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Свети Флавиан I Антиохийски (Свети Флавиан Патриарх Антиохийски) – починал февруари, вероятно затова поставян в някой православни календари на 18 Февруари

Флавиан (на латински: Flavianus I; ок. 320 – февруари 404) е епископ или патриарх на Антиохия от 381 г. до смъртта си.


saint_Patriarch_Flavian-II-of-Antioch-icon


Роден е около 320 г., най-вероятно в Антиохия. Той наследява голямо богатство, но реши да посвети своите богатства и таланти в служба на църквата.

Заедно с Диодор Тарсийски, (по-късно епископ на Тарс), той подкрепи православната вяра (т.е. православния християнски мироглед) срещу арианския последовател еретик Леонтий, който наследява Евстатий като патриарх на Антиохия.

Двамата приятели събират своите привърженици извън градските стени за богослужения (според Теодорит Кирски именно на тези събрания за първи път е въведена практиката на антифонното пеене в службите на църквата).

Когато Мелетий е назначен за епископ на Антиохия през 361 г., той ръкополага Флавиан за свещеник и след смъртта на Мелетий през 381 г. Флавиан е избран да го наследик.

Разколът между двете партии обаче далеч не бива излекуван.

Епископът на Рим и патриархът на Александрия отказват да признаят Флавиан, а Павлин II (Антиохийски – който ръкополага свети Йероним Блажени), и от крайните евстафианци бива избран за епископ в опозиция на Мелетий, продължава да упражнява власт над част от църквата.
След смъртта на Павлин около 383 г. Евагрий е избран за негов наследник. По късно след смъртта на Евагрий (ок. 393 г.) Флавиан успява да предотврати избора на наследник еретик евстафианец, въпреки че евстафианците все още продължават да провеждат отделни срещи.

Чрез намесата на Йоан Златоуст скоро след издигането му за патриарх на Константинопол през 398 г. и влиянието на император Теодосий I, Флавиан е признат през 399 г. за единствен легитимен епископ на Антиохия.

Независимо от това, Евстатиевата схизма не е окончателно излекувана до 415 г. поради усилията за помирение на Александър (назначен за епископ 412 г.), наследник на Порфирий (също изписван Порфир).
Флавиан бива почитан посмъртно както в западната, така и в източната църква като светец.


Превел Георги Георгиев ( hip0 ) https://pc-freak.net


Послепис:
В някой православни стенни а и в по ранни години, църковни календари издадени от БПЦ се на 18 Февруари се поставя Свети Флавиян Патриарх Константиполски (това обаче е всъщност същият Свети Флавиян Архиепископ Константинополски, поставян, да се чества по-рано на 16 Февруари, която е и датата, на която обикновенно се чества в Българската Църква, грешката, най-вероятно, се състой че имат впредвид честване на Свети Флавиян Патриарх Антиохийски.
Източник:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavian_II_of_Antioch

Кратко житие на Свети Новъмъченик Захарий (Захарий) + Пострадал 1782 г. – паметта се чества се на 20 Януари

Кратко житие на Свети Новомъченик Захарий от остров Пелопонес Гърция пострадал 1782 г.

Свети новомъченик Захарий е от Пелопонес в Гърция. Той се отказва от Христос, за да стане мюсюлманин, след което отива в древната Патра и работи там като кожухар. Той имал книгата „Спасението на грешниците“, която често четял. Книгата го подтикнала към покаяние и той плакал горчиво за голямото зло, което извършил.
Свети Захария срещнал един старец и му разказал за своя грях. След като се помолил и постил двадесет дни, той се върнал при Стареца и изповядал всички грехове, които бил извършил през живота си. Когато поискал благословението на стареца да поиска мъченическа смърт, светецът се опитал да го разубеди. Той предупредил, че може да не бъде убит набързо, а само след много мъчения. Той също така посочил опасността Захарий да предаде Христос за втори път под мъките, които ще изтърпи. Светецът, пламнал от ревност за мъченичество, казал, че е готов да претърпи безброй наказания заради Христа.

Старецът прочел опрощаващите молитви и миропомазал светеца (както се прави, когато отстъпниците от вярата се приемат обратно в Църквата), след което го причастил със светите Тайни. Тогава благословил Захарий да се върне при мюсюлманите и да заяви вярата си в Христос. По пътя си светецът искал прошка от всеки срещнат християнин.
Светият мъченик отишъл в къщата на местния кадия (съдия) и казал, че е бил измамен, когато е приел тяхната религия, но сега се е опомнил и се е върнал при Христос. Свети Захарий бил хвърлен в тъмница, където бил бит по три пъти на ден.
Накрая светецът умрял, като бил прострян на стелаж. Християните поискали тялото му, за да го погребат, но мюсюлманите отказали. Те казали: „Той не е нито един от вас, нито един от нас, защото той отрече и двете
религии. Следователно той е недостоен за погребение.

Sveti_Mychenik_Zaharij-ikona

Тялото му било влачено по улиците и хвърлено в сух кладенец, като падайки паднало на колене в право положение. На следващата нощ християните видяли лъчиста светлина над кладенеца и побързали да се поклонят на светеца. Турците напълнили кладенеца с пръст и отломки, за да предотвратят подобни събирания в бъдеще (според както правили за да заличат завинаги паметта на убития).
С проливането на кръвта си свети новомъченик Захарий измил греха на своето отричане от Христа и получил неувяхващ венец на славата през 1782 година.

По неговите Молити Христе Боже Наш, помилуй и спаси нашите души !

Collecting Rosehips near Kremikovtsy Monastery Saint George – An Orthodox Christian Team Building

We (me and my wife) and a couple of other volunteers to help with the collection of Rosehips spend the last Saturday on a.
For all those who don’t know Rosehips are rear kind of grass fruits that grow usually in wild open places and mountains.

rose-hips-mountain-fruit-rich-in-vitamin-c-that-helps-immunity
rose-hips-mountain-fruit-rich-in-vitamin-c-that-helps-immunity

The whole event was a kind of Orthodox Christian team building because of most the people involved was dedicated Orthodox Christians with the idea to help Kremikovski Monastery in collecting the left rosehips (after the main harvesting).
We were 9 people and half of the people were known or at least seen a couple of times in activities related to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and half of ppl were completely new to me hence and enjoyable network building exercise too.

One of the ladies Angelina organized the whole trip as she has already been to Kremikovtsy Monastery many times and she knows well the Abbot father Seraphim (who is a merried priest but set as an abbot because of the lack of Monk to serve the duty).
The monastery is a really beuatiful one originating from around XII-XIV centuries in the Second Bulgarian Empire (by the order of Tzar Ivan Alexander) and suffered the times when Bulgarian Empire was in its dawn, but
even today keeps this spirit of Majesty that used to have back in the day.
Saint George Monastery Kremikovtsy is situated is situated northeast of Bulgaria’s capital City Sofia. After its destruction in y. 1398 during the Enslavement of Bulgaria by Turkish it was renovated in year 1493 by Ktitor named Radivoy (Beneficient – A Local Bulgaria Nobel).

Ktitor_Radivoj_Kremikovski_monastery
Ktitor_Radivoj_Kremikovski_monastery

The church was rebuild from its ruins by a crushed stones. The main Church was in favour of the Monastery Patron SaintSaint Great Martyr George.

The monastic frescoes are absolutely unique piece of art from the 15 century and are mostly found in the east side of the Church narthex, parts of the frescoes are originating from the 17th and 18th century.
Nearby is built a large Church with a size of a small city Cathedral named in glory of the Intercession of the Mother of God (constructed in 1901 – 1902) to serve the monastery new inhabited 20 nuns from Vardar Macedonia.

Saint_George-on-a-Throne-with-foot-over-the-dead-dragn-satan-Kremikovski-monastery-Church-icon
Saint_George-on-a-Throne-with-foot-over-the-dead-dragn-satan-Kremikovski-monastery-Church-icon

Monastery main frescoes are of Saint George who sits on a Throne over the head of the defeated dragon (a depiction of Satan) as well as the famous icon Jesus Christ (Pantokrator) and the Alter icon of Mother of God (Theotokos).

Shirshaya-nebes-bigger-than-the-heavens-Frescoe-Mother-of-God
Shirshaya-nebes-bigger-than-the-heavens-Frescoe-Mother-of-God (source Wikipedia)

In the 15 century the monastery was a pillar stone of the medieval Bulgarian education and culture.

The Rosehip bushes were situated about 1h 30 minutes away from the Monastery and since we arrived in the monastery quite late about 11:30 and we spend 30 minutes in a hospitable lunch in monastic Magerna (the Old Bulgarian Church term for Kitchen) and we eat Kurban (a lamb soup) and a “fried eggs bread” (Dzidzhi Papa) to reach the small field with Rosehips we had to travel with the monastic Jeep (car), we the man were in the back of the Jeep in the rack and we had about 30 minutes bumping hardly pretty much like in a Safari 🙂
The Rosehip collections after that was quite of an adventure of itself as the bushes of the plant are quite thorny we all had mildly wounded our hands.
We collected rosehips in the crystal clear mountain air enjoying a great sight of the Majestic Vitosha Mountain for about 4:30 h time and after that the Jeep came and bring us back to the monastery, where we arrived about 18:00 just for the Saturday against Sunday (Resurrection) evening service which was united with an Akatist to the protector saint of the monastery Saint George.
We stayed for the service about 30 minutes time after which the abbot and the nice ladies (monastic personal) we were offered a great dinner (which consisted of a very tasty home brew goat’s milk again of Kurban soup) + a very tasty blessed bread and small piccant cheese with peppers portion.

The abbot led a spiritual talk about the current state of Christianity and answered a couple of questions and his wisdom was quite distinctive.
We learned interesting details about how the monastery takes care about his goats and bees and other holdings and had an enjoyable time!

It was really a great experience and I advice any Christian who visits Sofia Bulgaria to also drop by the Monastery for a Pilgrimage, you will not regret it !

Error 509 – What to do when you see your website has “Bandwidth Limit Exceeded.” and how to fix it

Error 509 - What to do when you see your website has “Bandwidth Limit Exceeded.” and how to fix it
bandwidth-limit-exceeded-509-error

Error 509 – What to do when you see your website has “Bandwidth Limit Exceeded.” and how to fix it

 

1. 509 Limited bandwidth error Case – a common start-up online business mistake

You have build a large website with many pages and you receive a few thousands of visitors daily each page with some of the best Search Engine indexed pages to Google.com / Yandex.com / Bing.com etc. getting a more than 3000 unique visits (a month), you have a well written and have arrangements with few custom affiliate ads netowrk and your web data content already well SEO optimized for top keywords and showing in head positions in people searches on the net.

However your overall website is still not getting more than 150 000 to 200 000 visits a month which and the site is not so big still to host it on your own hired dedicated server hosting but situated on a relatively cheap shared hosting and you have a limited web hosting plan because you want to maximize the earnings made from website and minimize the costs (as it is common for most Start-up website hosted businesses). After all you and the hired programmer / and support guy have to live on the the earnings you make from the website.

Everything works great and you’re happy the business is growing month by month and website Rank gets and Visitors are increase leading to improving affiliate payment check – (financial results).

But wait suddenly a colleague friend of yours you developed together the website platform that generates you money
calls out and tells you when he faced interruptions with website and gets in his Chrome Web browser sudden unexpected Error 509 – Bandwidth Limit Exceeded errors as he was working inside the website (admin) web panel moving (renaming) website categories to put a better order of shared blogs user data.

Of course as your website is build by a developers you hired and you might be not an IT person, the website makes its money using business processes logic and you as a CEO Manager did not have a in depth perspective on the technologies so you did not have idea originally what the Error 509 – Bandiwidth Limit Exceeded message means at all so you do a quick research online and quickly realize the Error 509 status error is caused by your Web hosting provider and the relatively cheap Limited Hosting plan you choose to use in order to cut the hosting budget expenses.

The first logical reaction is to get angry at the Web Hosting Provider that they failed to inform you timely that your reserved account Data Receive / Send bandwidth is exceeding, you might even call the Web Hosting Service Provider (SP) and scream them a little bit that they failed to warm you timely about the upcoming bandwidth exceeding, just to understand you missed the email sent by them because you thought it is some non-important Marketing “SPAM” aimed to make you Increase Hosting Plans and take your money for nothing.

Well anyways that won’t make situation better, until you pay for raising your hosting plan.
For those curious, the reason the 509 page error came true is because the Hosting SP entered a Firewall (Shaper) rules on their traffic shaping Network (Cisco) routers and automatic page was placed via a automated script that does run a mod_rewrite if Apache, NGINX, Lighttpd URL rewrite rule to rewrite all your received URL addresses (that point to your IP or Ips of your (Web hosting) VPS to a simple 509 error return page

As you pay for a hosting plan where your Bandwidth Limitations are set on montlly basis (principle) and your preset amount of bandwidth to make the website display again you have to pay the Hosting SP Company for a Higher Limit Bandwidth or no Limit Bandwidth (which would be best and will prevent your business from future 509 error issues)

2. So what is really a Bandwidth ?

To get you better understand the problem let me explain shortly what is bandwidth since it can mean a multiple things in general.

1. Bandwidth might be a limitation on the maximum speed Download / Upload data information speed (rate) your website can be accessed with.
Information is transferred in computer terms generally in Bytes / Kilobytes / Megabytes / Gigabytes and Terrabytes.
a) High Download speed limitation is required if your website needs to be fast in downloading files, that is the case if your website has a lot of files and its users regularly tend to download from it.

b) Your upload speed needs to be high if your website gets a lot of traffic of Upload type (e.g. many people are uploading data to your website) – an example for high Upload need website is for example Google Drive service which is configured to receive data with a very high Upload limitation.

c) Bandwidth term could also stand about the maximum amount of data transferred at a certain interval of time (lets say your Hosting Providers might allow you to Download / Upload 10 Gigabytes daily a day hiring a Bandwidth amount is common especially at the Age of Cloud computing we are entering lately, where it is common for a Web Hosting user to hire assign for a certain bandwidth resource according to its needs.

Bandwidth being exceeded is common when you have a sudden increase in amount of up / down data traffic your website experiences due to improved reachability from Organic Searches in Search Engines or because an important link to your website provided (software product) has become Viral on the Internet being posted on some huge group on Facebook / Twitter / Pinterest etc.
The increased amount of high visitors website registration upload / download (data share) might push your website to reach the bandwidth capacity (lets say 500 Gigabytes a month) and then your hosting provider automated shaper might start showing up your clients the annoying 509 web server error code.

3. Solution to Bandwidth Limit Exceeded error

You have your hosting profile (max amount of data that can be transferred) and since the Limited access to your website could damage severely your web presence the issue has to be solved in a shortest term possible as every second and minute of downtime to your website might ruin your website reputation both for Search Engines (website SEO) and for end users which take advantage of your website content data, that’s especially sure if your website is unreacable due to the error for 1 or more hours. If the inaccessibility to website continues for too long (lets say a week) without being tracked that might even make some of the pages or the whole website being temporary delisted from Search Engines, thus the issue has to be solved in a matter of minutes to hours …

To do so just use your Web Hosting provider account provided management interface and do pay for a Hosting plan upgrade that switches you to Unlimited Bandwidth hosting plan (if such is present from HP) or even better change your account plan to Unlimited Profile Account (where you will get unlimited amount of disk space, CPU time and bandwidth.

Shared hosting plans on Amazon Web Services, OVH, Hostgator, BluehostOvh.com had shared hosting plans offering unmettered (unlmited) bandwidth of course that unlimited is not really unlimited, it just means the limitations of maximum bandwidth traffic tube you get is so high it is mostly unlikely you will ever reach it except if you are not running in innovation Video sharing service that is to be a direct concurrency to websites such as Youtube.com or Vimeo. Most of websites however are of small or mid-sized scales and never match a traffic limitation more than some 100Gb to half a Terabyte monthly.

For users hiring a VPS server instead of simple Data web hosting control panel such as cPanel, ISPManager, Kloxo Virtual Min etc. there is usually a way to dynamically choose the exact amount of resources you plan your website to have (based on your quick website scaling research).

4. Counting how much Bandwidth you need (quick tips)?

Projecting your web site bandwidth plan is a task whose success depends heavily on proper evaluation on some website statistics directly on VPS (if you have one) or measuring statistics tools log tools Awstats, Webalizer etc. and other Web ones such as Google Analytics.

The rule of thumb to prevent yourself from 509 Bandwith Limitation errors is to better choose a a hosting plan that is much higher (over-sized) than planned expectations than to go with a one that is fixated on too much realistic data but severely down-sized.

Here are few tips on how to do an adequate decision on how much bandwidth (what kind of hosting plan) its best to purchase for your Site.

* Read unique Visits hourly, daily monthly statistics, read as many and differentiated channel Website access (Visit) statistics as you could!
Also read statistics for more prolonged intervals of times, last 6 months statistics and checking last 1 year statistics (if your website is up for that time already) is a very good practice to help you understand more about your website.

* Use a small shell / perl script to define the biggest and smallest downloadable files and pages on your site (that are most often accessed) – The script could parse Web server access log files and generate some predefined criteria statistics.

* Understand approximate number of pageviews a unique visitor does to your site

* Always purchase at least 2 to 4 times more bandwidth than site actually use monthly

* Check out regularly at least 2 to 4 times a week for any notifications / warning / error messages inside the provided Shared Hosting provider interface.

* Never ever skip to read emails delivered from your Hosting Provider (make the habit to move such emails into a separate folder under your webmail (you can create a simple email filter to
* If your website is running on Linux VPS server use something as vnstat tool to determine the I/O network statistics that flow to your Virtual Network Card Interface.

always move emails from Hosting Provider to a separate email directory for the goal, that way you might miss up the HP emails, between the tons of other work emails you get just because you thought of reading the email but forget too).
An useful tool that can help you to Calculate the right amount of bandwidth is Bandwidth calculator

You can also try to use a sample required Bandwidth formula such as:

Alleged hosting bandwidth required (AHBR) = Avarage Number of pageviews (ANP) [ multipled by] Avarage Accessed Page Size (AACP) [ multiplied by] Avarage Number of daily visitors

Written in a more comprehensible form the Bandwidth Limitation (calculate) is:

AHRB = ANP x AACP x ANDV

Of course there are many other factors to consider for your webserver to achieve maximum Bandwidth performance. For example if your website is targetting the American E-market, its best practice to choose as a hosting provider an American for example NameCheap or iPage , since your website is mostly going to be visited by America continent (Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, Brazilians, Columbians etc.)., doing so would make the Internet backbone internet traffic routed through American Internet Provider servers and will impact the bandwidth performance drastically.

Another good idea if you want to prevent your site partially from Bandwidth Limit 509 error is to configure the site’s hostname (DNS records) to to point to Cloudflare CND.

That would make your web hosting website provider webserver IP to not be directly visible by a simple DNS requests (automatically done by browser once you type the URL of your site in it) instead when your Domain-Name-URL.com gets resolved you will end up seeing the CDN configured to use Cloudflare external IPs which does redirect to your website besides that CloudFlare provides Server Load Balancing and will prevent your website from many of the automated script hacking attempts as well as Denial of Service (DdoS) attacks.

5. End up Summary

509 server errors would cost you money and time to recover your online business harms, hence you always try to make a proper site scaling in advance so you never with site down due to it.
As a best practice whether you can financially afford it invest in non limited bandwidth hosting!.
The extra money that you will spend will usually return back multipled and would be better than harming your website online image by ending looking to your customers like unprofessional.

I hope this article enlightened what stands behind the Bandwidth term and gave you a better understanding on why the 509 Bandwidth error message appeared and give you some general suggestions on how to prevent it.

Windows 7 Enable bluetooth Speaker connect howto

pairing-bluetooth-to-windows-7-notebook-pc-Bluetooth_logo

A friend of mine called with a problem that he can’t connect her just bought “No Name” cheap bluetooth Speaker to her Windows computer.

As you could guess she was completely computer illiterate and had no idea and couldn’t answer even basic questions like what kind of Windows version is her Windows installed OS, neither she know whether her Samsung Notebook had Bluetooth device at all.

1. Checking whether a PC notebook had Bluetooth device

The first logical step in the short investigation over the phone was to ask her about her Laptop version. And after she made a picture with her Phone of her notebook backside Model and Serial Number and send me the pictures in Viber turner to be Samsung NP300E5X-A02BG.

I did a quick search in Google and it turned out that this notebook (in sell in the distant 2012) had bluetooth.
So far so good…

2. Checking the Windows version number with command

Second interesting question was on what kind of Windows she is operating, as she couldn’t answer that neither (pretty much expected),
in order to check the OS version, I suggested her the quickest way to check Windows version I am aware of, which is to press Windows key + R run:

cmd.exe

and type in:

 

 

 

winver

 

winver-command-line-output-windows-7-screenshot

As shown in screenshot winver command, you can get the type of Windows OS you are using and the edition of it as well, plus the build number.

I’ve asked her to check whether the keyboard on her notebook had the bluetooth logo on F keys and to press Fn + F11 (as I thought this is the location of Bluetooth and that might turn on the bluetooth in case if it is off-ed).In general once the bluetooth is enabled (after pressing and holding down right buttons the bluetooth indicator (if such is present) starts blinking and Bluetooth window on Windows 7 will pop up in activated discoverable mode.

3. Connecting the Bluetooth Speaker

Here is the steps I asked her to do to make her Speaker connected to her Notebook:

Go to Control Panel on View Devices and Printers

windows-7-control-panel-view-devices-and-printers-screenshot-add-device

and click Add a device

 

bluetooth-speaker-add-device-windows-7-screenshot-i1560EN

 

Start -> Control Panel -> View Devices and Printers -> Add a device

Note that the Add a device button is situated on top left corner. The Bluetooth device speakers will be automatically searched (and found if the Speakers are not too far from the PC and if they are turned on).

Click on the name of the Bluetooth discovered Speaker which you would like to add to the computer and click Next.

This steps worked fine luckily for her. In case of problems with the bluetooth being discovered I was prepared to ask her to restart the BT Speaker and computer

Without a PC restart many cheap bluetooth speaker devices will show paired in Windows Sound Volume User Interface
Which I instructed her to run with the command by pressing Win button + R and typing:

sndvol.exe

 

https://pc-freak.net/images/volume_mixer_windows-7-screenshot

Chossing the BT shows unmuted and the sound bar keeps moving up / down just like music is getting out of the spaker. But in reality will be unable to communicate sound to the PC (no idea why this happens) but a PC restart does fix it.

 

I have to point sometimes discovering the Bluetooth Speaker might take several seconds to detect (if it was recently turned on).

Some Bluetooth Speakers has a key-pass protection, her speaker did not but if yours have one just type it in to authenticate and make speaker wired to your PC.

Botevo Monastery Saint Marina – Dobrich and Varna most famous active male monastery

Monastestery “Great saint Martyr Marina” or the “Monastery of Doburdja” is situated about 1 km east side from Botevo village, which is situated 8 km west side from the main road between Varna – Dobrich.
It is situated near a vale of a cold water spring.

To reach the holy cloister you should drive the way connecting Krumovo village with Botevo village and you have to turn right nearby the signature pointing the road leading to the monastery. The road leading to the monastery is new asphalt road and is leading straight to the holy place.

saint-Marina-monastery-near-Botevo-village-only-active-monastery-near-Dobrich-and-Varna-Dobrudja-region-Bulgaria

In the monastery only 1 monk (who is the abbot) and one novice are living but the perspective is for the monk community to quickly grow as the place seems to be the only active monastery in the Dobrudja region. The abbot is hieromonk father Prokopij (named after a local saint saint Propkopij from Varna) the novice neophyte who is rumored to become monk near Christmas is Luben and these two man achieve to have a daily Morning and Evening Church services as well as Holy Liturgy so any Orthodox Christian around could benefit to have a regular communion and a monastic services if interested.

saint-Marina-monastery-monk-cells-and-monastic-corpus

History

Little is know about the early history of the monastery. A little data is evidencing that the wild woody terrain nearby the miracle healing spring that give the raise of the monastery there was any kind of monk or monastic life in ancient times.
Near the spring are found a remains of old village as well as work and home vessels, as well as an old Christian cemetery.
During the Ottoman Turkish Slavery in Bulgaria the region is called “Dylyp Dere“, some information about the monastery are found in an article of a newspaper Macedonia nr. 39 issued in September 1871 written by Dimitar Stanchev who has been migrated to village Juvenlij (the old name of Botevo), he used to be a teacher and a creater of the local revolutionary committe, writer-patriot and a very close friend to the legendary revolutionaries Luben Karavelov and Hristos Botev.
In this article is said “There in the brushes there is a very cold spring surrounded everywhere by stones with the size of a tomb, the walls and inside is a meter of water which does springs all-time down. The spring creates a river used for crop watering”.
The source also says in Kalyp Dere (today st. Marina monastery) there was an yearly assembly of people in which people from all around Dobrudja come together.

Sv.Marina-Botevo-an-yearly-people-assembly

St. Marina Spring has been personally owned by an Ottoman Turk Sali Tapchi (Turkish Bey) and on this place he spend the summer with his harem of woman and this pushed him to decide to build his sarai and once the digging started they found a Cross with a writting Saint Marina.
Once the bey found this is a Christian place he decided to sell the whole region to someone called Lecho from nowdays Botevo, for the symbolic price of 2 horses, 5 goats and 3 mats.

The old man Lecho donated the region to the local Church. Because of any further exact historical writing all known about the monastery is based on local legends which are being confirmed by a real events described by the teacher Dimitar Stanchev.

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The two most famous legends regarding the monastery are following.

1. An old grandmother and grandfather were on their way to the city to trade with their caravant and promised to their granddaughter to pick her up, she fall aleep and they decided not to wake her up and on the coming morning after the first cock sing they departed. The granddaughter awake and decided to leave home and went through the woods hoping to catch up the grandparents but got lost and too tired and then she reached the crystal clear spring and to have a rest lay on the cold stones and died there. People found him on the same day but already dead.
It is not known for sure whether the kid has been buried there but on the grave cross there was written here died “12 years old Marina” and that’s how according to the legend the spring took its name “Marina’s well” and local people decided to gather yearly near the spring to pray for the soul of little Marina. Once Bulgaria came under Turkish Ottoman Slavery, Christians being infear by Turkish cancelled the yearly gathering near the spring. The place changed the spring filled up with filth and people started calling the place “feverish well”.
Then follows the story prior said how the Turkish bey came with his harem and started building the sarai just to find the writting “Here died Marina” with a Cross and he declined his new sarai project and sold the place to Christians.

2. The second legend tells us about the miraculous attributes of the holy spring water.
Long time ago during a hot summer when everyone was working filling their carrets with sheaf bundles, bringing them to the nearby stone road, there was a carret with no sheafs but had inside a suffering family in which a suffering mother was holding a kid burning in fever, they were on a way to look for some medicine for their only child. They tried to find a healing already to a local quacks and tried all possible healers without success near the st. Marina spring they stopped for rest and the kid asked for some water from the spring water. But the spring wasso cold that even the ox refused to drink, and the mother scared to give the kid to drink took some water and washed the kid eyes.
A few drops came to the kids mouth and the mother prayed fervently to God to have mercy on her only child. Angel came down smerked the water and the water become healing.
Even before they came to their village the child was healed and they were joyfully laughing telling all the their neighbors about the miracle and the rumor quickly spread around the nearby villages.
In 1882 after the liberation Church members took a decision to build a small chappel near “Marina’s well”, along with the chapel a two open bathings were build one for woman and one for man.
On the next 1883 they build a stone fountain (that were so popular during turkish and post liberation times), the difference was the fountain did not have an arabic ascribing as most fountains had but st. Marina had a cross on it.

After the Church chapel was built the yearly Chritian gatherings so common in the past re-emerged and on 17 July 1900 on the feast of Saint Marina, a local priest Hristos Hadjiev from Botevo village, preached fervently and put a new beginning of the remembrance of the memory of saint Martyr Marina.
In 1929 a second stone wall was build in a spheric form on the top of which was placed the holy cross again.

After the first world war after the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine Bulgaria lost a big part of its territories and South Dobrudja region has been given as a gift to Romania and st. Marina’s monastery was situated only 1 km away from the Romanian border as a result of that many people stopped visiting the chapel St. Marina.
In 1935 the Church board took a decision to build a Church instead of the Chapel. The money for the Church was quickly raised for a very short time and over the holy spring is build a beautiful building and near the Church has been build a special place where the travelling marketers could offer their products. The new Church has been sanctified on 30 july 1935 (on the feast of saint Marina old style calendar) and a Holy Liturgy was served

Тhe water well was sanctified with the rite of sanctification of water by priest Nikola Petrov Apchev serving at the Church of saint prophet Elijah in the village of Botevo.

An old tradition of night vigil on the night before great feasts was also resumed.
According to the Treaty of Craiova in 1940 south Dobrudja was returned to Bulgaria.
At that time king Boris the III-rd was at st. Marina’s region on his way to Dobrich and accidently stumbled on the yearly organized assembly next to the Church and being glad of seeing all the people celebrating together issued a decree to “Build a monastic complex” next to saint Marina’s Church.

King Boris III-rd has personally donated a big sum for building the monastic complex and become the first donor of the monastery because of that time the region was called by local people “The King’s monastery”.

The yearly assembly next to saint Marina monastery’s popularity grow and yearly more and more people attended. Carrets and Caravans visited on saint Marina’s feast coming from all near regions from whole Dobrudja, Varna, Provadia, Valchidol as usual for the time people stayed for the Holy Liturgy then young and elder went to the holy spring and drinked water for a blessing and better health over the year and some of the people take a full shower with the water hoping for a cure from various diseases. Some drinked Rakia other participated in the Horo traditional dances.

Soon came the World War II and Allies and Axis forces soldiers crossed the region sparing the monastery but with the coming of communist (solialist) powers on 9th of September 1944, the water from the holy spring was used for water supplies the monastery was taken by communists and the place desolated quickly, the buldings were in decay, icons, the bell and everything that had any value was stolen. The only remain was a signature on the Church building reading “Saint Marina Church”.
In the 1980s the condition of the monastic temple is terrible in 1981 a nun Valentina from Kalofer Monastery visited the place and worked hardly for the recovery of the Church building begging for help to anyone able to help for the recovery of the monastery.

Initiative is taken by some volunteers by Water and Canals (ViK) Varna for the recovery but noone is allowed to cross the fence of the water providision zone. One of the workers on his own responsibility allowed enthusiastic people to do some repair works and a slow recovery of the place was done.

A help was required by Varna metropolitan Joseph, who most likely being scared by the communistic authorities rejected using an excuse that other Churches in ruins are waiting for recovery …

Following some local people collected donations by nearby citizens and village people around.
People still did not forgot the joyful summer yearly assembly before communism came and wanted this initiative to continue.

With the first collected money brother of nun Valentina, Drumi Spasov, who from the beginning is in the headlines of fighters for the resurrection of the monastery, thanks to him the monastic road was formed, the Church was hedged along with a small coutryard with the help of locals.

saint-Marina-Botevo-Monastery-near-Dobrich-yearly-gathering

Bricks were taken from the home town of Valentina and Drumi Vylchi Dol and concrete was delivered from Devnia concrete factory. Two men on pension participated in smearing the walls from outside and inside. The parish priest father Ivan restored the altar and handcraftly made the iconostasis.

All necessery was provided by people from the near villages. Money are collected with which an icon of saint Marina is bought, which later on
mysteriously disappeared.

A lady Zoya Kiriakova from Varna donated two Greek icons. The old Church bell which earlier was given to a a recycle point in Botevo from a partys antichrstian famous guy was returned by Lubcho Stefanov who kept the bell in himself for many years.

The Church was ready and metropolitan Joseph from Varna was invited to sanctify the Church but he rejects.
The Communist State security interferes and does ruin the sanctification preparations.
The people who were heading the Church with the hope for the sanctification of the Church to occur are stopped before Botevo village, and other people from local villages were prohibited to come near the Church.

The main person father Ivan who initiated the Church gathering is arrested and his faith further on is harsh. He was sent on exile in a distant Dobrich village, where being in great inconveniences he passed away.

Bad years come again for Botevo monastery. The church is vandalized and church belongings stolen. In this terrible period for the monastery the monastery is visited by few local courageous believers mainly on great Church feasts secretly. The Church is locked and controlled by bai Drumi, who preserves the two greek icons.

metropolitan_Kiril-saint-Marina-Monastery-Botevo-village-holy-Liturgy
A good years come for “Saint Marina” monastery when metropolitan Kiril was selected for a bishop of Varna in 1989.
On the next year in 1989 after the democratic changes on the Church feast 17 of July, metropolitan Kiril leads the first for a long time Holy Liturgy.
After the old atheistic regime of persecution of Christians is in the past in the Church there are regular services, the only left is to renew and enrich the material base of the monastery to prepare everything for a monks to inhibit.

For next 10 years in the Church served priests from Varna and in 2001, archimandrite Seraphim, who also provided funds and protection for the place.

Then among the laymen appeared the Christ loving family of Petar and Biserka Petrovi from Varna, with whose fudings a Church restoration works were done and a new living building was built, that is how among the healing water spring and the beautiful small church is formed a beautiful monastic complex. The renewed monastery was sanctified with celebrations by metropolitan Kiril on 17 July 2005 and the common feast region people assembly for Saint Marina’s feast was restored.

Today the holy place, beautifully renewed is a functional monastery with a monk abbot and the small bortherhood lives on people’s mercy (donations). Near the holy spring water there are constantly people with a faith in God and love in the soul which believe in the miracle powers of the holy water.

It is believed that the holy spring cold water helps people recover from severe eyesight diseases and a soul sicknesses.

Sources:
1. Atanas Kazandzhiev, Ivan Kolev, The Monastery “Saint Marina” in Botevo Village, publishing house “Matador 74”, Dobrich 2007
2. Official site of Varna and Veliko Preslav Metropolia – www.metropolia-varna.org

Trip to Baylovo Village, Meeting a Living saint and Elin Pelin birth house

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Today thanks to my dear friend Cvetomir, I had the chance to visit Baylovo village with us was also his wife Dimitrina (Dima) and their 3.5 years old Son Boris. Baylovo is very famous nowdays in Bulgaria because of Elder Dobri (Dqdo Dobri) – who is considered by many in Bulgaria a living saint for more about him see http://saintdobry.com.

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These Elder is said to posses the gift of prophecy and many other gracious gifts from the Lord Jesus Christ. Already for years he has taken on himself the cross of poor life and beggery. The overall appearance of elder is unique as he continues to wears a typical old Bulgarian times dresses which was common among Bulgarians, about 100 years ago.

 

Dyado-Dobri-from-Baylovo-the-living-saint-begger-from-Bulgaria

Dyado Dobry has consciously choose the way of simplicity and poorness to honour God. He can often be seen in Sofia streets begging and then all the collected money he gives for the creation and reparation of old Churches and monasteries.

Seeing the elder gives you faith that there is still hope for us the sinners.

Cyrkva-Baylovo-next-to-home-of-dyado-Dobri

We had the chance to see the Living saint living room (house) which is few meters from the Baylovo village Church. Elder Dobry lives in a small room with an old wood stove. He has a prayer corner with many icons of the Lord Jesus Christ, The Mother of God and saints.

He doesn’t even possess a bed but sleeps on sheep leather directly on the ground, the picture below is the other room where is living another relative of him who is nowadays taking care about the elder.

dyado-Dobri-one-of-two-living-rooms-of-his-house

I had the chance to receive his blessing and kiss his holy hand.
The elder advised me to persist in the blessed silence, because silence breaks up the devils and brings us closer to God.

He also advised me to be careful with empty speech (by which I suffer often), few of the other things he told me were also striking.
Hearing my name Georgi he immediately mentioned the Great Holy Spirit that Saint George possesses and how Saint George helps all the earthly people named after him.

Interestingly Dyado Dobry also told me few things which for me was an evidence he posses the gift of clairvyoance (soul seeing).

We also had a chance a little bit earlier to go and Visit Spasova Mogila’s small Chapel which is situated in a very beautiful nature place.

 

Spasova-Mogila-chapel-from-the-famous-Elin-Pelin-story


After Spasova Mogila
is named the famous Elin Pelin short story, for those unfamiliar who Elin Pelin is he is a famous after liberation from Slavery of Bulgaria Bulgaria Author.

 

Later on after leaving Dyado Dobri we went to see the Elin Pelin Museum.

elin-pelin-museum-baylovo-village

Museum contains all the major writting works of Elin Pelin with unique pictures with Bulgarian King Boris III, Ivan Vazov and his friends and various intellectuals.

Elin-Pelin-with-signature
One of the interesting works of Elin Pelin we saw there was of course Yan-Bybian (Ян Бибиян).

yan-bibiyanelin-pelin-1162-500x500-famous-children-story

We also passed on near Elin Pelin’s birth house but unfortunately didn’t have the time to visit, however if we have a second chance to visit there, we will definitely see it too.

Baylovo-Elin-Pelin-birth-house-picture

Vrana – Orthodox Palace (Residency) of the last surviving Eastern Orthodox King Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha


Vrana-Bulgarian-king-summer-residence

Yesterday 20.03.2016 wife Svetlana and Alexander, Gabi, Georgi and Ivcho (11 year old boy) visited Vrana Residency park, after we was in St. George’s Church Dyrvenica for the holy service.

Vrana used to be a summer residency palace of the King Ferdinand and King Boris III during the Third Bulgarian Kingdom (3 March 1878 – 1946).

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Vrana’s palace is nearby but outside of capital city of Bulgaria Sofia and is unique park made in the traditional Western style “Landscape” parks popular in the beginning of the XXth century among all Europe.

Bulgarian-King-palace-residence-Park-Vrana-Sofia-Bulgaria

The park is a large botanical garden, containing 831 wooden species, bush and grass species belonging to 118 tree species and about 435 bushy species on the territory of only 100 hectars.
The park

The naming Vrana (Crow) was given by King Ferdinand, because before the fields where currently the Castle is stiuation was heavily crowded with crow birds, so seeing all these Crows, he decided to call it Crow (Vrana).

Thus Park Vrana is one of the unique parks to visit if you happen to be in Sofia. The sight from the park is also unique as you can see the beatiful Vitosha mountain.

Officially the King Palace was opened in for a first time in 1903, first stage of the formation of the today’s appearance was completed in 1909 and was a great labour. The park happened to be the most unique park for its time and actually the first botanical park with its size in Bulgaria, the park continued to be enriched by Saxo-Coburg family for about 40 years until the death of the last officially rulling Bulgarian King Boris the III-rd in 28 August 1943 who was supposedly poisoned by Hitler (because of his refusal) to sent Bulgarian Army against Russia’s Soviets (USSR).

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King Boris III-rd of Bulgaria (3rd October 1918 – 28 August 1943)

Vrana-palace-greenery-outside

Vrana park is also unique because of the greenery which contains exotic tropical and Meditarrenian grass species, cactuses, pineapples, aloe vera, lemons and all kind of species from far Africa and Asia, some of the species are about 100, 50, 30 years old and so on. The park has an unique Dog Graveyard containing all the Royal family dogs (where each Dog has his ancestry year of birth, year of death and a small stone monument signifying the place of funeral).

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vrana-palace-sofia-bulgaria-terrace

The palace itself is also a unique about 90 years old building. In front of the Vrana King’s palace entrance there is a beatiful pine wood and on the back a fountain with Liliums. Around the place one can see bird feeding throughs.

Vrana-Bulgarian-king-palace-lake-with-Lilium

Among the many and beatiful alleyes one sees trees from different American, Canadian, European, Asian species.
The King’s Stables are also preserved (and inside one can see whole collection of all the carrets of Ferdinand and Boris, but unfortunately this can be seen only on a special request as it not publicly shown to all visitors.

Through the years the Palace had even Elephants imported from Africa and there is a kind of Elephant stables left.
We had the luck to get to know one of the king Simeon II-nd palace personal assistants and she shared with us a lot of interesting internals about how the work inside the palace is organized and unfortunately a lot of the problems faced, because of shortage of people to take care about the gardens and especially the shortage of people to take care about the extoic plants conservatory which in my opinion is the most unique thing to see in the whole park.

The Plants Conservatory (Greenery) is not opened full time so, if you happen to go to the Vrana palace you probably have to be in time when Maria Djadjarova the King’s palace assistant that takes care about the Conservatory is there, so you could take a look at it.

As of time of visiting Vrana Palace, unfortunately the palace building was closed for visitors, because of restoration works.
So next time hopefully we’ll be able to see the Karelian Hall which is a gift from Alexander III of Russia (The King Liberator as famous in Bulgaria as it was during his reign Bulgaria received liberation), and all of its furniture (the table, the chairs and the dressing table) are made of Karelian birch by master woodworkers specially sent from Russia. The first storey also has a cinema hall and tea halls, the second storey is where the apartments are located, and the third one used to be allocated to the servants and the court.

The palace buildings outlooks is an interesting combination of Baroque, Austrian, Venetian and Bulgarian style.

The palace features a carved wooden ceiling, oak wainscoting, built-in metal plates and Delftware. The interior columns are made of Carrara marble and an old Schindler lift is still in use. In terms of architecture, the Vrana Palace combines Byzantine influences, Bulgarian National Revival traditions, Art Nouveau and French classicism.
In 1918 Vrana passed from Tsar (king) Ferdinand after his demission to Boris III. Here he faced the new government after the military coup on 9 June 1923. In August 1943, it became the property of Simeon II. The main palace was bombed by the RAF in 1943-44 during the World War II and after partially damaged, it was subsequently restored in 1947. After the abolition of the monarchy, Vrana was taken by the communists and became a residence of Georgi Dimitrov who was the first communist leader of Bulgaria and a personal friend of Joseph Stalin.

Tsar-King-Simeon-2-ri-king-of-Bulgaria

King Simeon II-nd – The Last Surviving Eastern Orthodox Monarch as of 2016

What is interesting about King Simeon the second is he was anointed as a child after the death of King Boris II and declared a King of Bulgaria. After the communists in Bulgaria take the power of the Country and made it a republic unlawfully, he went into Exile in Spain to escape persecution and death.
Even to these day as an anointed by the Church he has the status and is King of Bulgaria and he appears to be the last living Eastern Orthodox Christian monarch living !!!

Among the landscape artists who have worked on the Vrana Park include V. Georgiev, K. Baykushev, Jules Locheau, Johann Kellerer, Anton Kraus, Alaricus Delmard and Wilhelm Schacht. The park includes a lake and several rock gardens.

Vrana Palace is closed for visiting during the Work week days (as King Simeon Saxo-Coburg) is often living there and only opened for visitors during Weekend Saturdays / Sundays from 10:00 to 16:00 to reach it there is a special bus number 505 that walks to there only weekends, the entrance fee to Vrana is quite symbolic only 5 lv. and really worths the price.

To conclude this post I totally enjoyed the silence and beaty of Vrana, if you’re overloaded from today’s busy life or just want to show your kids a little piece of history and enjoy in spring or summer time, just go visit these amazing place. The feeling there reminded me on how Adam and Eve was feeling before the fall of man while beeing in Paradise (Edem).

Reverting Malwarebytes from Free Trial Expired to Free Malwarebytes howto

malware-bytes-revert-to-free-end-free-trial-recover-from-expired-trial-purchase-to-free-to-protect-your-pc-from-spyware

Note: When the evaluation period was over, you’ll get a popup or notification, conveying message ‘Trial expired, You are no longer protected because Malwarebytes Anti-Malware free Trial has expired’, you’ll be presented with options to ‘End Trial’ and ‘Buy Premium’.
That’s pretty annoying especially as Malware Bytes is a real anti-spyware diamond software that worths to be ran every now and then to keep your PC protected from ever increasing terrible spyware malware and ransomeware.

Thanksfully it is rather easy to fix that and revert back to Malwarebytes Free Trial.

Open Malwarebytes, and on the Dashboard, click on ‘Malwarebytess or End Free Trial’, the message here does vary according to the version you have. Then will be instantly converted to the free version.

Outlook block pictures howto / Change images in E-mail messages to not show automatically

dont-download-automatically-images-pictures-in-email-correspondence-in-ms-outlook-on-windows-7-8-10

If you’re working in a corporation such as IBM or Hewlett Packard Enterprise and you’re forced to use MS Outlook Express, because of the Calendar / Lync integration, you probably will get a lot of useless Corporate Junk informative emails (Corporate SPAM). This is very annoying but the ugly thing is, you have to check that emails and you can’t simply send them in Spam folder, at least partially. The major irritation from these SPAM like corporate emails steams in the annoying pictures, which are supposed to give you e-mail interactivity sense but instead or showing a lot of laughing joyful (bur obviously brainless) looking people.
These is too much annoying at a point, so in order to decrease the mind overheat from that, I’ve decided that it will be nice to not show up the pictures in Outlook emails.

Initially I thought there might be necessery to install an extra plugin, but after a quick search in Google Search Engine, luckily it turned out Outlook is equipped with such functionality by default:

Block picture downloads for all messages in Outlook Express

  1. Click the File tab.
  2. Click Options.
  3. Click Trust Center.
  4. Under Microsoft Outlook Trust Center, click Trust Center Settings.
  5. Clear the Don’t download pictures automatically in HTML e-mail messages or RSS items check box.