Holy Prince Lazar Camp is in Need of Help!

This year for the fourth time, our monastery will be sponsoring the Holy Prince Lazar Summer Camp during the first ten days of August at the entrance into the Lazar Canyon. During these warm days and the summer vacations, those who attended St. Lazar camp are growing more and more impatient as that precious time of socializing and growing in an Orthodox and patriotic spirit comes ever closer. Telephone conversations and correspondence over social networks that the Lazarites maintained over the past year have now come to boiling point as the day approaches when all will stand again under St. Sava’s banner and harmoniously sing the anthem “O God of Justice.”  Of course, every year new members join so that the St. Lazar community is growing more and more.

The excitement at our monastery about our upcoming camp session is no less than that of the children. It is a great joy for us that with this project we can offer our youth such a thing, while on the other hand it is a big responsibility and sacrifice because the organization, acquiring food, clothing, camping/alpine equipment, etc has to begin three or four months in advance.  With this, one has to take into account our monastery’s remote location and the subsequent difficulty in acquiring everything necessary: the two-and-a-half hour drive to civilization is not at all easy. 

 As the St. Lazar community grows, so do its needs, ie, everything required in order to provide the children with a high-quality, safe stay in the nature.  Everything from the biggest items to the smallest details has to be brought to this wilderness which leaves no one untouched.  The children have to have three meals a day plus two snacks, enough blankets, sleeping mats…. The tents that they sleep in must be in good condition and completely waterproof. They need mountain-appropriate shoes and camp uniforms… and numerous other things that are essential for the camp’s existence.  The monastery has a lot of these things, since, with your and God’s help, we have succeeded in organizing the camp for the past three summers.  Nonetheless, because we expect more campers than ever, we have to ask again this year for your help.  For our friends abroad it is easiest to do this through our St. Catherine Charity fund at gofundme.com:   

St. Catherine Charity

Trusting in God’s help and the patronage of the Holy Prince Martyr Lazar, we hope and pray that this year’s St. Lazar Camp session will bear good fruits in the hearts of our little Lazarites, in which we wish to nurture Christian virtues, among which are the manliness and heroism of our forefathers, the holy Serbs who gave their lives, scorning an earthly kingdom and yearning for the Heavenly.  May the Lord account your “two mites” that you donate to the monastery as a sacrifice and the disdain of an earthly kingdom and yearning for the Heavenly, of which may the Lord deem us all worthy!