Helen Theodoropoulos: Thank you for graciously agreeing to share your experiences with the St. Nina readership. Presbytera Gallos, what was your earliest experience of Church life and how did you become involved as such an active participant?

Nancy Holloway: How would you describe your experience growing up in a Greek Orthodox family in the first half of this century?

Eva Topping: The daughter of Greek immigrants, I was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia (in 1920, I’m exactly the age of the amendment that gave women the right to vote!). At that time and when I was growing up, there was no Orthodox church or Greek community near my home. A priest from Washington traveled by train to Fredericksburg and baptized me in a washtub. So I have been Orthodox all my life, even though I grew up in the Baptist church. As long as I can remember I knew that I was Greek Orthodox, and I was proud of it. Thus, the many prayers of a Sunday school teacher that I should one day become a Baptist missionary in Korea were never answered. My first prayer was in Greek and to the Theotokos, taught to me by my mother when I was a little girl. I still pray those few lines.

Nowhere is the mystery of the three-in-one Godhead more clearly grasped than in St. Andrei Rublev’s icon of the Trinity. Also known as the “Hospitality of Abraham,” this icon is based on the Old Testament story in Genesis 18, where Abraham is visited by three young men (later identified as angels) presaging Trinitarian doctrine. It has become the image par excellence of the Holy Trinity for the Church.

Suzanne Magerko: Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed for this issue of the St. Nina Quarterly, Maggie. Are you familiar with the publication and do you receive it?

The mission statement for the Antiochian Orthodox Women of North America (AOCWNA) reads:

“To develop a spirit of Christian leadership, awareness and commitment in the Holy Orthodox Church...to foster a genuine expression of love and service through works of charity and to instill a sense of fellowship and a deeper understanding of the heritage and traditions of the Antiochian Archdiocese and the Orthodox Church.”

Though officially formed as an organization in the early 1970s, the women of this Church have been doing the work of discipleship and diakonia (service) for as long as there have been women and a people gathered as “Church.”