An Orthodox church boat sets off down the Ob River in a medical education mission

An unusual charity action began on August 15 in Novosobirsk as the St. Andrew the First-Called, an Orthodox church boat, set off from the city river-boat station down the Ob to remote villages along the river in the Novosibirsk Region for a charitable medical education mission.

The chairman of the mission organizing committee, Andrey Filichev, who is Novosibirsk regional deputy governor, said that in the course of a two-week journey its participants would visit 28 remote villages.

The action has been organized jointly by the Novosibirsk regional administration and the Novosibirsk diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church. Its principal aim is to give people in remote villages social, medical and practical aid, spiritual support and educational assistance. The church boat will make fast at 28 remote villages located down the Ob River.

Among the participants in the action are regional social workers, medical staff, clergy and cultural workers. At every station, locals will have an opportunity to visit special doctors, such as a surgeon, a therapist, a pediatrician, an ophthalmologist, a neurologist, an endocrinologist, and to undergo a functional diagnostics check-up, such as ultrasonic scanning and electrocardiogram. They will also have an opportunity to consult social pedagogues, psychologists, narcologists and gerontologists. Medicines will be distributed free of charge and spectacles will be sold at reasonable prices.

At every station, an Orthodox choir will give a recital of church music. All those who wish to do so will have an opportunity to be baptized, take communion and make confession, to talk to a priest, to have their homes blessed, to receive holy water from a thanksgiving, to buy religious books in a movable church bookstore. The social-medical program is carried out by the church boat as a charitable action.

From Regnum news agency/Sedmitsa.ru