October 30, 2009 Visit to Local Monastery

Holy Myrrhbearers Monastery, Otego, NY
Originally uploaded by JuneNY

A couple of weeks earlier, I was driving down Main Street in Otego and saw a sign for Holy Myrrhbearers Monastery. I turned down the side road, thinking maybe I could locate it, but I could not find it that day. At home later on, I did a mapquest and got an exact address for it.

I asked my friend Linda, who is Roman Catholic if she would be interested in checking it out and she was. So, on October 30th, we set out early in the day. With the help of mapquest, it was easy to find.

We were met at the door and welcomed in. The nun who let us in handed us over to Sister Michaela (pictured to the left) who gave us a tour and visited with us and answered all of our questions. Sister Michaela was an Episcopal nun for a long time before she became an orthodox nun. We attended a short prayer ceremony at noon, just before the residents were going to have their lunch. Linda and I were not the only "civilians" there, there were two young girls who I think were staying in the retreat house.

The outside of the monastery is rather plain, but the inside is very beautiful as you will see from the attached pictures. They rent rooms out in their retreat building and raise farm animals and vegetables. The monastery is very small, I think there are six nuns living there.

After leaving the monastery, we headed to Bainbridge where we went to The Frogpond, a huge fruit and vegetable stand, and we also had a buffet lunch at a restaurant there.