When an Arctic cold struck Colorado for a few days, a much nicer and warmer weather moved in just in time for the Holy Epiphany and the feast day of St. John the Forerunner. The community in Lakewood Colorado is dedicated to St. John the Baptist and was preparing for 24^th celebration of its protector. Not just that the parish itself celebrates St. John, but also a great number of faithful celebrate St. John as their family saint (aka) Slava. It was a joyful weekend filled with prayers and Slava preparation.

The Colorado community was blessed to welcome its spiritual leader His Grace Bishop Maxim, who arrived to Colorado on Saturday evening. The Sunday celebration begun with welcoming His Grace in front of the church and the Hierarchical Divine Liturgy followed.  Our small church was packed with faithful adults and children of whom many received Holy Communion. After Gospel reading, His Grace reiterated the importance of the Great feast day of the Holy Epiphany and the role that St. John played in it.

Our parish Slava celebration continued in the church hall with prayer, a wheat blessing, and bread breaking followed by a festal luncheon. His Grace was greeted by this year’s Slava hosts Srecko and Mirjana Jaksic. Fr. Radovan Petrovic offered words of gratefulness to His Grace for visiting Colorado, as well to the Jaksic family for their love, effort and sacrifice.

His Grace spent the afternoon filled with friendly conversations with faithful parishioners. Later, he presented the idea of restarting an initiative by the name of, “Circle of 100 Benefactors/Fellowship of St. Sebastion of Jackson and San Francisco”. Program aim is to find 100 supporters within the Western American Diocese whose contributions of $1,000 per year for a total of 3 years would help raise funds to support important outreach and special programs and expenses within the Diocese. Fr. Radovan promised to put an effort in order to help kickstart this initiative with finding 5 individuals to support this program. Very quickly 5 individuals responded positively to the invite and committed themselves to helping the initiative. The five devoted individuals are: Boris Jugovic, Ranko Mocevic, Cvijan Kanjeric, Branko Mocevic and Dragan Cicvaric. Furthermore, our parish in Lakewood, Colorado decided to help this initiative as well. The amount of contribution is currently pending the Parish Councils approval.