St. Thomas Albanian Orthodox Church

After the funeral on Thursday our family drove up to Michigan. On Friday we looked at four houses after Ben got off work. On Saturday we put an offer on one of the houses. We're still waiting to hear whether the offer has been accepted or counter-offered or... It's so nerve-wracking! Also on Saturday we had an early birthday party for Evelyn with the Michigan family. On Sunday we visited St. Thomas for Liturgy. After visiting with the nice parishioners at coffee hour we drove back home to Ohio. We had just a little time before Ben had to head back to Michigan. Being apart has gotten old really fast.

This was our first time visiting an Albanian church but it was an OCA parish and it reminded me a lot of the OCA parish in Fort Wayne. The service was mostly in English but it was neat to hear a bit of Albanian too.

The walls of the church were painted with beautiful, life-size icons.

This icon of the Prophet Elijah was on the wall behind us. 

In the church hall they had some tradition Albanian folk items on display. We met a very nice man who had immigrated from Albania. It took him 14 years to get through the immigration lottery. The priest shared with us that the Albanian government has outlawed all religion for the past 20 years. Even so much as being seen with a red egg on Easter would be cause for imprisonment.

In the narthex they had two of these nice sets of shelving for all the feast day icons. I thought it was nice that they kept them out rather than pack them away for most of the year.