187 received into the Church in ocean baptism at Kiamba

01 Ready to begin 01

On Facebook, the Philippine Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) writes:

On Saturday, September 26, Orthodox Priests Stanislav Rasputin and Silouan Thompson received into the fold of the one holy, catholic and apostolic Church four former parishes of the Philippine Independent Catholic Church by baptizing 187 former Aglipayans in Sarangani Province, in the Philippines.

The baptism took 6 hours despites big waves (2 ½ meters high) in the ocean, making the baptism very difficult. After the baptisms, a Divine Liturgy was served for the newly-accepted Orthodox Community where the newly baptized faithful received their first communion.

Fr Stanislav and I baptized despite unusually boisterous waves. At times it felt like playing with a kennel full of 200-pound mastiffs: We got knocked down repeatedly! One particularly strong wave took Fr Stanislav’s epitrahil (stole) right off his neck and washed it out to sea – we think it’s halfway to Malaysia by now.

Kiamba is in an area where the Moro Nationalist Liberation Front (Islamic secessionist group) is quite active, and a number of foreigners have been abducted this week by various groups of evildoers; so we were grateful for the escort the Philippine National Police provided for our sacrament and our procession from the church to the beach and back (even if their machine guns were a little strange to American eyes.)

Between ROCOR and MP missions, this makes a total of nine Russian Orthodox parishes in the Philippines, in addition to about twenty more mission communities still in catechism.

As the only Russian Orthodox priest resident in Mindanao, with the blessing of ROCOR Metropolitan Hilarion and of MP Archbishop Mark of Egorievsk, I travel often to teach and serve the Liturgy in these missions and parishes in addition to serving at my own parish of St John Maximovitch in Santa Maria. Also very busy are visiting missionaries from Russia and elsewhere: This month, besides Fr Stanislav, we have benefited from the work of Maxim Bardin, Maria Golik, and Anastasia Mikhailova. Before the ned of the year, I understand the Moscow Patriarchate means to assign a full-time priest to Mindanao, bringing the total count of resident clergy up to 2. Please pray for this decision and for the clergyman selected!

Baptism photos below:

02-Ready-to-begin-02-300x225

02.5 Instructions - Alphaeus translates

03 Lines 01

04 Lines 02

05 Anointing 01

06 Anointing 02

07 Anointing 03

08 Baptism 01

09 Baptism 02

10 Baptism 03

11 Baptism 04

12 Baptism 05

13 Baptism 06

14 Baptism 07

15 Baptism 08

16 Baptism 09

17 Baptosm 10

18 Baptism 11

19 Baptism 12

20 Chrismation 01

21 Chrismation 02

23 Epistle

24 Gospel

26 As many as have been baptized into Christ..

27 Tonsure 01

28 Tonsure 02

28.5 Tonsure 03

29 Group shot 01

30 Group shot 02

31 Group shot 03

32 Liturgy at St Joseph, Kiamba 01

33 Liturgy at St Joseph, Kiamba 02

Sursa: https://philippine-mission.org/2015/09/187-received-into-the-church-in-ocean-baptism-at-kiamba/