Wow, some of your guys on here know Fr. Stavros Chatzis? He's an amazing priest, very young and full of energy. I almost wish I was part of his parish, but alas his is 40 minutes away by car, although I might help with some youth activities over there- btw, he now has a beautiful baby girl named Anna. Plus I've got our own cool priest Fr. Peter Mentis, he's a Holy Crosser too.
As for being welcomed in church, in Canada its weird. In some parishes, where there are more northern greeks like Makedonians, Epirots, Evros, if you are greek but have lighter features/are nothern greek yourself, you're more welcome. In some parishes it's the opposite, if you're an Cretan/Dodecanese island person or from Imvros,Tenedos, Constantinople, you're treated better than northern people. That also partially depends on the priest, whoi gives the altar boy from his region the better roles etc. Peloponesians tend to be treated equally in most places. Thus, even when we play soccer in our church's gravel and cement lot behind the church, we divide the teams "island people" versus "northern people".
Then theres the "if you're greek and orthodox you're welcome because all Hellenic lands are equal."
Theres also the "if you're orthodox, you're welcome whether your chinese or a canadian blonde bt that tends to be more of the 30 year old people. Us teenagers are more hardcore than our parents sometimes. Heck, once we got a 50 year old chinese lady to dance tsifteteli ("belly dance") at our festival, at which of course the yiayaides (grannies) were staring and pointing, cheering and laughing.
