It was with great joy that we received the Miraculous Icon of Saint Anne, brought to our monastery by Archimandrite Sergius, the abbot of Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk Monastery in Pennsylvania.

Father Sergius is a dear friend of the Monastery, and this was the first time he was able to visit us.

This makes the second time this year God has arranged for St. Anna to come and “visit” us here – apparently we are in need of it!

Please remember both Fr. Sergius and the Monastery of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk over in Pennsylvania in your prayers, and of course our small community as well!

We are pleased to announce the return of our Christmas themed soaps for the year, together with some new offerings of Christmas themed incense!

We have the Candy Cane Swirl and Christmas Cheer soaps available again, together with our best selling Three Kings soap. In fact the other day when we made it active on our store in anticipation of this announcement someone came to the site and cleaned out the inventory! (Fortunately we had some in back stock still and some in the process of curing still….)

For incense we have the new Bethlehem variety, and we also have Frankincense available. The latter is a very pleasant and fine quality resin harvested from the boswellia sacra species of frankincense tree and burns quite cleanly and gives off a natural, pleasant scent.

Just a quick note to remind everyone that our Christmas Blend coffee is available now!

Also, please note: Orders made with the intent to arrive in time for the 25th of December should be made BEFORE December 15!

https://store.vashonmonks.com/christmas-blend/

Also, we are pleased to announce the availability of icon prints of the icon of St. Paisios of Mt. Athos treasured in our monastery church that was painted by John (Shayne) Swenson.

These prints have a customized, patterned grape vine themed frame and have a fold out stand on the back to stand on tables, desks, or similar surfaces. They are 6.25 x 5 inches in size, and quite affordable! At the moment we have very limited quantities, so it is first-come, first-serve!

https://store.vashonmonks.com/icon-of-st-paisios-of-mt-athos

Other special Christmas themed items will soon be available soon as well! ˆˆ

We are pleased to announce a few new arrivals now available in our bookstore!

Two of them are new soaps: the first is a rose soap with a new technique of decoration which we have simply called Rose Soap with Brush Embroidery. This one uses the same fine fragrance as our rose soap but is instead cast in a round shape and floral painting on top using the “Brush Embroidery” technique.

The other is Patchouli Oil, which is soap laced with the warm, husky and spicy scent of the essential oil made with the leaves of the plant of the same name.

In addition we also have a few more offerings of new incense types available, many of which were made in Greek monasteries. We now carry Gardenia, Hyacinth, Magnolia and Violet. All of these are floral in scent and ideal for use both in the home and in church as well.