With the blessing of Metropolitan Pavel of Khanty-Mansiysk and Surgut, Administrator of the Philippine-Vietnamese Diocese, and at the invitation of Priest Evgeny Chebykin, Rector of the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God “Joy of All Who Sorrow” in Langepas, Hieromonk Korniliy (Molev), Secretary of the Philippine-Vietnamese Diocese, visited the city. On October 9, 2024, on the day of the commemoration of the Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian and St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Hieromonk Korniliy and Priest Evgeny celebrated the Divine Liturgy.
In 2019, when the Philippine-Vietnamese Diocese was formed, Father Evgeny, as one of the most educated priests of the Khanty-Mansiysk Diocese, visited the Philippines to train newly ordained priests. This time, Hieromonk Korniliy had the opportunity to visit Priest Evgeny’s parish in return.The Liturgy was celebrated in Slavonic, English, and Cebuano. At the end of the service, Hieromonk Korniliy thanked those present for their joint prayer. He especially noted the singing of the choir under the direction of Mother Nadezhda Chebykina. Then he gave a sermon in which he noted that thanks to the holy Equal-to-the-Apostles brothers Cyril and Methodius, we, living in different parts of the country and being far from each other, speak the same language. In the Philippines and in many other countries, there are many dialects, and people often do not understand each other. After the service, Father Korniliy visited the Museum and Exhibition Center, where he became acquainted with the culture of the Khanty people and noted the similarities in the behavior of local small peoples and small nationalities of the Philippine Islands. After visiting the museum, at the invitation of Gymnasium No. 6, he held a conversation with senior school students. The children asked questions animatedly, in particular, they were interested in the peculiarities of Orthodox life and the interaction of different cultures in the Philippine Islands. Then the chairman of the trade union organization of TPP Langepasneftegaz, Yevgeny Vitalyevich Rogozin, in agreement with the director of the enterprise, Denis Gafurovich Mukhametov, gave Father Korniliy a tour, during which he showed the first spring of the oil field in the city of Langepas. The priest became familiar with the principle of oil production with great interest, since he has an engineering and physics education. That same evening, Hieromonk Korniliy held a meeting at a Sunday school for adults, where he told the audience about the Orthodox mission in the Philippines.
