St. George Greek Orthodox Church - Bakersfield, CA : 2022-01-16 Bulletin

Click here to stream our services if you are not able to join us in person.

There are several inserts at the end of this bulletin, please scroll to the end when done reading and look at all the inserts.There is more info on those inserts thruout the bulletin.
If you don't YOU will miss out.
In Christ,
editor, Demetris <-- Click here to send your questions via email to editor@ourparish.us

General Announcements:

State of California has implemented

a 30 day mask mandate.

Masks are required in church,

regardless whether vaccinated or not.

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Sunday regular schedule will be, Orthros at 8:30am and Divine Liturgy at 9:30am.

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Father Jim and Father Christian will be performing house blessings by appointment only. Should you wish to schedule a house blessing, please contact the church secretary by email or phone to be added to the schedule. Since Father Jim and Father Christian come in town on the weekends, this will be the most convenient time for them to do so; however, weekday availability may arise dependent on their schedules.

Father Jim will be able to hold confessions by appointment only, on the weekends when he arrives in town for service. Should you wish to schedule a confession with Father Jim, please contact the church secretary by phone or email to set up a time and date.

If you may have any questions for Father Jim or Father Christian, please contact the church secretary by email or phone. All messages and requests will be forwarded their way.

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Congratulations to our new Parish Council members;
Nikoli Hackleman, Tom Drulias, Christopher Key, and Christopher McNaughton.

The oath of office for the 2022 board members has been postponned by the Metropolis.
We'll keep you posted when a new date has been set.

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Youth Group Announcements

Part 3: The Relationship Project is starting. Here are the dates:

Session 1: An Introduction to Mental Health - January 29th

Session 2: Friendship and Loneliness- February 12th

Session 3: Stress and Anxiety- February 26th

Session 4: Sadness and Depression- March 5th

Meetings will be at the Cisneros Residence from 10:00-12:00.

Please review the dates and times and RSVP to Joyce as soon as possible. I need full commitment to these 4 sessions because the lessons do build upon each other.

*Donations to St. George Youth Group are always welcome!

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Get excited, Summer Camp is Back!!

More info in flyer at the end of this bulletin.

Register here

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Sign up to host a Sunday lunch! See sign up list in the hall bulletin board.

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Stewardship

Read November 2021 Stewardship News on our site (click here)

If you have not yet fulfilled your stewardship commitment you can easily give online using your credit card. There are two ways to donate; using your PayPal Account or your Debit/Credit Card:

Using a PayPal account:

Note: If you don’t have a PayPal account you’ll need to open one.

How to open a PayPal account

1.   Click here to create a PayPal account, then come back here when done.
2. Once you create your PayPal account, come back to this page and click on the "Make donation via PayPal" link below.
3. Enter your donation amount.
4.   Log into your PayPal account
5.   Confirm your donation amount
6.   Enter the donation purpose (click on “Please indicate purpose (i.e. Pledge)”)
7.   Click on “Donate $xxUSD Now”

Using a credit card:

1.   Click on the "Make donation via PayPal" link below.
2.   Enter your donation amount.
3.   Complete your credit card information.
4.   Click “Review Donation and Continue”
5.   Enter the ddonation purpose (click on “Please indicate purpose (i.e. Pledge)”)
6.   Click on “Donate $xxUSD now”

For both methods you’ll receive an email confirmation after you donate.

See links below.

Make donation via PayPal <-- Use paypal; (CC or PayPal) to make a donation.

Click here, to download the 2021 Commitment Card.

Please fill it out and return to the church office or mail it, address at bottom of buletin.

Or you may fill it out the form online and sumbit it online. ---> ONLINE FORM

You may also download here the flyer to read all about stewardship according to the Bible.

Stewardship@ourparish.us

Do you shop at Amazon?

Help your parish...

If you DO, you can help your parish by assigning St. George as your charity and Amazon will donate to St. George with each purchase you make at NO cost to you!

Here's how....

Support St. George by using the Amazon Smile program when shopping on Amazon.
You still get the same Amazon selection, and the same Amazon prices.
Amazon will donate 0.5% of your purchase price to our parish at ZERO COST TO YOU.

Thank you for your support of our parish!
God Bless you and keep you!

Here's how to shop AmazonSmile:

1. Visit smile.amazon.com

2. Sign in with your Amazon.com credentials

3. Choose a charitable organization to receive donations, or search for the charity of your choice
(if you wish to donate to our parish, search "st george bakersfield" exactly like that without the quotes).

4. Select your charity

4. Start shopping!

5. Add a bookmark for smile.amazon.com to make it even easier to return and start your shopping at AmazonSmile.
You MUST shop at smile.amazon.com not the amazon.com, same site, but does not give to St. George, the smile.amazon.com has been setup specificaly for donating to your charity, same site, same selection, same prices.

Sunday School

Sunday School classes are going.
For more info or to register contact Stavro at pa@ourparish.us

Orthodox Catechism/Faith Classes

We have our Catechism/Faith Class every Wednesday evening at 7:30 pm via Zoom. This is led by your Priest, and assisted by Stavros Emery. We spend an hour presenting and discussing different aspects of our beautiful Orthodox Faith, as well as her history and practice. Here you will have the opportunity to meet some of our other inquirers as well.

The Zoom link is below.
My cell phone is (661) 496-5768 should you have any issues with the connection.

Zoom link Wednesdays 7:30 pm

GOYA/Youth group

Youth Program: The Relationship Project for Grades 7-12 AGES 12 - 18. Thank you all who participated in the summer session. Part 3 will resume in the fall/winter. Please contact Joyce Cisneros for more information and make sure she has your contact information as well for possible Youth outings and get-togethers.

TUESDAY BIBLE STUDY

Bible study is back!
Tuesdays at 7:15 PM
Click here to Join Zoom Meeting

"DAILY" BIBLE READING

Monday-Wednesday-Thrursday-Friday at 7pm
Saturday at 4pm

Use the same link as the Bible Study

Parish Council

Next Parish Council meeting is 1/27/22 at 7:00pm at the back office.

Social Media & website

Follow and join us on Facebook

St George Greek Orthodox Church of Bakersfield

St George Christian Outreach Facebook Page

St George Greek Orthodox Church of Bakersfield YouTube channel

Legacy

Leave your mark!
Consider naming St. George Church as a beneficiary on your life insurance policy. It's a great legacy gift to your parish and very easy to do...just ask your provider for the change beneficiary form and complete and return to them. The legal name for the church is Hellenic Community St. George Church Tax ID #95-3575365 God bless you.

Endowment

Click here to read how you can leave a lasting legacy to your parish.
Church Beautification and Capital Improvements. Click here for the 2021 update.

Text Notifications

If you would like to be part of our system, please provide your phone number to the church secreatary at Secretary@ourparish.us.

This service will only be used to notify parishioners of any changes to service times or to provide information on events or occurences that affect the entire parish. We see this as being used infrequently but feel that we need to an effective way to communicate important information quickly.

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Secretary hours: (subject to change w/o notice)
Tues - Thurs 9-2
Please call the office for updated hours.

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Prayers for Thanksgiving-Healing and Help:

Please add to your daily prayers

Condolences to the Southerd family for the passing of Kyriakos Katsikaros (Eleni Southerd's father), may his memory be eternal!
Condolences to the Strategos family for the passing of Candess Strattegos, may her memory be eternal!

Orthodox: Ernie, Bert, George, Abram, Vickie, Elaina, Maher, Nabel, Magdy, Daniel, Natalia and family, Nickolas, Irene, Pamela, Virginia, Paraskevi, Michael, Dimitris Mary, Margarita, Jennifer, Nikolas, Pamela
Non-Orthodox: Judith, Nayeli and David, Peggy

For the rest of the soul of our departed:

Orthodox: Nicolas, Louise, George, George, Sooad, George, Leonid, Nikos, Vivian, John, Mary, Louise, Nektarios, Nicholas, Elephtheria, Kyriakos, Candess.

From our Pastoral Assistant Stavros

Excerpt from the book "Blessed John the Wonderworker - A Preliminary Account of the Life and Miracles of Archbishop John Maximovitch" by Fr. Seraphim Rose and Abbot Herman. . .

"One of the most striking things in the life of the Orthodox Church in recent years has been the extraordinary response of Orthodox believers in many Local Churches and jurisdictions to the remarkable life of the reposed hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Archbishop John Maximovitch (1896-1966), who served the Church as bishop first of Shanghai in the Far East, then of Western Europe, and finally of Western America and San Francisco. This righteous man, who even in our cold and faint-hearted century, was like onto the great Orthodox hierarchs of old, has inspired such love and veneration among Orthodox Christians, many of whom never knew him when he was alive, that with his death in 1966 one many say that a whole new chapter in his "life" has opened: precisely that of his veneration by the Orthodox faithful." ..

.. In 1934 it was decided to raise Hieromonk John to the rank of bishop. As for Vladika himself, nothing was farther from his mind. A lady who knew him relates how she met him at this time on a streetcar in Belgrade. He told her that he was in town by mistake, having been sent for in place of some other Hieromonk John who was to be consecrated bishop! When she saw him the next day he informed her that the situation was worse than he had thought: it was him they wished to make bishop! When he had protested that this was out of the question, since he had a speech defect and could not enunciate clearly, he had only been told that the Prophet Moses had had the same difficulty.

The consecration occurred on May 28, 1934. Vladika was the last bishop of the very many to be consecrated by Metropolitan Anthony, and the extraordinarily high esteem in which that venerable hierarch held the new bishop is indicated in a letter which he sent to Archbishop Dimitry in the Far East. Himself declining an invitation to retire to China, he wrote: "..But in place of myself, as my soul, as my heart, I am sending to you Vladika Bishop John. This little, frail man, looking almost like a child, is in actuality a miracle of ascetic firmness and strictness in our time of total spiritual enfeeblement". Vladika was assigned to the diocese of Shanghai.

Vladika arrived in Shanghai in late November, on the Feast of the Entrance of the Mother of God into the Temple, and found a large cathedral uncompleted and a jurisdictional conflict to resolve. The first thing he did was to restore Church unity. He established contact with Serbs, Greeks, Ukrainians. He paid special attention to religious education and made it a rule to be present at the oral examinations of the catechism classes in all the Orthodox schools in Shanghai. He at once became a protector of various charitable and philanthropic societies and actively participated in their work, especially after seeing the needy circumstances in which the majority of his flock, refugees from the Soviet Union, were placed. He never went visiting for tea to the rich, but he was to be seen wherever there was need, regardless of times and weather. He organized a home for orphans and the children of needy parents, entrusting it to the heavenly protection of a Saint he highly venerated, St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, who loved children. Vladika himself gathered sick and starving children off the streets and dark alleys of Shanghai's slums. Beginning with eight children, the orphanage later housed up to a hundred children at one time, and some 3,500 in all. When the Communists came, Vladika evacuated the whole orphanage, first to an island in the Philippines, and then to America.

It soon became apparent to his new flock that Vladika was a great ascetic. The core of his asceticism was prayer and fasting. He ate once a day at 11pm. During the first and last weeks of Great Lent he did not eat at all, and for the rest of this and the Christmas Lent he ate only bread from the altar. His nights he usually spent in prayer, and when he finally became exhausted he would put his head on the floor and steal a few hours of sleep near dawn. When the time would come to serve Matins, someone would knock on the door, to no avail; they would open the door and find Vladika huddled on the floor in the icon-corner, overcome by sleep. At a tap on the shoulder he would jump up, and in a few minutes he would be in church for services - cold water streaming down his beard, but quite awake.

Vladika officiated in the cathedral every morning and evening, even when sick. He celebrated the Divine Liturgy daily, as he was to do for the rest of his life, and if for some reason he could not serve, he would still receive Holy Communion. No matter where he was, he would not miss a service. ..

.. Vladika's constant attention to self-mortification had its root in the fear of God, which he possessed in the tradition of the ancient Church and of Holy Russia. The following incident, told by O. Skopichenko and confirmed by many from Shanghai, well illustrates his daring, unshakable faith in Christ. "A Mrs. Menshikova was bitten by a mad dog. The injections against rabies she either refused to take or took carelessly... And then she came down with this terrible disease. Bishop John found out about it and came to the dying woman. He gave her Holy Communion, but just then she began having foam at the mouth, and at the same time she spit out the Holy Gifts which she had just received. The Holy Sacrament cannot be thrown out. And Vladika picked up and put in his mouth the Holy Gifts just vomited by the sick woman. Those who were with him exclaimed: 'Vladika, what are you doing! Rabies is terribly contagious!' But Vladika peacefully answered: 'Nothing can happen; these are the Holy Gifts.' And indeed nothing did happen."

Vladika wore clothing of the cheapest Chinese fabric, and soft slippers or sandals, always without socks no matter what the weather. He often went barefoot, sometimes after having given his sandals away to some poor man. He even served barefoot, for which he was severely criticized.

By now it had become known that Vladika not only was a righteous man and an ascetic, but was also so close to God that he was endowed with the gift of clairvoyance and there were healings by his prayers. ..

..Vladika loved to visit the sick and did it every single day, hearing confessions and giving Holy Communion. If the condition of a patient should become critical, Vladika would go to him at any hour of the day or night to pray at his bedside. .. Vladika visited the prison also, and celebrated the Divine Liturgy for the convicts on a primitive little table. .. During the Japanese occupation it was extremely dangerous to walk on the streets at night, and most people took care to be home by dark. Vladika, however, paying no heed to the danger, continued to visit the sick and needy at any hour of the night, and he was never touched.

At the end of the war persuasion and pressure were brought to bear on Russian clergy everywhere to submit to the newly-elected "Patriarch" of the Soviet Church. Of the six hierarchs in the Far East, five submitted; only Bishop John, resisting all persuasions and threats, remained loyal to the Russian Church Abroad. In 1946 he was raised to the rank of Archbishop over all the Russian faithful in China.

With the coming of the Communists, the Russians in China were forced once again to flee, most of them through the Philippine Islands. In 1949 approximately 5,000 Refugees from the Chinese mainland were living in an International refugee Organization camp on the island of Tubabao in the Philippines. This island is located in the path of the seasonal typhoons which sweep through that part of the Pacific. During the 27-month period of the camp's occupancy, the island was threatened only once by a typhoon, and it changed course and bypassed the island.

When the fear of typhoons was mentioned by one Russian to the Filipinos, they replied that there was no reason to worry, because "your holy man blesses your camp from four directions every night." They referred to Vladika John; for no typhoon struck the island while he was there. After the camp had been almost totally evacuated and the people settled elsewhere (mainly in the U.S.A. and Australia), and only about 200 persons were left on the island, it was struck by a typhoon that totally destroyed the camp.

Vladika himself went to Washington, D.C., to get his people to America. Legislation was changed and almost the whole camp came to the New World - thanks again to Vladika.

The exodus of his flock from China accomplished, Archbishop John was given in 1951 a new field for his pastoral endeavor: he was sent by the Synod of Bishops to the Archdiocese of Western Europe, with his see first in Paris, and later in Brussels. He was now one of the leading hierarchs of the Russian Church, and his attendance was frequently required at the sessions of the Synod in New York City."

PROSPHORO OFFERING

Elaine: 1/2, 2/6, 3/13, 4/17, 5/22, 6/26, 7/31, 9/4, 10/9, 11/13, 12/18

Joyce: 1/9, 2/13, 3/20, 4/24, 5/29, 7/3, 8/7, 9/11, 10/16, 11/20, 12/25

Mary: 1/16, 2/20, 3/27, 5/1, 6/5, 7/10, 8/14, 9/18, 10/23, 11/27

Basema: 1/23, 2/27, 4/3, 5/8, 6/12, 7/17, 8/21, 9/25, 10/30, 12/4

Olympia: 1/30, 3/6, 4/10, 5/15, 6/19, 7/24, 8/28, 10/2, 11/6, 12/11

Thank you!

Father Jim would like the Prosphoro brought to the church Sunday morning between 7:30 AM
and no later than 8:30 AM.
We are looking for more people to make the blessed bread.
Please approach Father if interested.
If you want to learn more about how to make Prosphora, you can visit our Prosphoro site
Thank you.

JANUARY

ANNIVERSARIES

1/9 Tom & Elaine Dorlis

BIRTHDAYS

1/2 Melena Cain
1/3 Hesham Ayoub
1/3 Athina Kinsley
1/6 Cathleen Budy
1/9 Chris McNaughton
1/11 Alexandra Valos
1/14 Angela Becerra
1/16 Fentanesh Birehanu
1/16 Pamela Yanney
1/18 Achilles Canellis
1/21 Matt Jennings
1/24 Chuy Cisneros
1/24 Sofia Asmerom
1/25 Joseph Chaffee

If your Anniversary or Birthday is not listed and would like to be added or if it's incorrect, please contact Presbytera directly or send her an email at secretary@ourparish.us

PLEASE NOTE: All bulletin announcements must be received each week by 6:00 pm Wednesday to be included in the Sunday bulletin for that week.

A note from the publisher:

PLEASE READ CONTENT AFTER THE CALENDAR, THERE IS MORE, there are inserts of interest!

If you have ANY kind of a challenge reading this bulletin or ANY part of it, like unable to or know how to open various inserts at the end of the bulletin, PLEASE contact me at editor@ourparish.us
I'll be happy to help you! And any suggestions for improvement are welcome!

Please send email with your request or suggestion to editor@ourparish.us

General Information

Contact Information

Services Schedule

Past Bulletins

St. George News and Events

Gospel and Epistle Readings

Epistle Reading

Gospel Reading

Hymns of the Day

Resurrectional Apolytikion in the Plagal First Tone

Apolytikion for Veneration of the Chains of Ap. Peter in the Second Tone

Seasonal Kontakion in the First Tone

Calendar

St. George Greek Orthodox Church Calendar

January 16 to January 30, 2022

Inserts

Summer Camp is Back