A man in Siberia has constructed an entire Russian Orthodox church out of snow.
Alexander Bityokhina made the church for his village of Sosnovka, building the structure out of ice so that the churchgoers of Sosnovka wouldn't have to travel far to go to pray, as Dailymotion reports.
"You know, it's the voice of the heart, he is a believer, it's built by my son." said Bityokhina's mother Tatyana.
"He just wants to pray in a church, but we don't have enough resources to go to the city or even to Azovo [the nearest village].
"He was thinking a lot, and then decided to build it."
The Church features a 106-square foot prayer space and includes an altar, various icons, and a copy of the New Testament. Bityokhina named the Church after Christ's birth, giving it the Russian name 'Christorozhdestvenskaya'. The structure is adorned with a cross on top of it, bringing the icy sanctuary to over 15 ft in height.
The construction took one and a half months and required 400 cubic feet of snow. Bityokhina sought the blessing of the local archpriest and his structure now gives his village a dedicated holy place to pray.
At present the village experiences temperatures that average -30 degrees Celsius, or -9 degrees Fahrenheit. Once the warmer weather comes, the snow structure will melt.
"It's all a fairytale!" said one fellow villager.
