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His Grace Bishop Porfirije visited St Antony Monastery in Florence (AZ) and St Paisius Monastery in Safford (AZ)
August 27-28, 2007

VISIT OF HIS GRACE BISHOP PORFIRIJE 2007

У оквиру своје посете Западноамеричкој епархији, Епископ Јегарски Порфирије је у држави Аризона посетио два православна Манастира. У понедељак у подне је са Епископом Максимом посетио мушки Манастир Преподобног Антонија у пустињи Аризоне у Флоренсу, где су срели духовника Манастира Старца Јефрема и с њим разговарали. У пратњи двојице Епископа био је и свештеник Станислав Дурић из парохије Светога Николе из Финикса и студент Вук Милишић.
Поподне су стигли у женски Манастир Преподобног Пајсија где су за празник Успења Пресвете Богородице служили Бденије а сутрадан и празничну Свету Литургију. Епископ Порфирије је началствовао и беседио током богослужења.
Приликом ове посете, Епископ Максим је духовника манастира јеромонаха Доротеја одликовао звањем протосинђела.
Током ове посете сестринство Манастира је разговарало са епископима, а посебно је од епископа-госта добило корисне духовне савете за монашки живот.

St. Paisius Orthodox Monastery is a women’s coenobitic community which follows the traditional rule of monastic life. The monastery was founded in 1993 and is dedicated to St. Paisius Velichkovsky, who dedicated his life to collecting and translating the texts of the Philocalia as a means of preserving the teachings of the Holy Fathers on the hesychastic way of life.
The sisterhood is currently comprised of about twenty sisters. The Holy Liturgy is served daily in the monastery, and the daily cycle of services is conducted primarily in English.
To support themselves, the sisters publish spiritual texts, make prayer ropes, and offer to over 1000 guests who visit the monastery each year a fully stocked bookstore. They also labor in cultivating the earth and tending the monastery’s flock of purebred milk goats and other animals in order to be as self-sufficient as possible.
Since 1995, the sisterhood has welcomed teenage girls who wish to live and study at the monastery. The monastery home school is dedicated to the Protection of the Theotokos. The sisters tutor the girls in their studies and offer supplementary classes. Some of the students have chosen to remain as nuns in the monastery, while others have married and started their own families.
Situated in the High Sonoran Desert at the base of Mount Graham, the monastery is in the process of building to meet the growing needs of the monastic community and the faithful who visit. This includes plans to build a church, a trapeza (or dining hall) and kitchen, and then continue with a full monastery enclosure. An Orthodox cemetery was established in 2004 for the faithful.