“Elder Paisios must have called you here.”
During evening prayer, we entered a dark, candlelit church—no power, just the light of oil candles.
I took my new prayer rope in hand and repeated the Jesus Prayer:
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
Over and over.
But my thoughts kept drifting. This was my first time away from my children since they were born. I felt an verwhelming feeling of discomfort, almost unbearable.
After prayer, we were led into the dining hall again for supper. Then, back to the church for another short service. As the final prayers ended, a monk walked up to us and asked us to follow him to the kitchen.
He handed us a box of potatoes and asked us to help prepare for Sunday’s feast.
A few minutes later he returned and we started to chat. His English was excellent, and I asked how he spoke so well.
He told us he had studied and worked in Belfast.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I was a surgeon,” he said.
Now, he was a monk, cooking in a monastery kitchen.
I asked him why he had become a monk, he said “I operated on others, and the time came to operate on myself”.
Later that evening, as we wandered through the monastery’s stone courtyards—more like a small city than a cloister—a monk approached us. When he learned we weren’t Orthodox, he rolled his eyes and asked what we were doing on the Holy Mountain.
I told him, “I’ve always had a love for Elder Paisios. That’s what brought me here.”
His face softened. And he said “Then Elder Paisios must have called you here.”
