Egeria Orthodox Home & Hospitality Exchange

Egeria is a member-based service website matching Orthodox Christians and their friends for home and hospitality exchange worldwide.

Simply become a member for one low flat fee, and you can get in touch with other members around the world who have a place for you to stay, a home for simultaneous exchange with yours, or an Orthodox B&B!

Egeria starts the conversation for you. You work out the details. Wherever you go - you have friends there!

The human being is a communal being. God is community - the perfect community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - and we, having been made in His image, are made to live in community.

Love, in all genuine expressions, needs another to be love. The church, as a body, as an ecclesia, is the restored communion of people, not just with God through His Son, Jesus Christ, but also with each other in Jesus Christ. The Church is community, restored and revealing the community of the Godhead. The Church is the sacrament of community.

For these reasons and many more, All Saints takes community life very seriously. The open Gospel in the icon of Christ on our iconostasis reads, "You did not choose me, but I chose you, that you might go and bear fruit "  We might think that we chose a community, for this or that reason, but in reality God has chosen us to live within and learn to love the community in which He has placed us.

We believe that community should first and foremost we be a worshipping body, and should, as importantly, be a studying one. But a really, really important ingredient of any Orthodox community life (one which is generally overlooked) must be simple fun. We laugh, and sing, play games and spend time together. Friendship, one of the four Greek loves (and the most important), is born from this fun, and matures in the worship and Paradosis also inherent in our communal life.

A Brief History of All Saints of Alaska

Originally established in 1983 by the V. Rev. Andrew Morbey, All Saints of Alaska Mission lay dormant until August 2002 when it was re-established, with the blessing of His Grace, Bishop SERAPHIM, Bishop of Ottawa and Canada, as an OCA English-language mission to Victoria and the surrounding region under the pastorship of Fr. Kaleeg John Hainsworth. Fr. Kaleeg graduated from St. Vladimir's Seminary in New York in May 2002.

The first service was a Divine Liturgy for the Feast of Dormition, August 15th, at St Barnabas Anglican church. The first vespers and Sunday liturgy were held at the Chapel of the Peace of God on August 17/18, where services were held until November 2003. The Chapel was offered for the Mission's use by kind gesture of the Anglican (Episcopal) diocese of Vancouver Island.

The mission moved to its current location in November of 2003, and is expected to remain there for some time. There is room to accommodate the growing membership, and we are putting down roots. Our iconostasis was raised before Nativity 2003 with the generous help of two sister parishes. We now offer a full range of services for the entire liturgical year, and have two deacons, several readers and servers to assist Father John. The choir is growing, and we have enough children that we have begun a church school. We have a bookstore, a library, an iconography workshop twice yearly, and much more.

What is most special is the community. The people here love, pray and enjoy each other. God has blessed us in so many ways.

Today by the grace of God, the parish continues to grow in numbers, from a cross-section of social, economic and cultural backgrounds.

All Saints of Alaska parish strives to be faithful to the Holy Traditions of the Orthodox Church. The people have brought a multitude of talents which are being shared in the parish for the mutual upbuilding of all.

As of September 1, 2011, our new rector is Fr. Larry Reinheimer, formerly rector of St. Peter the Aleut Church in Calgary, Alberta.