Water in thermal springs was blessed on the Epiphany Day in Chukotka

It is a problem to break a jordan, an ice-hole, in a lake or river in the Chukotka diocese on the Epiphany Day. Severe frosts came to that region as early as November to make water bodies covered with two meter-thick ice, some frozen through to the bottom. It is for a fifth year in row however that the Great Blessing of Water has been performed on the Epiphany Day at the Lorinsky Thermal Springs 30 kilometers away from the Lavrenty village.

‘There are many thermal springs in Chukotka’, Father Leonid Tspok, rector of St. Michael’s at Lavrenty, explains. But they all are far away and it is difficult to reach them by car in winter. We usually order an Ural car with a passenger cabin. In some years it takes up to two hours to cover the 30 kilometers because of snowdrifts.

A difficult road, frost, piercing wind do not intimidate parishioners. ‘A winter trip through tundra is always extreme’, Father Loenid says, ‘Especially if we have to take the Sunday school children. But it is a great blessing from God that we may bless water in these remote and cold places. It is a great comfort to be able to dive in the blessed water whose temperature is + 45C’.

An increasing number of people seek to get to the Lorinsky thermal Springs on the Epiphany Day every year. In these places remote from Orthodox centers, church traditions and still new and unusual for the locals, which makes their missionary importance ever greater.