THE ANNUNCIATION GREEK ORTHODOX CHURCHTHE FIRST GREEK ORTHODOX CHURCH IN CONNECTICUT

The Good News

FR. EVAN EVANGELIDIS, PASTOR 1230 NEWFIELD AVE, STAMFORD, CT 06905 + TELEPHONE: 203-322-2093 + FAX: 203-968-6632

EMAIL: SECRETARY@ANNUNCIATIONOFSTAMFORD.ORG + WEB PAGE:ANNUNCIATIONOFSTAMFORD.ORG

OCTOBER 2014

WORSHIP SERVICESIN OCTOBER

Oct. 5 th 2 nd Sunday of Luke9:00 am Orthros & 10:00 am Divine Liturgy Oct.12 th Sunday of the Holy Fathers 9:00 am Orthros &10:00 am Divine LiturgyOct. 19 th 3 rd Sunday of Luke 9:00am Orthros10:00am Divine LiturgyOct. 23 rd St. Iakovos (James), Apostle9:00am Orthros9:30am Divine LiturgyOct. 26 th 6 th Sunday of Luke 9:00 am Orthros &10:00 am Divine Liturgy Oct. 28 th Holy Protection of the Virgin9:00 am Orthros &9:30 am Divine Liturgy

Fr. Evan’s Corner Our monthly “Good News” newsletter is back in circulation. Its purpose is to increase communication and co-operation between the church, our organizations and you, our members. Hopefully this will give everyone an opportunity to get more involved in the spiritual and cultural life of our church. I encourage you to take part in the sacramental and life of the Church so that you may "become partakers of the divine nature" and save your souls (2 Peter 1:4). As you read this, it is my sincere hope and prayer that the Holy Spirit moves you to become more actively involved in the life of our church community so that you join us in its sacred mission of passing our Orthodox Christian faith and Hellenic Culture to the next generation of Greek Orthodox Christians in Stamford and beyond. God bless you! ---------------------------------------------------------------------

Philoptochos Our Philoptochos Society is ready for another productive year! We met for our September meeting and have a calendar full of exciting commitments and events. Join us in raising Breast Cancer Awareness on Sunday, October 12th by wearing something pink to church. Information about prevention and resources will be available during coffee hour. A raffle will also be held to benefit the Bennett Cancer Center in Stamford. We are hosting a “Pampered Chef” party after our next meeting on Monday, October 13th at 7:00 pm. All proceeds will benefit the St. Nicholas National Shrine. Please join us and support this important project by purchasing this company’s wonderful kitchen accessories. Orders can also be made online.

We’ll also go by bus to attend the ground breaking ceremony for St. Nicholas National Shrine on Saturday, October 18th. The program begins at 12pm so the bus will leave by 9:30am from our church. If you are interested in attending this historic event, please contact Christiana Ramoglou or Athena Valoulidis for reservations. Our annual Tag Sale will take place on Saturday, November 15th. Please consider donating your gently used items. All proceeds benefit the many local and global charitable commitments that our Chapter makes every year. For more details, contact Tina Scarpelli at ss013@aol.com. --------------------------------------------------

Greek School Committee We thank our outgoing Interim Greek School Director, Mr. George Argyratos. George will be devoting more time to his opera career. We also thank Ms. Katerina Dillulio for her year of teaching and sad to see her go. We wish both of them well, much success and thank them for their years of service to our community. We welcome back Ms. Penelope Venetsanos as our Greek School Director and her wonderful teaching team; Ioanna Kreatsoulas, Despina Kreatsoulas, and Agapi Theodorithou. We wish them a fruitful and productive year. As part of the school committee’s desire to make our class rooms more interactive, it approved a proposal by the PTA to purchase two televisions and two laptops as teaching and learning tools. The 2014-15 School Committee includes: Vicky Christakos, President; Stacey Karipides, Vice President; Vivi Radis, Secretary. Other members include Christina Ramoglou, Georgia Poulos and Kirsten Ziotas, and the parish council representative is Nik Matthews. We congratulate our new School Committee and wish much success during the year. --------------------------------------------------------------------

PTA Our PTA is off to a wonderful start. It sponsored a fabulous Greek School Open House reception on Friday, October 3rd that was attended by many Greek School paents. PTA is also bringing back our traditional children’s Halloween Party on Friday, October 24th right after Greek School, so please save the date! At its general meeting on Sept. 26th our PTA elected a board for 2014-15: Helen Vlahakis & Nia Thomas, Co-Presidents; Gina Christakos, Secretary; Irene Tournas, Treasurer; & Vicky Sakellson, Asst. Treasurer. Congratulations to our new PTA Board and much success! ----------------------------------------------------------------

-----Greek School

Our Greek School is off to a great start. The school year began with Fr. Evan performing an Agiasmo Service for a healthy and successful school year.

We also welcome our dance teacher, Despina Kreatsoulas to our language team. She is teaching our 3rd grade this year. The teacher/class schedule is as follows: Ioanna Kreatsoulas 2nd and 7th grades, Despina Kreatsoulas dance & 3rd grade, Agapi Theodoridou Pre-K/Kindergarten, 4th and 6th grades and Penelope Venetsanos 1st and 8th grades. Our curriculum allows students to learn not only Greek language and culture but also traditional dances and songs as well. Our children are busy getting ready for the “OXI Day” celebration and pageant that will take place on Sunday, October 26th after church. Our Open House on Friday, October 3rd

was a great success. We wish to thank our PTA for sponsoring this event. A special thanks goes out to Famous Pizza of Norwalk for donating the delicious pizza. We thank our parents for choosing our Greek School. We still have room for more students. Please contact Penelope Venetsanos at kladielias@yahoo.com for registration info. ----------------------------------------

----------Sunday School

Our Sunday School has over 30 children registered! Fr. Evan teaches our children about the significance of the Divine Liturgy and Gospel in their daily lives. Sunday school plants the timeless truths of our Orthodox Christian Faith in our kids hearts and gives them the tools to make good moral choices. According to behavioral studies, children that attend Sunday School fare better behaviorally, emotionally and cognitively than those who don’t attend regularly. Any parent interested in registering their child for Sunday School, please contact Penelope Venetsanos or Vicky Sakellson at ve4@columbia.edu. -------------------------------------------------

GOYA Our new GOYA Director is Mr. George Zoumboulis who has a wonderful year of fun and fellowship planned. Our first GOYA meeting is on Sunday, October 19 th

right after church. All GOYA aged teens 12yrs to 18yrs old are welcome to attend. GOYA is a great opportunity for your teen to share in fun, fellowship & community service with other Greek Orthodox teens. For further info please contact George Zoumboulis at gsyk0002@yahoo.com. -------------------------------------------------

HOPE Our church is starting a separate HOPE children’s ministry program that we are excited about. HOPE is for children from Pre-K/K to the 2nd

grade and teaches them about their Orthodox Christian faith through games, arts & crafts, book readings, role play, multimedia and discussions with Fr. Evan. Please register your youngsters for HOPE because it

gives them an opportunity to learn about their faith and to socially interact with other Orthodox children their age. HOPE/JOY will be meeting together for the last time on Friday, October 17th Beginning in November, HOPE will meet separately and have its first meeting on Friday, November 14th at 6pm. Our new HOPE director is Ms. Yianna Bakes-Dimitroglou. Please contact her for further info at yiannab@aol.com. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

JOY Due to the great number of children in our community, HOPE & JOY will meet on different days beginning in November. HOPE is for children from PreK/K to the 2nd grade while JOY is for kids from the 3rd through 6th grades. Each ministry teaches them about their Orthodox Christian faith outside of church services in a social environment. Kids play games together, are creative with arts and crafts, discuss and share ideas with Father Evan, learn prayers and hymns and share a meal together. JOY kicked off another year! We will discuss the “Seven Heavenly Virtues” this year. Our first gathering took place on Friday, September 26th from 6 pm-8:00 pm. We discussed the meaning and importance of each virtue: diligence, humility, generosity, abstinence, kindness, patience and chastity. We will learn about them through role playing, discussion groups, games, etc. We had a great turnout for our first meeting and thank John’s Pizza for donating an awesome dinner. This year we are asking families to host a gathering. The lessons are already prepared and will be given to you in advance. The host family will also provide supplies for crafts, food and dessert. Please consider getting your family involved in a night of fun for everyone. Please contact Stacey Karipides at skaripides@optonline.net for more info. Our next HOPE/JOY meeting will be on Friday, October 17th, 6pm-8pm. See our church website for greater info on upcoming meetings. ----------------------------------------------------------------

----YAL We thank YAL for their generous donation towards the purchase of banquet tables. There will be a district wide YAL conference at St. Barbara’s Church, October 10th-12th. The theme of the conference is Discipline & Distraction. Gain a better understanding of how to maintain a spiritual focus in your

everyday life while sharing in fun and fellowship with other Greek Orthodox Young Adults from the NY/CT metro area. There’s still time to register so please go to http://yalcon14.eventbrite.com for further info. Walk in registration is still welcome. ---------------------------------------------------------------------

Mommy & Me Our church is staring a "Mommy & Me" Music and movement program that we are very excited about. We will be hiring Music professionals and the class will be educational and fun as well as a great opportunity to socialize our little ones! We plan to have a weekly music class that meets one morning during the week and one that meets on one Saturday morning each month for all the working mommies to attend as well. We will bundle the classes into "semesters" and will have a schedule of class dates printed soon. We are also putting a Facebook group page up soon for more information! Our Mommy & Me program is open to mothers/caregivers, yiayia/ papou and to the general public. It will bring together three generations for fun and fellowship. This program is geared for babies 3 months up to 3 years old, so help us spread the word. For further information, please contact Kiki Tournas at 910-233-2168 or kikikabouris@gmail.com. --------------------------------------------------------------

Stewardship Committee Our annual Stewardship drive is progessing nicely this year. We have over 137 committed Stewards and approximately $66,000 in collected pledges. This puts us close to the 75% mark of our budgeted and forecasted annual stewardship goal of $90,000. We have about 180 Stewards in our community so if you haven’t made your stewardship pledge for 2014, please do so now. If you’ve already pledged, we sincerely thank you and ask you to please consider increasing your pledge over last year to offset the increased costs of fuel, utilities and vendors. Stewardship statements are going out soon so keep an eye out for them. The Church needs your time, talent AND treasure to survive. If you don’t support our Church to promote our Orthodox Christian faith & our Hellenic Culture, WHO will?--------------------------------------------------------------

Marriage Seminar Our church hosted the Direct Archdiocesan Marriage Seminar on Saturday, Sept 20th. It was attended by 15 couples from all over the NY/CT metropolitan area. The seminar’s purpose is to help young couples prepare for marriage by allowing them to explore their relationship and to better understand marriage as a Sacrament. Seminars are for engaged couples and newlyweds and are a necessary part of wedding preparations for couples that want their marriage blessed in the Greek Orthodox Church. We thank Dunkin Donuts of Stamford for donating a delicious breakfast and

Rebecca Boutsikoudis, Maria Marangos & Olga Benekos for the lovely autumn decorations and event set up. A Special thanks goes out to Ron’s Deli for donating a delicioius Lunch that all enjoyed.

Clergy Meeting Our church hosted the monthly clergy meeting of all Greek Orthodox clergy from CT & Westchester. 15 priests attended to discuss and plan upcoming religious, cultural and sporting events in our district. We thank Donut Delight for donating a wonderful breakfast Stacey Karipides for the lovely autumn decorations and setting up for the event. A special thanks goes out to Tripp’s Restuaruant for hosting us and donating a delicious lunch. --------------------------------------------------------

Maintenance Committee Our maintenance committee has been very busy. It updated the lights in the altar area, replaced all the lights in our fellowship hall and installed a new audio system. It painted the downstairs hall area and conducted a beautification project to our fellowship hall enterence area. It also completed staining the oak paneling and renovated the stage area behind the curtain to allow for more seating at church functions. Additionally, it repaired our fellowship hall’s front doors and brought them up to code. It also cleaned, stripped and polished all the floors in our church & facility. In the near future, maintenance will continue to beautify our church grounds and with your kind support replace the double sided doors that connect the church narthex to the hallway, repair and repoint flagstones on church patio & steps, renovate our upstairs bathrooms and provide bookcases for our classrooms. The Maintenance committee wishes to thank our communications guru, Paul Poulos, for supervising Cablevision’s update of our church’s communications infrastructure. Maintenance especially thanks an anonymous donor for generously replacing all the broken tiles on our church roof and making sure our dome windows are still watertight. Our maintenance committee is Vasilios Sotiropoulos, Larry Karipides and Stanely Sakellson. We thank them for all their hard work and dedication. Anyone wishing to donate towards these aforementioned projects, please contact Fr. Evan or any member of our maintenance committee.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

General Assembly Our Parish General Assemblywill take place on Sunday, November 16th right after church services. Food and child care will be available for your children so parents can attend the assembly. All steward members are invited to attend the assembly and get involved in the life of their church.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sports Program Our Co-ed Midget (7-10 years old) and Junior Division (11-13 years old) basketball teams need players. Practice is usually held on Wednesdays from 6pm to 8pm. If your child likes playing basketball, please call Coach Louie Recanatini at (203) 524-4473 for further information. No experience is necessary. Just a desire to have fun!