As the internet develops, web sites become more and more interactive. At the Saint Nicholas Church home page (somewhere in the US) you can follow a link which takes you to an interactive page which is divided into three sections. At the top you can see a series of about 12 topics including the feeding of the five thousand, Lenten services and Holy Week. By clicking on each link a question appears in the left-hand window. To reveal the answer just click on the “answer” link and it will be served up to you in the right hand column. One question was “Who was the only one of the apostles to not abandon the Lord when he was arrested? What important task did the Lord give him while he was on the cross?” The pages were well laid out and easy to navigate. It wont be long now before the use of so called “cgi scripts” and “java applets” become commonplace allowing a web page to keep score of how many questions you answered in say a multiple choice quiz. The site also contains plenty of other material including Questions and Answers about Orthodoxy, Thoughts on the Sunday Gospels (Sermons from the various Sundays of the year), Services (Service texts and explanations of Orthodox Services), Recipes for fasting periods and much more. Visit at http://www.orthodox.net/ or go directly to the quiz at http://www.orthodox.net/questions/index.htm.
Another interesting site is a series of pages devoted to the Russian Orthodox Church’s missionary work to the native people of Alaska. In 1794, the Russian Orthodox Church established its first mission in North America, at Kodiak Island in south eastern Alaska and, in 1799, appointed the first American Bishop. By 1808 the capital was moved to Novoarkhangelsk (Sitka), where in 1848 the Cathedral of St. Michael was built, the seat of the Bishop of Kamchatka, the Kurile and Aleutian Islands, and Alaska — a vast expanse stretching over 2,000 miles.
The story of the many remarkable priests and monks who served the Church in Alaska, recounted in a number of valuable journals in the Church Archives, is one of incredible achievements against often overwhelming odds. They contended daily with bitter cold and deep snows, travelling by dogsled to attend their widely dispersed parishes. The constant lack of essential resources led them to sell candles and books, and to sometimes sacrifice their own salaries to meet parish expenses. Despite the sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867, and the incursion of other groups, Catholic and Protestant, the Russian Orthodox priests continued their mission, leaving an indelible mark upon the culture of the Native Alaskans, visible even today. Visit at http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/russian/russch0.html.

S. Liacos