The Mar Thoma Evangelistic Association (MTEA), organisers of the Maramon Convention, has launched elaborate preparations for the 120th Christian religious meet to be held on the riverbed of Pampa at Maramon near Kozhencherry from February 8 to 15.
Thatched shedA large thatched shed (pandal) is being constructed at the venue. Thomas Mar Themotheos Episcopa, MTEA president, inaugurated the work on the pandal on Saturday.
DegradationThe Pampa riverbed at Maramon has been facing alarming degradation owing to the indiscriminate sand-mining over the past two decades.
The organisers are levelling the ground and clearing the vegetation.
Fr. George Varghese Punnackadu, MTEA general secretary, said that the Metropolitan of the Mar Thoma Church, Joseph Mar Thoma, would inaugurate the meet on February 8. Evangelists Bishop Sifo De Silva from South Africa; Samuel D. Kamalesan; Leonard Sweete from the United States; and Dushanta Rodrigo from Sri Lanka would be the key speakers at the convention, he said. Bishops attached to the Mar Thoma Church and other churches will address sessions of the meet. A separate pandal for women and children, eateries, sheds for missionaries and the clergy, and three temporary bridges linking the convention venue with the river bank on the Maramon side would also be constructed.
