Update 27 February 2017:

As we have been announcing over the past while, the Lord has gifted us with the chance to buy our own church.

Thanks to the love, the prayers, and the financial help you have offered, we have succeeded in raising the necessary sum to pay our taxes (to the state and to the notary) at the moment of purchase. Yet the road to converting the building into a church and school is arduous, for in addition to the credit that the parish needs to pay over the next ten years in order to become fully owner, there are important renovations, improvement, and safety works that are necessary in the building. We would rejoice if you would be able to participate in this “noble” founding of a church and school (for historically, only nobles and princes founded both churches and schools :-)), helping us according to your strength, and transmitting our request to others.

IBAN account: BE03 3631 2661 8584
BIC/SWIFT: BBRUBEBB
Beneficiary: PORTS asbl

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In these seven years since the Lord has created a parish out of all of us – the “All Saints” parish –  we live and experience the Mystery of the Church together, which can make out of strangers, brothers and sisters in Christ.

Our parish first began to take life in spirit, and then in body. From a few scattered meetings in the beginning, and then through thousands of confessions, hundreds of Liturgies and myriads of prayers, the Lord bound our hearts and slowly we became a family in Christ. In this family, we have welcomed all who have felt spiritually close to us, thus enlarging our hearts and expanding the “house” of our souls. Even if great distances, and even oceans, sometimes separate us, we are always close. Even if we see some of you only rarely, prayer for each other makes our hearts mysteriously and unceasingly closer.

Our parish needs to leave the church in Vedrin-Namur, and we have been looking for a church for about a year and a half. The Lord has heard our prayers and has recently granted us a great joy, on the eve of the great Feast of the Nativity of Christ: namely the occasion to purchase our own place. It is a rather spacious building in a village called Huldenberg, near the city of Leuven, where we would be able to continue our prayers and all the activities of parish life and of the Orthodox mission work in the West. Part of a former Catholic monastery, the building would permit the establishment of both the parish, as well as a school for our children. (As many of you already know, a few of the brothers and sisters from the parish created a foundation that inaugurated a private school this autumn. “Saint Silouan” school is based on Christian pedagogy, and desires to be for our children a Christian alternative to the official school system.)

We would rejoice and we would be very grateful if you would be able to help us. “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). Now is the time for founding for all those that wish it.

God works through people, and I would rejoice if this time, He works through you, our brother, our sister, that is reading these lines.

“To be charitable, we do not need money, but good will”, says Saint John Chrysostom, since the value of charity is not in the amount of what we give, but in the thought with which we give it. We thus assure you of our whole gratitude, promising commemoration in prayer, regardless of the amount of your gift.

The information necessary to make a bank transfer:

We ask that you also add a short list of names to be commemorated (living and departed) for the future list of names commemorated as founders and benefactors of our church.

“May He remember every sacrifice of yours, may He give you according to your heart, may He fulfill all your counsel. We will greatly rejoice in your salvation, and in the name of our God we will be magnified. May the Lord fulfill all your petitions. (Psalm 19)

Father Ciprian