biographic facts about our brother ipodeacon Georgi Nedev are here
Unfortunately the bio-facts I know about Georgi are very little, as I only knew him for a couple of years. Even though the short time I used to know him, I can say I was blessed through him and I’m exteremely grateful to him, it was through him I’ve learned a bit more about Holy Mount Athos and our Bulgarian monk community that is in Zographus, as well as some very minor details concerning the spiritual Church life that I’ve never thought about.
It was thanks to him I was being encouraged on numerous times in terrible times of desparation and loss of faith and track in life.

Thanks to him I was being explained for a first time, how one can go for a pilgrimage journey to Holy Mount Athos and how one can get the pilgrim’s permit documentation related to going there called in greek diamontirium
He also told me about numerous miracles about Holy Mount Athos, and explained me one needs to pray to the Holy Theotokos Virgin Mary and ask her that is being allowed to enter this holy place.

This last lent, even though his sickness Georgi was regularly visiting the evening services in the Church and was dilegent in his spiritual life.

I remember him expressing his enormous joy the last time I saw him on a Holy Liturgy for he took the Holy Communion.
After the Church service, I asked him how is he, his answer was; I’m not feeling well, but praise be to God! for I was able to take the Holy Communion

Many times when I asked him what are his future plans, he used to answer I don’t know anything, it’s all in the God’s will (hands) for me.

You can see yourself how great his dedicated for God was by his own words.

As our priest, who used to be his confessor said, “Georgi was a righteous man and God took him early on”.

Let eternal be your Memory beloved brother Georgi now and Forver and Ever! Amen!

Weekend with a lot of friends

Monday, April 7th, 2008

I spend the weekend with a lot of friends. God has prepared another great time for me. In Friday I was out with Alex, and we had a long discussion for who is God, because he thinks he can know the Lord without our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ which is completely wrong and impossible like it’s written how our Lord says “I and the Father are one” and again “Noone comes to the Father except through me“. At friday I was out with Static a friend and brother in Christ 🙂 We went to the school where he lives “Dimitar Talev”. This is the second time when I visit this school but it’s so colourful and I like it so much that I wished for a second to be pupil again :). In Sunday I went to Liturgy as often I went to bed very late in Saturday so I wasn’t able to wake in the morning and I went to the Church service somewhere around 9:30. The Priest’s preach was about the gospel’s where our Lord Jesus freed and healed a boy who was very often abused by wicked spirits, he also mentioned how some of the ppl fasts only abstaining from food and how this ain’t fast at all. He gave us interesting example how the animals who ate meet are cruel and animals who eat grass are very meek and pure. For example he said look into the fox, wolf they eat meet and they’re fierce animals whether animals like sheeps and rabbits eat only grass and are mostly good. He also mentioned that the st. Ioan Zlatoust(John / James the Goldenmouth) said that the fasting gives wings to the soul. In the church I saw Stelio the man who introduced me to the Orthodox Faith and after the Service we spend some great time in the park talking about the past during the communist regime here in Bulgaria, also the current state in the country etc. etc. In 12:30 we had previously arranged meeting with two of my colleagues from the College. We had to make the SPSS project which we have to complete and pass to the teacher today. Thanks God everything just went smoothly. And we had to make just a little text to the project in order to complete it. In 09:00 we went to the Fountain with Vlado (hellpain), because he was here for the weekend. Now just after I came home I prayed I take a shower. And I intend to read a bit from the bible and go to sleep.

END—–

What’s going around Lately

Saturday, April 19th, 2008

Nothing special. Last week went just fine thanks to the Lord ! Of Course :). It was mostly peaceful. What was interesting was a method our teacher at management choose to use to make us better understand ourselves. She said I want all of you to draw me a picture of how do you foresee yourself ten years from now :). We all was surprised but just as she requested we did draw the pictures. My picture had 4 possibly futures. In one of them I was with my wife and a kid in front of our house, on the other I was owning and leading an IT company. On one of them I was helping to get out of the terrible pit of depression, addiction to drug, alcoholism, telling them “Stop there is a reason to live, God Loves you!”. In the other case I was a Senior SysAdmin in a middle size/big company managing servers/clusters. Now we had to make a report explaining our picture. I just did make my report hope the teacher would like it. Yesterday, Bino came home and proposed to go out, we went out we saw Stoyan (who btw is a Brother in Christ). Later we saw Dancho a friend of mine (a communist). First we started a normal talk later the talk just transformed into a terrible and useless argue I did a mistake not stopping whenever I had to. And in the end we decided not to see each other because it’s bad for both of us. Later Alex (an ex class-mate) called me and we went we had a walk in the central park and talked ’bout if I can say it like this “the life, the universe, and everything else” :). The next few weeks outline to be a tough one. We are going to have a lot of exams 8 or 9 ! We had a lot of projects and assignments but still I trust on the Holy one to help me make all of them and do just fine on the exams just like he helped me the last semester and the previous year.END—–

Our beloved brother in Christ Ipodqkon Georgi (Atonski / from Mount Athos) has passed away

Sunday, May 22nd, 2011

Ipodqkon Georgi Atonski from Dobrich

Below I post the only picture I have of this beloved brother in Christ ipodqkon Georgi You see our brother on the right side of the Metropolitan of Varna and Great Preslav Kiril.
Georgi served as an ipodqkon in the Church Holy Trinity here in Dobrich and was well known and loved by the Church community there.
He also was a really good loving and decent man completely devoted to our Orthodox faith, standing firm in the faith.
He worked for many months in Holy mount Athos as a repair workers cook, where he cooked for about 70 people.

Before he worked in Holy Mount Athos, he used to be a restaurant chef in Sandanski.
Since about 6 or 7 months time he become sick, his assumption for the sickness was that it might be of a bad sploit old food which was consumed by accident by him and the rest of the workers.
He shared with me that all of the workers felt sick after eating it but all of them except him has vomited the food afterwards.

He gets poisoned and urgently transfered back in a hospital in Bulgaria. Consequently he went under a lot of examinations which failed to proof the exact type of sickness he was suffering from.
He was prescribed to eat only fasting food (some bread, apples, oil and a few of other light meals). He was prescribed a lot of medications he tried but none of them really helped him and he on a numerous times has shared with me he is not feeling weel, though I was not really believing his health situation is so severe.

The exact state he was experiencing was infirmity, headaches, skin rushes, he could hardly stay on his foots for more than few hours, as lastly he shared with me.
He also got rashes from most of the food he consumed. His life was a real tragedy as I remember I saw him just 3 weeks ago and he was about to go to Sofia for some examinations.
Even though his hardships in life, he was not loosing faith and believed all that was happening was according to God’s will and did accepted his sickness with humility.
During the about 7 months he spend in sickness he was many times being hospitalized in Hospitals in Dobrich, Varna and Sofia.

In each of the hospitals he spend a couple of weeks on injections and live sustaining medical systems.
During this periods, when he was in his home here in Dobrich somewhere in Balik, he often chatted with me over Skype, giving me good spiritual advices.
He also often called my landline phone to consult on various stuff concerning his problems with his notebook. As in the last days he could only lay and use the computer.
The computer he had was one of the few possessions he had, in his last days he did not have money at all as all of his savings were spend for examinations and drugs…

I remember still one time when I walked with him towards the bus-station and I was in a terrible desperation, being faithless.
He instructed me I should pray and told me not to despair and stop smoking as I was nervously smoking…
He lived a life similar in many ways to the life of the saints. He had a strong love for monasticism and had the desire to either become a monk or priest.
He told me many miraculous things he has seen and heard when he was in holy Mount Athos.

Last time I saw my beloved brother Georgi near the Church saint George (sveti Georgi) and for my grief I behaved partly as an asshole, and I repent I was not behaving better.

In this last time I saw him he shared for his great gratitude for God that he was allowed to visit the holy Lands (Jerusalem) The Holy Sepulchure church in Jerusalem.
Even in this last days, obviously living in infirmity he had his strong dedication to the Church and come to the Church services for Resurrection / (Easter) and was mostly being present on holy liturgies in Sundays.

The last time I saw him in the Church he did the Gospel and red some psalms. He was always serious and looked for the spiritual in everything, very rare kind of person to meet today.
Georgi blessed me with a couple of small icons (two copies of icons of Saint Georgi [Fanailska and Araviiska] miraculous icons from mount Athos as well as an icon picture of the Altar of Holy Sepulchure Jerusalem church), and I pray in front of them when I pray to God.

These are two of the icons brother Georgi give me as a gift and blessing from Holy Mount athos:

Saint Georgi Zographus miraculous making icon

Saint Georgi Zographus Miracle making icon

Saint Georgi Fanuilska Zographus Bulgarian Monastery miracle making icon

My beloved brother in Christ Georgi (God Forgive him / Bog da prosti) has also blessed me with a wonderful digital movie about the Bulgarian monastery in Holy Mount Athos Zographus. The movie about Zographus is explaining thoroughfully the history of the holy cloister and showing the originals of the Holy miraculous icons and monks who spoke about today’s spirituality and what is it to be a monk on holy mount athos (one of the most holy places on earth today).

I know also that Georgi was a wonderful a really talanted cook (even a chief) as he was responsible to take an eye for 6 cooks during his work as chief in Sandanski.
In the just recently passed away Resurrection day, he has cooked an Easter cakes and banica as well as some other meals using a holy mount athos recipee.

After the Resurrection early Holy liturgy was over we ate together with the brothers and sisters from Georgi’s delicious meals praising God and rejoicing for our Lord has Resurrected from the dead…
I will really miss my namesake (adash) as I used to call him often. I just hope one day I would see him again if by God’s grace I’m allowed to enter Heaven.
Just about 1 year ago his mother passed away, then some few years before his father has passed away and now not more than a year after his parents he is gone as well.
When I look over this tragedy it’s really hard to understand it but using the Holy Scriptures, one can easily understand why it happened that way as,

His early departure from this life is according to the words in the Holy Bible in Isaiah 57:1:


The righteous perish, and no one ponders it in his heart; devout men are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil.

I hope ipodqkon Georgi will find grace in front of God to pray for me the sinner and the rest of us who’re still living in ours sins on this sinful earth.

As the memory of the righteous lasts forever he will be forever remembered as I believe he was in the number of the rightous …

Please Orthodox Brothers and sisters pray for ipodqkon’s Georgi’s soul that our merciful God forgives him his trespasses and grants him an ever lasting joy with all the saints in the heavenly church, in paradise!

God forgive you our and my beloved brother Georgi! Let your memory last forever. Amen!

Resurrection (Easter) Orthodox Christian iconogoraphy

Saturday, April 30th, 2011

Nicolae Ovidio a brother in Christ from the Romanian Orthodox Christian, has provided me with a number of Beautiful Orthodox icons displaying the glorious resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ!
Христос Воскресе!
Hristos Inviat!
Xristos Anesti!

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This icons are truly a blessing so I kindly thank brother Nicolae for blessing me and allowing me to bless my readers with this wonderful icons!