The Mother's Day is traditionally celebrated on the last Sunday of November. It is not a national holiday, but many concerts and events are usually devoted to the Mother's Day. Dut to the coronavirus pandemic, this year it was decided to celebrate the holiday by feting mothers of many children in a chamberlike setting.
On November 23 the Burtsevs came to Penza invited by Olga Chistyakova, head of the Penza regional branch of the Union of Women of Russia.
The family's patriarch Aleksey Burtsev works as a senior priest in St. Alexander Nevsky chapel in the town of Kuznetsk-8. Together with his wife Anastasia they raise 11 children, seven of whom are their own and four adopted.
This large and close-knit family is active in community work. The senior priest initiated to open a school of the unarmed self-defence on the territory of the military community in Kuznetsk-8. Those who want to study Orthodox Christian books and the Holy Scripture can do it in a church library.
Olga Chistyakova cordially thanked the parents and especially the mother of the large family for her goodness and readiness to share her emotional warmth with the others, for this invisible, but essential labour of motherhood which is impossible to overestimate.
Presents were given on this meeting: Olga Chistyakova gave the schoolchildren a laptop necessary for a successful education, the whole family received a food gift basket and the youngest children got toys and books.
