Vacation at the Monastery

The book includes stories about two twelve-year-old boys—Sanka and Romka—who spent the summer and winter at a place by the Chusovaya River in the Perm region. These stories are based on real events; with the author’s permission, we publish two of them.

Getting to know Ponchik

Winter has come: bright stars, white paths, fierce January frost and February winds, snow and blizzards, the dark dawn of the year…

Sanka, a sturdy boy with fair hair, and Romka, a red-haired restless kid, went for the winter holidays to the monastery to Father Savvatiy. At school they suggested a trip to an aqua park, but the friends refused: they missed Father terribly, the little horse Yagodka and the donkey, the shaggy dog named Druzhok, and even the young novice Timofey.

Now in winter everything in the monastery is different from how it was in summer: you’re not allowed to bathe in the spring, the river is frozen, you can’t really walk around fields and forests—the blizzard is raging, snowdrifts, cold… Shaggy Druzhok hides in his kennel, and even Yagodka with the donkey don’t hurry out of the stable.

But there were joys of their own—and especially winter obediences. The shed has stacks of firewood; monastery novices chop it there. And these boys hauled the firewood on sleds to the brother cells—so the monastic brotherhood could light the stoves and not freeze. And it was pleasant to know that they, Sanka and Roma, also brought some benefit, doing their obedience. No wonder they eat lunch at the monastery refectory!