Christ is Risen!

Before I post about my upcoming schedule later today, I want to provide an update for those of you still waiting for your pre-orders. I especially wish to apologize to and assure those of you who have been waiting, that your pre-orders will be arriving soon.

After I helped St. Tikhon’s Press sign and ship the large quantities of Thebaid pre-orders back in mid-March, I left them with what I thought was an adequate supply of signed books and signed/matted fine-art prints to complete the remaining few dozen shipments after I had left on the next leg of my travels. However, they/we somehow miscalculated, and the Press soon ran out of signed copies and the fine-art prints. (But I was unaware of this until later.)

My ongoing road travels occurred at the same time as the international travels of STMP’s managing editor, which led to sharply reduced communication between us for a couple of weeks, followed then by Holy Week (during which the Monastery and Press are focused on the services, with limited business activity). Though I began hearing in early April from supporters who had not yet received their orders, I had a very difficult time getting any answers from the Press until after Pascha/Easter.

So, it was only late last week that I could confirm how many orders STMP had remaining to be shipped (20), what we needed to complete them (signatures), and how many receive signed/matted fine-art prints (16), and how then to fulfill the orders most efficiently.

We decided the best method of fulfillment would be for me to provide personally-signed bookplates for STMP to insert into the books, plus the signed/matted prints, which will enable STMP to complete all the remaining pre-orders for shipment as soon as they receive the bookplates and prints from me.*

In addition to the pre-orders to be shipped by St. Tikhon’s Press, I’m also arranging to deliver books to my dear friends and supporters at Christ the Savior in Cincinnati, most of which were delayed by my travel and lack of cargo capacity. I will have St. Tikhon’s Press ship the number of books that we need to the parish, and I will have the books ready for pickup at the church, sorted by name. I’ll announce a target delivery date soon, well in advance of the June 1 parish book signing event that we just scheduled. I will also ask Fr Steven to announce the CTS book distribution plan via his regular parish email announcements.

Thank you all for your patience! It has grieved me very much to have any delivery delays, but we are almost there, and will soon have all the pre-orders fulfilled!

Yours in Christ ~ Ralph/zosimas

NOTE: * We also have a small number of orders (7) requiring address verification, so please watch for an email from me if you haven’t received your order by mid-May.