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Aprim Moshe Iskhaq ministers in
the Assyrian Church of the East in Linköping, Sweden, Aprim was born
in Duhok, Iraq, on 20 April 1974. Photo: Andro.
When asked in a TV interview "how many Assyrians are members of the
Assyrian Church of the East?" the young priest answered: “I don’t know.”
Next day at a meeting of the Executive Board or Seeta, the administrative
committee of the Assyrian Church of the East in Linköping, the priest the
same question. Members of the committee's answer varied from 400 to 600. All
guess work.
The young priest, Rev. Aprim Moshe Iskhaq, was ordained on 27 November 2004
by Metropolitan Mar Avrahim Odishu, to minister in the city of Linköping,
Sweden for the Assyrian community upon the request of the community members.
His first act was to find out the number of the members of the Assyrian
Church of the East in Linköping. He designed a form of questionnaire in
Arabic and Swedish. The form was distributed to all those
attending the Christmas Eve celebrations on 25 December 2004. On that date
after church services 150 forms were picked up by the members of the
congregation and 140 completed forms have since been returned to the
Administrative Committee.
Another project underway is the preparation and distribution of another form
asking members of the Church where their parents and forefathers who had
passed away were buried. This, Rev. Aprim , considers as very important to
maintain the memory of their deceased parents and to keep a link with the
past.
The form asked the following questions:
1) Name of family head
2) Date of birth
3) Marital Status, if so name of spouse and birthdate
4) City of Residence
5) Members of the family, their dates of birth, relationship
6) Country and city residing in
7) Date head of family entered Sweden
8) Swedish citizen? Permanent resident? Other?
9) Address
10) Home phone number, Mobile phone number
The Administrative Committee is now planning to prepare an account of the
members of the Church. Since most Assyrian families live together with their
parents, Seeta plans to record family members from their parents.
Rev. Aprim is also planning to prepare a telephone directory of all Assyrians
in Linköping. The Seeta hopes to include all Assyrians in Sweden in the
telephone directory.
Teaching of the Assyrian language is also given high priority. Shortly
Assyrian language classes will begin. Assyrian students in Sweden studying
their mother language are graded and their scores are added to their grades
in the Swedish public schools.
Shortly Rev. Aprim will attend Swedish and English languages and plans to
study Theology at a Swedish University.
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