Off to our Annual Retreat...

Sunday, August 22 - Thursday, August 26, 2010:

For the next couple of days, we will be spending our time exclusively with Jesus :-) Yes, we are off to our annual retreat - a time of abundant grace, a time to experience God's love anew, and a time to fall in love again with Him who loved us first. We trust that He will lead us beside quiet waters and restore our souls (Ps 23:2-3). God is always faithful. We will be praying for you...please keep us in your prayers too. See you on the other side!

Savoring our Catholic History: Vatican Splendors

Friday, August 13, 2010:

How much of the history of our Catholic faith do you know? Well, we learned quite a bit when we spent some time at the Vatican Splendors (http://www.vaticansplendors.com/) exhibit held at the History Museum here in St. Louis. There were a lot of pieces of art work that were magnificent in telling the history of our faith. Some of these pieces were being shown for the first time to the general public! From the beginnings of the apostles Peter and Paul, and the early church, the "splendors" took us through a journey of learning about our popes and the happenings of our Church throughout the centuries. Towards the end of our tour, we touched the cast of the hand of Pope John II (just about the only thing we could touch there!)...which was special. Speaking about media, the "splendors" were an excellent way to help many meet God in the arts simply through the description of stories in the Scriptures alongside the hardcore facts of our Catholic faith and traditions that have stood the test of time. It was truly edifying - be sure to visit the "splendors" when you can...its well worth your time!

Parish Exhibit in Wichita, Kansas

Saturday, August 7 - Sunday, August 8, 2010:

During our trip to Wichita, we also conducted a parish exhibit at Church of the Magdalene (http://www.magdalenwichita.com/) after the Saturday and Sunday masses. The pastor, Fr. Patrick, his associate Fr. Roger and the parishioners welcomed us very warmly. Sr. Rebecca and Jackie gave pulpit talks at the masses to share some of our media and explain our mission to the congregation . We learned that the Church of the Magdalene is a vibrant parish and has over 1000 families! Sr. Connie, the pastoral associate told us that the parishioners come from many nations. Most of the parishioners have young families and so it was beautiful to see how many of them took resources to help their children grow in the faith. Some parishioners has already obtained our media from our website but there were also many who asked for our website information so that they could our media there. We praise God for using us as instruments to bring His love to the people of Wichita!

Catholic Family Conference in Wichita, Kansas

Friday, August 6 - Sunday, August 8, 2010:

Sr. Rebecca, Jackie, and Laura all traveled to Wichita, Kansas for the annual Midwest Catholic Family Conference (www.catholicfamilyconference.org/). There were hundreds of families there! We brought some of our books, music, and DVDs and set up an exhibit at the conference along with many other exhibitors. The conference featured some great speakers who shared their knowledge and personal experience on topics such as "End of Life Issues", "Dangers of the New Age Deception", and "Laughter: the Sanity of the Family". We took turns attending some of the talks and taking care of the exhibit. Sharon Lee Giganti gave the talk on New Age and was very powerful! She was deeply involved in the New Age movement before she realized that she was wrong and that God was the answer to all her life's difficulties. Sr. Rebecca met her during the weekend and found out that she is a novice in the Pauline Holy Family Institute (www.vocations-holyfamily.com/). This Institute is one of the 10 religious orders founded by Blessed James Alberione including the Daughters of St. Paul (www.alberionefilm.com/). Since she is a novice, she is still in formation for the Holy Family Institute, but will take her first vows this fall. It was so nice to meet someone from our Pauline "family" while we were out in Kansas! We also met Sisters from different communities including the Sisters of Mary Mother of the Church (www.sistersofmarymotherofthechurch.org/) and the Olivetan Benedictine Sisters (www.olivben.org/). We stayed with Sisters who are from the Congregation of St. Joseph (www.csjoseph.org/wichita_kansas). Their convent was beautiful! One of their charisms is hospitality and it really showed. They were so kind and generous to us, willing to help us in any way. All in all it was a great weekend. We met so many kind people trying to help their families grow in their faith and grow closer to God. We are thankful for the opportunity to be able to share the Word of God with so many families.

Young Adult Retreat in Chicago - Coming up!

Are you a young woman between 18 and 30 years looking for a summer get-away with Jesus? We have one planned just for you!

You are all invited to our Young Adult Come and See Weekend in Chicago this summer from Friday August 20 - Monday August 23, 2010.

Please contact Sr. Helena Raphael at 617-850-5584 or HelRaphaelfsp@aol.com for more information.

The retreat will be held in our convent at 172 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Illinois, 60601. Jesus, Our Master is waiting for you! You can count on our prayers!

Enjoy the pictures from the retreat that Laura and I attended a couple of years ago :-)

Back in St. Louis...and off to Wichita, Kansas!

Thursday, August 5, 2010

We returned to St. Louis from our summer experience at our Motherhouse in Boston about a week ago. We are slowly finding our bearings now that we are back "home". It was great to see the sisters again and we truly received a warm welcome! Now that we are getting back to business, we will be hitting to road again tomorrow (Fri) for the weekend. Our destination: Wichita, Kansas where we will bring God's Love through our media to people there attending the Catholic Family Conference (www.catholicfamilyconference.org) and a parish exhibit at Church of the Magdalene (www.magdalenwichita.com). Please keep us in your prayers as we do keep you in ours. Stay tuned for our missionary news when we get back!

Fun in Vermont!

Friday, July 23 - Sunday, July 25, 2010

Being in Vermont for the weekend was great because we got to see all the "must see" sites. Laura gave us the grand tour of her hometown (Newport). On Saturday, we went for morning mass to her parish, St. Mary Star of the Sea (http://catholicparishesofnortheastvermont.com/) overlooking the beautiful Lake Memphremagog. After breakfast, we got to see the US/Canada border which was just about 10 minutes from Newport. We then made a trip to see how maple syrup is made at one of the local sugarhouses owned by a friend of Laura's family. We learned that it takes almost 40 gallons of sap from the maple trees to make 1 gallon of maple syrup. No wonder the stuff is so precious! We even got a bottle of the "real" maple syrup for keeps at the end of the tour :-) After a tour of Burlington, University of Vermont campus and following our parish exhibit in Winooski, we had dinner with one of Laura's former pastor's of her parish. On our back to Boston on Sunday, we made sure to stop by Vermont's very own "Ben & Jerry's". The home-made ice-cream was quite refreshing. It was really cool to be in Vermont and experience the breathtaking scenery and fresh air - there's nothing like it, you've just gotta go there yourself!

Trip to Vermont

Friday, July 23 - Sunday July 25, 2010

While we were in Boston, Laura planned a parish exhibit in Vermont for one of the weekends. Sr. Carmen Christi, the novice formator, along with novices Sr. Emily and Sr. Sylwia joined Jackie and Laura for the trip. We had the exhibit at St. Francis Xavier church (http://www.sfxchurch.org/) in Winooski, Vermont. The Pastor, Monsignor Richard Lavalley, is a friend of Laura's, she's know him for many years. He was so welcoming to all of us and was willing to help us with whatever we needed. Monsignor graciously let us give a little pulpit talk to the parishioners after Communion. We introduced ourselves, told them a little bit about our community and our mission as Daughters of St. Paul, and then highlighted a couple of the items we brought to share with them. It was Jackie and Laura's first time giving a pulpit talk! We were both quite nervous, but we did okay! We met so many wonderful people. They were very friendly, and welcoming, and happy to have us there. We were happy to be there, happy to be able to bring God's word to them, to help them grow in their relationship with God, and happy to simply tell them that they'd be in our prayers.

Scripture Class

On the days we weren't visiting the various departments in our Publishing house, we were studying and taking a scripture class with Celia Sirois. The novices, Sr. Emily and Sr. Sylwia took the class with us Postulants. We met 3 times a week and each class was 2 hours long. The theme of the class was "covenant." So, we looked at many of the covenants God has made with man starting in the Old Testament with Noah, all the way through to the New Testament with Jesus being the New Covenant. Celia has a vast amount of knowledge of the Scriptures and the Jewish tradition, so she was able to give us a lot of background information before we even got into the topic of covenants. There was so much material to cover and we only had class for about 3 weeks. We probably could have had class for about 3 months and still may not have been able to cover all the material! It was so interesting though and we really saw how persistent God is. He never gives up on his people, no matter how many times we fail, he's always there to pick us up and give us another chance. We had to do a final project that showed what we learned about God's character through his covenants. We all worked together on the project and did a combination of a video and a play. We had a lot of fun videotaping and acting, but we also learned a lot in the process. Just before we left to come back to St. Louis, we performed/presented it to our teacher Celia and then for our community of Sisters in Boston. Everyone seemed to enjoy it and we were able to clearly show examples of God's character: how persistent, faithful, consistent, and abundant God is!

J-Club Bookfairs: Mission to Our Schools

As media nuns, we are not particularly stationed in schools. So our J-Club book fair outreach (http://jclubcatholic.com/) has been an excellent way to bring our media to many children in our schools who are in need of the Word of God. While in the J-Club department, we learned a lot about the various operations for the J-club: how to connect with the schools to set up the day(s) for the fair; how to conduct the fair (e.g. do-it-yourself fair by the school or one done by the sisters); how they receive and process orders of media from the children, etc. The J-club fairs have really been blossoming. In the past academic year, we had almost 50 fairs in several areas of the country, many of which we do not have our book centers! Indeed, the Word of God is taking on wings :-) We were glad to have had this opportunity to see how the J-club works at the Publishing house. In the past couple of months, we have been involved in several J-club book fairs here in the St. Louis area and so it was nice to see the other end of things. Praise God that our young ones can be able to meet Jesus through our media right where they are!

Let's Get Digital

Everywhere you turn to these days, there are all sorts of media being used to stay connected, informed or be inspired. You can have an iPod, iPad, read stuff on Kindle, and so on. Well, as apostles of the Word, we are certainly not being left behind! One of our projects at our Publishing house was at the Digital Publishing department. We played around with tools like Kindle and iPod touch...which was nice. However, for us these are not just tools in themselves. We learned about how our mission is evolving to reach the many people in our digital age. We have several iPhone and iPod touch apps already in place on our website (http://www.pauline.org/AppsMP3s/tabid/385/Default.aspx) and still many more to come! For our Digital Publishing project, we worked on getting the content needed for our apps. This involved reading some of our books and getting quotes and inspirational notes that would help many connect with God. It was great to hear about the visionary ideas we have to reach the people of our time. So, ever onward we go with St. Paul as our guide!

The Master is Here and Wants to See You...

Thursdays are special. In the Boston community, we found out that that is when we enjoy visiting with Jesus all day through Eucharistic Adoration! Of course, each of us makes our daily "Visit" with Jesus. However, on Thursdays, the priest exposes Jesus after the morning Mass and different Sisters take time to be with Our Lord. There is a sign right before you enter chapel that reads: "The Master is here and wants to see you...". How welcoming! You know, Eucharistic Adoration is central to our life (http://dsp.pauline.org/OurLife/ApostolicPrayer/tabid/113/Default.aspx). We need to spend time with Jesus to receive instruction and be nourished to go out to all the world and spread the Good News. It was nice to experience this part of our spirituality at our Motherhouse. At our formation house in St. Louis, every third Thursday of the month is special too. We expose Jesus in our little chapel and open the doors to all who wish to make a visit with Jesus by signing up or walking through our book center. It truly is wonderful to know that Jesus is with us and so close to us in this way. We are blessed indeed!