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4 THE SHEPHERD • JUNE 2024 • SAINT SPYRIDON GREEK ORTHODOX CHURCH OF SAN DIEGO Χριστός Ανέστη! Christ is Risen! Our Youth Ministries hopes that your Pas- cha was filled with love, family, and friends! It was so wonderful to see so many families at the Pascha Picnic. We enjoyed the Agape Service, great food cooked with love by the Dance and Choral School, dancing, playing softball, and finished the day with a Pascha Egg hunt! As we enter summer, many people in our community will be traveling. We pray that all of your summer travels will be safe and full of wonderful memories! If you are not travel- ing, we hope to see you all at the Divine Lit- urgies and family activities that we will have over the summer. Vacation Church School is around the corner on July 15th – 19th, 9am – 12:00pm. New this year is aftercare options! Register on the St. Spyridon Youth Ministries website: https://sites.google.com/stspyridon. org/stspyridonyouthministries St. Nicholas Ranch Camp Bus Seats still avail- able! If your child or teen is attending the first week of St. Nicholas Ranch Camp, we have bus seats for them! Contact Bill Navrides, navridesfamily@gmail.com to secure a spot on the bus to and from St. Nicholas! Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook (St. Spyridon GOC San Diego) and Instagram: @youthstspyridon. To volunteer or get more information on any of the Youth Ministries at St. Spyridon, contact Julie Dennis, Youth Ministries Director: 619-940-5167 or email youthministries@stspyridon.org. GOYA (Greek Orthodox Youth Association) Did you know that we have a large number of youth bakers in our Parish? One of them even has a home baking business! In May, our GOYA had a Great GOYA Bake Off com- petition! They competed to bake cakes or cupcakes with at least one traditional Greek ingredient. At the end, they accepted the challenge to learn a new recipe from a family member over this summer. Since food and tradition are linked so closely in our Greek Orthodox culture, we hope that our youth will carry on these delicious baking and cooking traditions. HOPE &JOY (Holy Orthodox Primary Education &Junior Orthodox Youth): HOPE and JOY had their End of the Year Party at the end of May. We had pizza, games, and Karaoke! It was wonderful to celebrate all of the youth group activities that we have had in the 2023-2024 school year – making pillows for St. Innocent Orphanage, packing snack bags for the homeless, beach picnic and kites, Orthodox lessons, baking Vasilo- pita, BBQ and bounce houses, making gin- gerbread houses, movie night, game nights! Keep an eye out for our summer events list. Sunday School Youth in grades 6-12 participated in Holy Monday Retreat where they attended the Bridegroom Service, had dinner together, and had a discussion with Father Andrew about the Bridegroom Service and its signif- icance in their lives. The conversation was especially interesting about how we can pre- pare our hearts through Pascha and beyond. Youth in grades preschool through 5 partic- ipated in the Holy Friday Retreat, and Youth Leaders, grades 6-12, helped lead the retreat groups and stations. The theme was Seek and Find the Way to Pascha . Participants learned about each stage of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. The service project for the re- treat was planting herbs for the Church. Each participant planted herbs and hopefully one day our community will be able to use the herbs in all the cooking at our Parish! If you have a green thumb and would like to help our youth with this project over the summer, please email youthministries@stspyrion.org. Kids’ Corner for babies, toddlers, and fami- lies will be open all summer. Sunday School is on break for the summer and will resume in September. We had a wonderful promotion fellowship on May 19th! Thank you Sunday School Families and all of St. Spyridon for your support throughout this school year! Families, keep an eye on your emails and on our online calendar. We will be having some fun summer events as well as some Summer Sunday School Family Days. 2024 METROPOLIS ORATORICAL FESTIVAL On Saturday, April 6th, St. Spyridon hosted the Dis- trict level of the St. John ChrysostomOrator- ical Festival for the first time and two of our participants were selected to compete at the Metropolis level on May 11th in Belmont, California: Maria Paraskevopoulos and Sia Paraskevopoulos. Congratulations to Maria Paraskevopoulos who came in second place in the Junior division at the Metropolis level! In addition to the festival, the organizers planned a wonderful pilgrimage to visit the home and churches of St. John Maximovitch of San Francisco and Shanghai, also known as “St. John the Wonderworker.” The pil- grimage began at his home where we were able to sit in his chair (that he slept in for only 1 hour every night) and ended at the Holy Virgin Cathedral in San Francisco, the church he helped build where we could venerate his relics. If you visit, you can write him a letter and drop it into the slot be- neath his relics, where the priests will pray over the letter. Many miracles have been at- tributed to those who write to St. John, es- pecially for those who prayed for children, as St. John saved over 3,000 orphans from China by rescuing them from the streets of Shanghai and bringing them to San Fran- cisco. The Oratorical Festival is a wonderful ministry full of spiritual growth and learn- ing. We would love to see more of our youth become involved! If you would like to learn more, please visit https://www.goarch.org/-/ st-john-chrysostom-oratorical-festival. New Festival topics will be announced in Novem- ber 2024. YOUTH MINISTRIES