Tucked among hills, sinking into silence and memories of the past – this is what our vision of a Bulgarian monastery is. That is why, children’s clamour, paintings, balls and running small feet, which welcome us in the yard of the Kremikovski monastery “St George The Victor”, surprise us pleasantly.

“Actually, who has said that children’s activities contradict Christian values? What God teaches us is not to hinder children from coming to church,” Father Serafim Yanev, the monastery abbot, says.

Together with a team of adherents for yet another year, he has proved that the Orthodox camps for children are not only possible, but also very beneficial to the children from the region and they even look forward to joining them. The idea for these camps has emerged when Father Serafim visited the children in the school in Gorna Malinaл

“We saw that children were engaged there with very useful things. The education system there transforms children into ‘devices’, whose memory we upgrade. At the end of the day they learn things, which help them succeed in the life on Earth. Yet, in this world of material comfort, humans are not just living matter. The main thing is to be humane, to be a person of high values. That is not taught at school. That is why this idea has emerged. At the monastery, far from secular life, in a different atmosphere without computers, children can have a different vision of life. Children will look for answers about why we live, what being a human means and why we should have a proper attitude to each other. There is no place for aggression, envy, blame. Everybody should try to be a human. We endeavour to teach the children to become friends. And we succeed in achieving the aims in a very good way.”

The Orthodox camps for children have been organized in the Kremikovski monastery for a fourth time. The first camp took place at Hadjidimovo monastery, near Goltse Delchev, 20 years ago. At Kremikovski monastery the children spend seven days, during which they adopt the Christian values and gain knowledge about the Orthodox faith in conversations and interesting games.

We asked Father Serafim whether it is difficult for these initiatives to take place.

“Nowadays, there is a concept that the Church - that is the building, the bishops, the priests who serve there. But this is actually wrong. The Church – that is all of us, regardless of who we are – priests, bishops or believers. And when we unify as a real ‘living’ Church, as a community – then we can achieve many things. I am happy that where I serve, there is a community like that, because such a camp cannot be organized easily. That is not just an option for children to sleep in the monastery. We are talking about financial resources for the camp itself and for children’s food. Apart from this, we have teachers and, thank God, there are exceptional professionals, who are not just theologians, but also teachers, psychologists, speech-therapists. They help the children with their moral issues.”

During the next summer Father Serafim and the Branits bishop Grigoriy are going to look for support again, in order to gather the children close to the church, in one of the oldest monasteries in the Sofia Holy Mountain. And they will definitely succeed, because their cause is worth it. According to Father Yanev, what the church could do for the children is weaning children from being aggressive and to show the spiritual side of the world. The material comforts should not be our main aim, because in that way we would waste a whole life in looking for prosperity.

English version: Atina Dimitrova