Sharon & Greg Buzi forwarded this Thank you letter from Holy Cross Monastery
On behalf of Archimandrite Seraphim and all the brotherhood of Holy Cross Monastery, we want to extend our most heartfelt thanks to the many hundreds of people from across the country and even across the world who have stepped forward to help us through our recent crisis. We have been truly overwhelmed by the enormous outpouring of kindness, concern, love, and generosity that we have received from all of you. Although we live in an isolated and remote location, and although we have seen far fewer of you than usual during the past year due to the COVID-19 restrictions, this recent disaster has brought us the incomparable consolation of revealing once again the spiritual strength of the bond that unites us to one another in Christ. We are immensely grateful to God for each and every one of you, and cannot begin to express our gratitude and love in words.
While the situation remains ongoing, by God's grace and through your prayers and support we have put the worst of the difficulty behind us. As of last Thursday we now have consistent power to our buildings once again, and roads have finally been cleared to allow deliveries and mail service to resume.
Most of the damage to our buildings remains in need of repair, although the property has largely been cleared of the many fallen trees and tree limbs from the ice storm. We will now be turning our attention to making the necessary repairs as quickly as we can, which has been enabled by the extreme generosity so many of you have shown.
We are also planning to upgrade as many of our generators as possible to be able to run on both natural gas as well as a propane backup, so that in the event of future disasters we will be able to better withstand prolonged power outages and shortages of natural gas. In addition, we will be carefully assessing the trees surrounding our buildings in order to evaluate which ones need to be cut down in order to prevent similar damage to our buildings in the future. This is tricky due to our terrain, as removing too many trees will substantially weaken the integrity of the hillside and increase the already serious problems we have with landslides and hill movement.
All in all, thanks to your generosity we are now in a position to both effect the needed repairs as well as to do everything possible to ensure that future disasters will not affect us so severely. Again, we are incredibly grateful to God and to all of your for doing so much for us in our time of need. May He reward you a hundredfold in His Kingdom!
We are still waiting for the restoration of our phone and internet service, and unfortunately there has been no estimate provided to us for when this might be. As soon as it is restored, we will immediately resume live-streaming the divine services once again, which we know so many of you have missed. In addition, once this happens we will serve a special Moleben of thanksgiving and prayer for all the many friends and benefactors who have helped to get us through this difficult time.
Please know that all of you remain in our unworthy prayers. If there is ever anything we can do to repay you, do not hesitate to reach out and let us know.
May God grant us all a profitable Lent and a radiant and joyous Pascha!
