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| A dream becomes reality – a faucet with cold spring water, and that with strong pressure, in the midst of the monastery |
Who is so great a god as our God?
Thou
art the God who doeth wonders!
(Ps 76:14-15)
This will be the eighth year of the New
Stjenik sisterhood’s existence in the mountains in difficult conditions without
running water. As we all know, for all
of these years the sisters brought, that is, carried, their drinking water
mostly by foot from a spring 300 m steeply downhill from the convent. Water for other purposes was also supplied
with difficulty. In the summertime water
was at times brought in barrels in the tractor or jeep, or rainwater was
gathered. In the wintertime snow was
melted. The sisters’ labor and patient
long-suffering with water which lasted all these eight long years has ended at
last, by the mercy of God. The most
God-loving goodness of a friend of our monastery, brother Alexander Zeremski
who completely covered all the expenses of this project, and the self-sacrifice
of various people who are also friends of the monastery brought to life
something which we could not even dream of:
running water at the monastery!
The project, whose final cost exceeded
10,000 euros, with excellent, expert earth- and water-works has been brought to
an end. The system is composed of two cisterns, one of which (capacity 10,000
l) is located underneath the spring below and another (capacity 7,000 l) above
the monastery. A powerful pump set up at
the lower cistern, run by a three-phase generator, pushes the water at 60 l per
minute to the upper cistern which provides the monastery with water by
free-fall. The main contractors for the undertaking were Duta from Svilajnac
and Žinesa Group, also from Svilajnac, with the support of machines from ULT
LLC from Despotovac. There were also
individuals who in various ways helped the realization of this project by
lowering prices or giving donations. For
example, all of the sand was a donation of Mr. Sindjelic from Svilajnac. One cistern (the larger) was a donation from
our friends Steve and Anna from Pirot.
For the second cistern the monastery was given a large discount, and the
diesel tri-phase generator was sold at a significantly lowered price. Everyone who took part in the realization of
this project offered some kind of help; without these good people, the price of
the project would have been much greater.
The sisterhood of the monastery with
Abbess Efrosinia at their head would like to express their deep gratitude to
all who in any way helped ease our difficult monastic life without water by
their involvement in this project, so vital for all of us.
We sisters still cannot come to our
senses from joy, for there is running water everywhere, even to the cows’
stalls. The monastery is preparing
grammaticae of thanks which will be ceremonially presented to all the donors
and benefactors of the water project at the celebration which will soon be organized at the monastery for this purpose. As for those who will not be able to be
present on this occasion, their grammaticae will either be presented later or
sent by mail.
We invoke the blessing of God and St.
John the Forerunner on the main donor of the project, brother Alexander, along with
all of the benefactors by whose goodness and sacrifice New Stjenik Monastery as
been given running water. May the Lord
bestow upon them every heavenly and earthly good thing!
August 2013: this sultry summer month in
which the monastery was given water will surely be marked as an important date
and given an important place in the monastery’s chronicle of a historical event
to be remembered in future generations.
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