The temple “St. Nikola” was the only one for all the villages around Elena. The villagers used to conduct their religious rituals in the local little village churchyards. They prayed for rain and rich harvests under century-old oak-trees. They organised liturgies in the days of their saints – St. Archangel, St. Nikola, and St. Ilia. The oldest man burned incense over the common table with incense on a broken roof-tile instead of an incense-burner. The villagers came to Elena to the church “St. Nikola” on Sundays. The church days became market days as well. Thus, later on, they started organising fairs that lasted three days and took place three times a year. On April 23, 1800 – the day of St. Georgi, when Elena was attacked by Muslim tribes (kardzhalii), the church “St. Nikola” was burned down together with most of the books. Without the permission of the Turkish authorities, the people of Elena started restoring the church. They rebuilt the church in secret for 40 days and nights. They had to dig the church into the ground in order not to tease the enslavers. It was restored back to the way it looked, in 1804, with the funds donated by the rich people and the labour of the poor. The rebuilding was managed by Hadji Ivan Kisiov – grandson of Pope Petko Sheytana, who attended the Sultan’s mother in Tzarigrad in a hat with a wheat-ear and persuaded her that the people of Elena should be relieved of their obligation to pay tax on growing of their wheat. Having heard that the trade governor of the region would order an examination whether the people of Elena were building a church illegally, Hadji Ivan Kisiov had the outer walls of the church grouted with lime and charcoal solution one night. Thus the walls looked old and smoke-black. Hadji Ivan kindly welcomed the examiners, gave them 30 golden coins, showed them the building and told them: “Greet the governor for me and tell him that the people of Elena don’t build a church but reconstruct an old threshing-floor”. The church looks like a stronghold from outside. Its walls are made of stone and are 1-meter thick; the little windows have iron gratings, and the altar is like an embrasure. The door was made of thick oak boards studded with iron, with a unique heavy lock mechanism. It is roofed in with