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!