Micah (Phiasayavong)

He was baptized and confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church in his homeland , after which he was sent to the Catholic center in the Sam Pkhran district near Bangkok ^[5] . Soon, Catholic missionaries determined him to study at Saengtham College, planning to send him to one of the Catholic seminaries in the Philippines in order to prepare him to serve as a priest in Southeast Asia ^[6] .

While still living on a Catholic mission, he began to visit the Russian Nikolsky Orthodox Parish in Bangkok in his spare time, and became interested in the theological differences between Orthodoxy and Catholicism . Studying at the college gave him the opportunity to become more familiar with the history of the Christian Church and the great schism of 1054 ^[6] .

By my own admission: “While studying at the Catholic seminary, I met a Russian monk and missionary father Oleg [Cherepanin] . We got close to him, and he had a great influence on me. If not for Father Oleg, I would not have known anything about the Russian Orthodox Church. He devoted his life to missionary work, constantly being in communication with people. His personality attracted me, perhaps, by the power of faith that I saw. It was a true devotion to God, trust in Him. He was not like ordinary people. In a Catholic seminary, everyone is preparing to become monks, but many Catholic priests and monks live like ordinary people. I do not want to say at all that they are bad, and Father Oleg is good. But in Russian monasticism, at least in the form in which my mentor represented him, I felt some primordiality. Then I saw the Orthodox service and felt that this is a special, ancient way of turning to God. It seemed to me that Christians prayed this way 20 centuries ago ... I could not help but become interested in the history of the Russian Church and, having come in touch with it, I clearly felt that this Church has preserved apostolic succession ” ^[7] .

After completing his second year of study at a Catholic college, he left this institution, as well as the Catholic mission, and applied to the Representation of the Russian Orthodox Church with a statement on his conscious choice to be an Orthodox Christian. Still wanting to be a clergyman, he asked me to provide him with the opportunity to receive a theological education in one of the Russian Orthodox religious educational institutions . After quite a long time and testing the truth of his conversion to Orthodoxy, a decision was made to join him to the Orthodox Church in the second order through anointing and leave him to undergo annual practice at the Church of St. Nicholas and the Miracle Worker in Bangkok, after which he applied for enrollment in one of the theological seminaries in Russia ^[6] .

On April 5, 2009, before the Divine Liturgy in the temple of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker of the city of Bangkok, in the presence of numerous parishioners and pilgrims of the Nicholas parish, he denied the errors of the Roman Catholic Church and professed the truth of Orthodoxy by loudly reading the undistorted Nicene Tsaregradsky Creed without adding a branch and a representative of the Russian Orthodox Church Kingdom of Thailand, Father Superior Oleg (Cherepanin) was annexed to the Orthodox Church with the name of Anthony in honor of St. Anthony the Great ^{[6 ]} . After that, obedience took place at the St. Nicholas Parish of Bangkok in Thailand ^[8] .

In June 2009, with the blessing of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Cyril was determined to study at the Sretensky Theological Seminary in Moscow ^[8] . On the eve of September 1 of that year, before leaving from Thailand to Russia, a parting prayer took place in the Nikolaev temple of Bangkok, for which the abbot of the church, Father Superior Oleg (Cherepanin), addressed him with good wishes for God's help in teaching, urged to strictly observe the disciplinary regulations of the Seminary and persistently work in mastering knowledge. After the prayer, the parishioners wished Tongham a happy journey and asked his prayers for them from the shrines of the Russian land. Priest Daniil Vann delivered a new student to the Sretensky Theological Seminary at Bangkok International Airport , from where he flew to Russia ^[9] .

On October 6, 2010, his siblings Sompheng and Khampan were baptized in the Nicholas temple of Bangkok, who had previously made the decision to convert to Orthodoxy under his influence ^[10] .

In October 2010, together with Napatra (Natalia), Abhichataphong left for Russia to study at the faculty of foreign students of the St. Petersburg Theological Seminary . The Committee of the Orthodox Church Foundation in Thailand decided to pay for their transportation costs, and also established scholarships, the size of which will be determined by student performance ^[11] . Entering the seminary, he decided on a monastic tonsure. In 2012, he admitted: “I dream of returning to my homeland and becoming a missionary. In Laos, an Orthodox missionary preaches from scratch, he has to plow virgin lands, so I have to put my whole life on it. It is unlikely that the mission in Laos is compatible with having a family. After all, the family is a big responsibility. Having married and having children, I can no longer break loose and go to unknown lands. I will need to have a house, stability. I want to devote my life to the Orthodox mission in Laos ” ^[7] .

In accordance with the tradition, publicly read prayers in different languages ​​of the world at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, on April 24, 2011 at Easter in the academic church of the Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian, he read out the Easter Gospel Conception (John 1: 1-17) in Thai ^{[12 ]} . January 7, 2012 at Christmas he performed a song in Lao ^[13] . On March 3, 2012, during the divine service “Let Now Come”, I read the Trisagion in Thai ^[14] .

In August 2011, led by a group of parishioners of the All Saints Parish in Pattaya , who were entrusted with the mission of conducting local activities, visited Laos , where he held a number of missionary meetings and interviews in distant villages ^[15] .

In 2012, a Russian-Lao Orthodox prayer book was published, translated by Tongham in conjunction with Pon (Peter) Samphet ^[16] . The basis was a prayer book, previously translated by priest Daniil Bath into Thai ^[5] .

On October 5, 2013, in the academic church of the Apostle and Evangelist John the Evangelist, Bishop Ambrose of Peterhof was tonsured a reader ^[17] .

In June 2014, he graduated from the St. Petersburg Theological Seminary, defending the work “Features of the Orthodox Mission in Southeast Asia and Southeast Asia” ^[18] and received a bachelor’s diploma ^[19] . Since Anthony expressed his desire for monasticism, a decision was made to send him to the Assumption Monastic Community in Ratchaburi as a novice for passing the master and carrying on monastery obedience ^[20] .

Returning to Thailand, he began to translate the "Law of God" by Archpriest Seraphim Slobodsky into Lao ^[21] . It was noted that the Laotian translation of the “Law of God”, following a similar Thai translation, is a direct fulfillment of the wish of Patriarch Kirill, who, when he was Metropolitan of Smolensky and Kaliningrad and the DECR chairman, paid attention to the absence of doctrinal literature in local languages ​​when visiting Thailand. ^[22] .

In early November of that year he became an altar boy and a reader of the Trinity Church in Phuket. On December 7 of the same year, he delivered his first sermon in Thai at the Trinity Church at the Divine Liturgy after the Holy Communion verse ^[21] .

On February 15, 2015, in the Nicholas Church in Bangkok, Archbishop Pyatigorsky and Cherkessky Feofilakt (Kuryanov) was ordained a deacon for further service in the parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church in Thailand ^[23] .

On April 3, 2016, 500 copies of this book were published, and the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church in Thailand, Archimandrite Oleg (Cherepanin) sent a report to the Hierarchy with a request to award Deacon Tongham (Anthony) Phiasayangong with a medal of the Russian Orthodox Church, and from the Representation he was given a laptop and a letter of thanks ^[24] .

On April 8, 2016, at the Holy Assumption male monastic community in Ratchaburi, with the blessing of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Kirill Archimandrite Oleg (Cherepanin), he was tonsured a mantle with the name of Micah in honor of the Monk Mikhey of Radonezh ^[25] before the Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts .

On August 21, 2016, at the Church of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist on Presnya in Moscow, the head of the Office of the Moscow Patriarchate for Foreign Institutions, Bishop Anthony Bogorodsky (Sevryuk), was ordained hieromonk and awarded the medal of St. Innocent, Metropolitan of Moscow, for his efforts to translate God's Law into Lao. Left in the clergy of St. Nicholas Cathedral in Bangkok ^[26] .