KENAI — A painted icon of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane that sits behind the altar in a Kenai church is getting repaired, months after it was damaged by a 7.1-magnitude earthquake.
The Peninsula Clarion reports the quake struck the Kenai Peninsula on Jan. 24, damaging a highway and destroying several homes. It also caused a heavy cross inside Holy Assumption of the Virgin Mary Russian Orthodox church to fall over and tear through the canvas of the icon.
The church council decided Saturday to send the icon to Colorado for repair.
Holy Assumption is now working to raise the funds needed to fix the large rip covering most of Jesus’ right arm as well as a burn mark left by a candle.
The icon was created by Grigorii Petukhov, an Aleut who lived in Sitka during the mid-1800s.
