Peter and Demetri Patitsas
Contact Info
- www.thespfl.com
- Email: peterpatitsas@gmail.com
- Phone: 814-386-5254 or 814-386-6851
In the spring of 2005, a group of young men traveled to the St. Gregory of Sinai's Monastery in California. They enjoyed hospitality from the monastery and in return provided labor. The young men, all laymen,aided the monastic community through service work. The experience was positive, refreshing, and reviving to the membersof that trip. So, they decided to mature the concept of service work for monastic communities into a formal program known as “St. Paul’s Fellowship of Labor (SPFL).”
Peter Patitsas, co-founder of SPFL along with his brother Demetri, feels that SPFL is an insightful and worthwhile non-profit organization that can help to unify and strengthen orthodoxy in this nation and in the world. The mission of SPFL is simple and to the point: to create an understanding and awareness of monastic communities and their activities, provide a service of labor to the monasteries, recognize one’s own faith and ability in the community, and to gain and foster long lasting friendships.
St. Paul’s Fellowship of Labor is a program that provides opportunity to serve monastic communities across the world and to meet and understand people of all ages and backgrounds. SPFL currently has seven programs and is growing quickly. Programs are run in California, Washington, and Massachusetts, as well as in the Bahamas. Requests from Canada, Belarus, Guatemala and the country of Georgia have been received and future programs are being implemented in these countries. Even though the group goes to many different locations, the hard work is the same. Any type of labor that is necessary will be done: pouring cement, framing, running electrical lines, digging trenches, insulating, clearing land, the list goes on.
Now in its third spring, SPFL has grown from 14 members to over 50 members and the numbers continue to rise as helping people in need is addressed more frequently.