Family Holiday in Temperley

On 28 September, a Mother’s Day celebration was held at the parish school of the Parish of the Protection of the Most-Holy Mother of God in Temperley immediately following divine liturgy.

Teachers of the school began the performance, reading a poem dedicated to the rector of the parish, Protopriest Igor Bulatov, written especially for this holiday by Svetlana Gurnakov, a professional journalist and mother of three students.

Besides the program prepared by the students under the guidance of their teachers, during which the children read poems, sang sons and even danced, some parents took part as well. The lyrical mood evoked by the song “Pisnya pro rushnik,” written by Andrei Malishko with music by Platon Maiboroda, performed by the Oleynik family, ended with uproarious laughter, along with humorous skits by the Golman, Nikolaenko and Morozov families, giving a rendition of “Tochka, tochka, zapetaya,” and other pieces.

The celebration was highlighted by the performance of the Koltsov family, which danced a smart Russian cadrille and a magnificent waltz.
The audience was shown an almanac, the result of an enormous effort made by Svetlana Gurnakova, containing information on the establishment of the church, the history of the parish school and on the life of the school today. Vladimir Dmitrievich and Svetlana Ivanova Belikov gave the school a gift of gooks, both children’s picture books and Orthodox books, which we hope will serve as the basis of a school library.

The day was imbued with genuine familial warmth and coziness, which can be summarized by these lines from S. Gurnakova’s poem:

Somewhere a hundred miles away
And over thousands of years
The Fatherland awaits us not
You remained the realm of dreams
But in this foreign and distant land
Which gave us a warm hearth
We did not remain, as before, alone,
A Russian church awaits us here...