Issue: 3.0

Web site last updated on 30th May 2010

Alison’s Newsletter - April 2008

Dear Friends,

Greetings from Alatyr! I'd like to get this clip to you before the Easter season ends. It will be Ascension Day here in Russia next Thursday and until then we continue to sing Christ is Risen from the dead! at all our services.

The clip which I hope you will find attached and will be able to open (please let

I hope you will be as excited as we are to see the progress the church building is making. The roof has now been put on and a floor will soon be laid. Some lovely carving has just been added to some of the outside edges of the building.

On Easter Sunday our own 'through the night' service finished about 4am and then we had a wonderful feast with eggs and salads and sweet Easter cheese.

I got to bed about 6am and then got up a few hours later to go to the prison where the women had prepared an Easter concert. After the concert we went out to stand by the church building and sang lots of the hymns sung on Easter night with the women. As we sang Father Vasilii did lots of shouting of Christ is Risen to which all the women shouted back 'He is risen indeed!'. He sprinkled lots of holy water on them. There was brilliant sunshine and the first warm spring weather so everyone enjoyed themselves thoroughly. We then distributed 1200 dyed eggs, one for each women. Quite a few of the women are Muslim and didn't know whether they could come up to get eggs. Most of the eggs were pink or red but some had been dyed green, so Fr Vasilii defused a slightly tense moment by announcing that the green eggs were specially for the Muslim women, at which they all came up and took an egg!

The course we have been running for the women introducing them to basic Christian teaching continues to run successfully. About 20 women are doing the written assignments and it's wonderful to see many of them visibly change as they begin to read the Gospels and understand something of Christ's message. One woman Zhanna has been doing all the reading and writing assignments with great enthusiasm. One assignment they have to do is to write Guidelines for Life for their children. When I asked her if she had any children of her own (she's 35) she replied with a smile, 'I haven't had time. I've been in prison 6 times since I was seventeen when I got involved with drugs.' My main role is to talk with the women about their written assignments which are partly designed to help the women assess their past and think about how to reorient their lives in future. Many of the women such as Zhanna have become real frieds through this process. I often feel like I've grown up and lived on an entirely different planet from most of them and have to entrust them to God whose love and power to heal can alone bring hope to women with such problematical backgrounds. Please pray for these women and for all of us involve in the work at the prison, Fr Vasilii, Nadya, Irina, myself and other priests who've been helping with the teaching, Fr Andrei and Fr Vyacheslav.

Over the next few months one of my main tasks will be to train a choir at the prison to sing all the services in the new church. The Orthodox church services are the best way in my opinion to help people understand and memorise in song the truths of the Gospel so please pray for the women's lives to be transformed as they learn to sing.

Please letme know you have received this and whether the clip works. I hope it will make the women at the prison feel much closer to you.

With love in Christ, Alison

Alison’s Newsletter - February 2009

Dear Friends,

Greetings from a still very snowy Russia! I have a couple of feet of snow outside my windows but on some days the temperature rises to about zero and water drips from the roof so there's a hint of spring being not too far off. Last Sunday it was the feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple which according to Russian folk tradition is the day when winter meets spring which struggles to overcome the winter until on the feast of the Annunciation (April 7th), spring finally conquers.

 I'm sorry you haven't heard from me over the Christmas and New Year period. Each year in the middle of December I get engulfed by a deluge of Christmas play rehearsals, singing practices, then festive events and services which last until 19th January when we celebrate Epiphany. And after that I'm so exhausted that I don't recover until the end of January by which time I feel embarrassed to send a Christmas letter. This year this extremely special time has felt very fruitful however. Most importantly, through all the many events we are seeing the parish developing a strong sense of community as people have worked together to put on Christmas theatrical productions, sung together in the choir and round meal tables, cooked food together, worshipped together at services right through the night (at Christmas and Epiphany we start at 10pm and finish at about 6am!) And many new people are being drawn into all this community life as I shall tell you about later.

On Christmas day itself, after getting to bed about 7am after the wonderfully festive All-Night service, I went back to the church in the middle of the day for our Parish Party at which both the Children's and Adult Sunday schools put on theatrical/musical productions. The children's play was about the Fourth Wise Man' who spent his life trying to get to Bethlehem to worship Christ, but met many needy people on the way and gave away all he had to help them. He finally reaches Jerusalem to hear that Christ has been condemned to the cross, but is met by an angel who comforts him telling him that he has met Christ in all the hungry he has fed and the needy he has helped. It was very moving, especially some of the very small children who said the most significant words. I spent the weeks before Christmas learning lots of lovely Christmas songs with the children and putting together the Angels' Dance' which has become one of our traditions. Lots of children who don't usually come to the Sunday school got involved and the audience was packed with parents, many of whom have little contact with the church. One Mum said to me afterwards that it was the first time she'd been to a Christmas Party (everyone has New Year parties here) and that it was the greatest fun she'd had in her life.

After the children's production, it was the adults' turn which was rather more nerve-wracking for me as after last year's 5-minute sketch, the adults put on a half-hour short play, a mixture of Russian folk-tale and pantomime, which I, the non-Russian (!), found myself directing. It ended up being a curious mix of serious, reflective moments and hilariously funny comedy which had people literally rolling in the aisles. It was the story of a fairy-tale king trying to find out how to make his people happy. The script was written, I think, at the height of the 1990's post-perestroika economic crisis, but somehow seemed very relevant as Russia has been struggling to cope with the new financial crisis. I thoroughly enjoyed trying to put the whole thing together and it was wonderful to see many members of the cast, some of whom are usually quiet, unnoticed parishioners, developing their singing and acting talents. It was a wonderful bonding process for us all in the adult Sunday school and there was lots of audience participation which everyone really threw themselves into with great Russian' spirit. We're now debating whether to put on Shakespeare or Chekhov next year, and Fr Vasilii is thinking about how to knock a few interior walls down in order to build a real stage and mini-theatre!

The Women's Prison

In between events in the parish and town we tried as much as possible to be present at the Women's Prison over the festive season, both attending their own festive productions and singing parts of the Christmas and Epiphany services with them. At Epiphany when the baptism of Christ is celebrated, we went for a Great Blessing of the Waters' at the prison which we held outside. We all froze somewhat, but everyone enjoyed having water sprinkled all over them. Unfortunately the financial crisis has meant that the main Moscow' sponsors of the prison church have no more money so, although the church building has been finished, there is no money to finish the inside. Please pray with us that we will be able to start some kind of regular services there even if the church is not quite finished.

The course I teach at the Women's Prison on the basics of the Christian faith has been going well on the whole. There are about 20 women who do the written assignments and thirty or so who come to the teaching sessions. After their written assignments we discuss the women's work with them individually and so we have been gradually getting to know many of the women on a more personal level. We are also still trying to develop a choir so that the women themselves will be able to sing the church services when the church opens. 

The Adult Sunday School Beginners' Group'

The above-mentioned Christmas play was put on by adults who have been involved in the Sunday school for several years now. Since last September I have also been running a Beginners' Group' for adults in the parish, the aim of which is to draw those who come occasionally more fully into the parish's liturgical and community life. The sessions take them gradually through the church's year as the main events of Christ's life are celebrated. We have also done a brief overview of the Bible and are just starting some sessions which will take us through Lent to Easter. Before Christmas about 15 were attending the sessions regularly and after the New Year there have been over 20. I've been trying to involve the members of the Senior Adult' group in leading the Beginners' Group so that they get experience of this kind of missionary work. And from the practical point of view, it's much easier for them, speaking their own language and being locals!

I've attached a few photos of some of the Senior Adult' Group when we went on a trip/pilgrimage to Ulyanovsk in November. One of the places we visited was the Simbirsk Chuvash School' which was the first school where Chuvash children could study in their native Chuvash language. The founder of the school, Ivan Yakovlev, is known as the Enlightener of the Chuvash' as he created the first alphabet for the Chuvash language and then, together with the teachers and pupils of the school, translated all of the New Testament into Chuvash, and large sections of the Old Testament, for which he was made an Honorary Member of the British and Foreign Bible Society. The man who inspired Yakovlev to do this was Nikolai Ilminsky whom I am trying to write my MA thesis about. The Yakovlevs lived at the school and in their dining room there was a portrait of Ilminsky on the wall. Two of the photos show the dining room today and a photo of the Yakovlevs sitting drinking tea, with Ilminsky on the wall behind them. I've also added some photos of teaching sessions at the prison and some of last year's Christmas and Epiphany. I didn't manage to take any this year as I was too busy!

Please let me know you have received this safely as sometimes I'm not sure whether my letters are getting through.

With much love and gratitude for your prayers, Alison Ruth

Some photographs

Click on any thumbnail picture to get an enlargement.