Our principled position is not to put any pressure and violence when involving Thais. If they are interested in Orthodoxy, they have the opportunity to come to our Church, to study the creed. Services are performed in Thai, and local residents have the opportunity, being Buddhists, to understand Orthodoxy better, and then to select.
I don’t recall the case, that we baptized a Thai not less than six months after his first visit to the temple. He is catechized and only when we are confident we carry out christening ceremony. Some dozen of Thais have been baptized in all parishes nowadays. Many of them are quite active.
But we have another problem: we have a need in the Thai clergy and are waiting for the young local guys who were sent to study in Russia, when they return back as shepherds. There is a principled agreement with the Thai authorities that in every Orthodox Church of the Kingdom must be both a Russian priest and a Thai priest because this is Thailand after all, and the Russian Orthodox Church is registered here as the Orthodox Church in Thailand of the Moscow Patriarchate”.10
10 The Archimandrite Oleg (Cherepanin): “Our fundamental position is not to pay any pressure and violence upon Thais” // patriarchia.ru, the 7th of August 2013 (date of access: 24.07.2014).
The newspaper Pattaya Daily News wrote about the first Orthodox Thai priest: “Danai Vanna is the name of the first in the history of Thailand Thai Orthodox priest, who became the father of Daniel. He is 32 years old. He is from the province Prachinburi where, after finishing a secondary school, he entered a technical College. With a degree he worked in a branch of IBM two years, and then he moved to Bangkok, where fate brought him together with the rector of the Orthodox Church, now the Archimandrite Oleg, in the world Cherepanin. It happened so that the father Oleg ordered the computer to the store where Danai worked, and when it was necessary to install this computer in the office of the father Oleg at the Church, the future priest came to him with this task. As the father Oleg told, the young man was impressed by what he saw in the Orthodox Church, he was interested in painting, icons, and he asked a lot. He went five months to preaching and was soon baptized.
Naturally, one need Orthodox Thais both parishioners and priests for the full existence of the Orthodox Church in Thailand. Therefore the direction of Danai to study at the theological Seminary in St.Petersburg, taking into consideration his interest to Russia and Orthodoxy, has become quite natural. But before he was finally sent to Russia for a long time, the father Oleg arranged for him a visit on the route Moscow-Yaroslavl-St. Petersburg for one month. And only after that Danai made the final decision, and left Thailand for six long years. And in the sixth year of his stay in Russia he married a Russian. His bride`s name is Elena and they married in Yaroslavl, where Elena was a singer of the Church choir. Danai, now Daniel, after graduating from the Seminary has been serving in Bangkok and Pattaya since three years. His current spiritual dignity is the Dean”.11
