Historical reference

In the 1930s, the holy martyr Pavel Gaidai, who was in exile in the remote Akmolinsk, predicted to his spiritual children: “What a big city there will be here! And trams will run, and there will also be a monastery.” They doubted: “Father, what monastery?! They close everything, they destroy it, who will build it?” “And whoever destroys it will build it,” answered the priest. This testimony of the late nun Evdokia (Levitskaya) is confirmed by her sister, Paraskeva Z., adding: “Many years passed. Once my daughter came home from work and said: “Mom, today they launched the first trolleybus.” I cried a lot: “Forgive me, my dear father, because I didn’t believe it then.” At that time, there were three trucks in all of Akmolinsk, people traveled on horses and camels. And the priest foresaw far ahead. When in the early 1970s Archimandrite Kirill organized a monastic community, and then registered a monastery in honor of the icon of the Mother of God "Seeking the Lost", I said then: "What a great Father we had!"

Among the repressed nuns who were in Akmolinsk in the 1930s and later, old parishioners named Abbess Martiniana, nuns Gabriela, Mikhaila, Raphael from the Borisoglebsky Monastery, nuns Magdalena, Evdokia from Shamordino, schema-nun Vera from Tver, nuns Evdokia, Evfalia from Odessa. Around these mothers, a community of sisters inclined to monastic life gradually formed, who in the mid-70s were gathered by Archimandrite Kirill (Borodin) into the "Cyril and Methodius Monastic Community".

Nun Nikolaya, Father Kirill's cell attendant, related that once, while setting the table for the priest and his guest, a visiting priest who was close in spirit, she heard Father Kirill reveal to him that while he was still studying at the seminary, the Queen of Heaven had appeared to him, announcing the will of God to establish this monastery. When he was sent to Tselinograd, the Mother of God met him with the following sign: entering the church, he saw how the "Pochaev" icon of the Mother of God did not fall, but rather descended, descended from the wall to the floor. He approached and knelt before it. This sign marked the beginning of a special prayerful veneration of this image of the Queen of Heaven. The abbess of the "Seeking the Lost" monastery, Nun Raphaela (Vasilenko), and the late Nun Evdokia (Levitskaya), who witnessed this incident, told about this.

Once after the all-night vigil on the day of the memory of St. Sergius of Radonezh, Father Kirill was very upset by the small number of worshipers, he even wanted to ask the ruling bishop to transfer him to another place: it seemed too modest after the celebration that the Lavra held for its venerable founder. But that night he was consoled by the appearance of the Mother of God, who revealed to him that it was in this city that he should found a monastic monastery.

In the 50s - early 1970s, the exterior of the temple, the interior and the iconostasis were quite modest. Plank wall paneling, a dismantled, as if cut off, bell tower (back in the 20s or 30s, the authorities, in every way preventing repairs, brought it to an emergency state, and the bell tower was deprived of two upper tiers and a tent), dilapidated buildings on an unimproved territory. Long-time parishioners recall how water would leak through a broken window in the drum of the central dome, forming puddles on the floor (some, however, say that the reason for this was the poor roof and cracks in the ceiling). During all the years of his rectorship (1970-1980), Father Kirill carried out repairs to the premises and construction work on the territory of the Constantine and Helen Church. The temple was plastered, the roof was repaired, gilded crosses were installed on the domes, the walls inside were painted and a new wooden iconostasis with gilding elements was installed (brought from Moscow). The icons and the icon cases themselves were updated.

On the site of a small baptistery that had existed since the early 1950s, a small church of the holy blessed prince Alexander Nevsky was built in 1980. On May 5 or 7, 1980 (the first date is on the antimins, the second – in the notes of one of the nuns) it was consecrated by Bishop Seraphim (Gachkovsky) of Alma-Ata and Kazakhstan.

Adjacent to it were the chambers where Father Kirill lived and where the ruling bishop stayed upon his arrival in Tselinograd.

Various living quarters were arranged at the Alexander Nevsky Church. A two-story building was built on the site of an old house where Father Kirill’s cell was originally located. The first floor was made of railroad ties, the second floor was made of fill, slag and sawdust. On the first floor there were cells for the priests, three rooms, on the second floor – a sewing room, later there were cells for the nuns.

A refectory, a vestry room, a prosphora room, a laundry room, and a hotel were also built. The history of the latter is as follows: a house was bought on Gabdullina Street, and a cattle yard was moved there. There were also cells and nuns lived there, about eight of them. The buildings where the cattle yard was were repaired, plastered, painted, two-tiered bunks were made, and a hotel was created. Many pilgrims came, they slept on the floor in the lower church of the Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir and in this hotel. The hotel nun was Mikhaila, she also had a small cell there. Nuns also lived in private houses on Akmolinskaya Street, Internatsionalnaya Street, Gabdullina Street.

By the beginning of 1980, more than 50 sisters worked in the community, including 2 schema nuns (Piama and Sofia), more than 20 nuns, novices, and workers.

In the 1970s, Father Kirill installed a white stone cross and a tombstone with the names of the priests who served in the church since its foundation: Archimandrite Maxim, Hieromonks Ilian, Evstafiy, Archpriests Ignatius, Simeon, Mikhail, Alexy, Maxim, Peter, Nikolai, Leonid, Parfeny, Victor, Vaptos, Nikolai, Evgeny, Nikolai, Priests Evfimy, Sergius, John, Sergius, Jacob, Feodor, John, Jacob, Deacons Feodor, Nikolai. Archpriest Vasily (surname unknown) is buried on the territory.

Current situation

After perestroika, when monasteries began to open and churches to be built, the nuns repeatedly appealed to the authorities with a request to register the monastery, and in 1990 the monastery was officially registered. It was named in honor of the revered icon of the Holy Mother of God "Seeking the Lost", which still adorns the church of the holy monastery. The monastery is located on the territory of the Constantine-Eleninsky Cathedral.

The statutory services were regularly held after the registration of the monastery in the Alexander Nevsky Church, until the Constantine-Eleninsky Cathedral again became the main church of the monastery under Abbess Damiana (Latysheva) in 1995. The rule for monastics was also read in the cathedral, and services in the Alexander Nevsky Church were held only on Sundays and major holidays. However, before 1999, even in those years (1991-1995), when services were held separately for monks and laity in both churches, services in the cathedral were also held strictly according to the charter.

At first, in 1990, it was decided to build a monastery in the village of Malotimofeevka. Land was allocated, a project was drawn up. Materials were brought in: bricks, sand, blocks. A foundation pit was dug for the church, and the ruling bishop Eusebius (Savvin) (now Metropolitan of Pskov and Porkhov) came to the site to consecrate the foundation of the church. The foundation for a residential building was also laid. A well was drilled for water, the area was temporarily fenced with barbed wire. The first summer, potatoes were planted there.

But soon the decision was changed and they began to build a residential building on the territory of the Constantine and Helen Church. The project was made by the city architect Kochetov.

At first they planned to raise the building two blocks above the ground, but it turned out that the building would cover the church. They decided to lower it two blocks. They called archaeologists, did a soil analysis, they said that the groundwater was far away and the water would not rise. But when they started digging the pit, water appeared. To get the excavator down into the pit, they brought in expanded clay, and on the other side they installed a pump and pumped out the water. They took the fill soil down to the clay. They laid the slabs and concreted them, creating a monolith, in two or three rows.

A lot of the work was done free of charge and the Cossacks helped a lot in the construction of the monastery. The sisters went with mugs to shops, to bazaars. Pilgrims brought donations. Transfers and parcels arrived. Enterprises and organizations helped. They wrote letters asking for help. The three-story residential building helped the entire city build.

Not only enterprises and the city administration, but also private citizens, among whom were not only Orthodox, but also non-believers and Muslims, made donations to the charitable cause. There were also miraculous cases when deceased relatives appeared in a dream to some who lived in another city, asking to transfer money for the construction of the monastery in Tselinograd, naming unfamiliar names of those to whom this money was to be handed over. In October 1994, the building was built, all the sisters of the monastery moved to it. In the winter of 1995, a tonsured nun of the Tolga Monastery, nun (later abbess) Damiana (Latysheva) was appointed abbess of the monastery. In 1999, she was replaced by nun Raphaela (Vasilenko), who currently leads the spiritual life of the monastery in the rank of abbess (since April 9, 2011).

Shrines of the monastery:

• icon of the Holy Mother of God "Seeking the Lost",
• reliquary with particles of the relics of the Kiev-Pechersk saints (about 80 particles), donated to the monastery church by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate,
• icon of the Holy Mother of God "Pochaevskaya".

Contacts:

Address: 010000, Astana, Republic Ave., 12B

Phone: (+7 7172) 53-69-67 Fax: (+7 7172) 53-72-58