Farmstead

In 1998, the Minsk Regional Executive Committee allocated a 120-hectare plot of land to the Sisterhood for use as a part-time farm in the village of Bald Mountain in Minsk Region, 30 km from the monastery. The monastery farmstead was created here where many individuals now find comfort and experience healing from difficult life situations. These including people crippled by sin, having lost their residences, formerly incarcerated and handicapped individuals, sufferers from alcohol and drug addictions. For many of them, this is the only possibility of returning to a normal dignified life. They live and work under the supervision of monastery sisters.

The number of residents at the farmstead fluctuates between 50 and 80. The monastery provides them with all that is needed for living (clothes, food, articles of personal hygiene, medication, etc.) The residents labor on the farm which has animals (large livestock, pigs, sheep, goats), in fields (potatoes, root crops, corn), on a garden (apple trees, pear trees, plum trees, cherry trees, red and black currant, raspberries), on a poultry farm (chickens, geese, quails), in an apiary, in a breeding kennel for Central Asian sheepdogs and on construction sites. In order to help these despairing people to correction, a 75-bed dormitory is being constructed with all modern amenities, a recreation room and library as well as a dining hall (kitchen and dining room for 100 persons) and a church dedicated to the icon of the Mother of God “Inexhaustible Cup”. In the summertime there is a children’s settlement at the farmstead, where boys and girls can not only actively rest in fresh air, but can make contact with spiritual and moral values of Orthodoxy and join in common labor.

Every week conversations with a priest takes place, the Liturgy is served on Saturdays and on Sundays the Sunday School is open for all who desire to learn the principles of Orthodoxy. Day and night the brethren continually read the Psalter.