Woman of the Week
Axia Women’s Oct. 19th Woman of the Week is Jaime Rene, nominated for her work in prison ministry.
She used to serve with her husband, Fr. Rene, here at St. Aidan’s Orthodox Church until they moved to the Lower Mainland in BC.
She says “We discovered that there was no Orthodox presence in any prisons across Canada in terms of volunteers, services or materials. We saw that this was a need that Fr. Rene was in a good position to fill.
As he started volunteering, he realized it’s really hard to serve liturgy or do anything on your own when you’re a priest. So he convinced me that I should come into prison with him. I started when he was working at the maximum security prison – we brought in a home-cooked Christmas meal and sang carols. It was a really moving experience: a maximum security person is pretty grim – you go through a lot of bars and heavy metal doors. But once you get in, the men are so overjoyed to see a normal person.
From there, I started going with him on a regular basis to serve liturgy or vespers or whatever it might be.”
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