SECOND WEEK OF ADVENT 2014

Roses in December

We are reviewing the process and procedures, expectations and experience of our Volunteer Program and our recruitment efforts.  Bob Koppes, the Director of the Volunteer Program has been working with John on some ideas.  Last week John met with Sr. Monica Gundler and Kristin Niedbala to discuss developing a survey for past volunteers about the program in New Orleans.  They also surfaced names of groups that might have members who would want to live in community while giving service.  An advisory group who would meet a few times each year is also envisaged.  John reviewed this with Bob on Thursday;  Bob talked about recruitment efforts thus far.

While Bob and Charles continued their work at St. Joseph’s Church and Lantern Light, John visited Pope John Paul II High School in Slidell, Louisiana on Wednesday for a ‘Discovery Walk.’

On Friday John met with Colleen Larocca to invite her and her husband to consider being companions to the Volunteer Program as part of the aforementioned advisory group.  They met at Café Reconcile where Br. Joe Fragala and John Petrullo volunteered at different times. 

 On Saturday we all voted in local elections; then Bob and John worked in the yard.  Bob salvaged an old iron gate and relocated it as a focal point where a path met a blank wall; then he transplanted a tree of unknown type next to it; the tree having outgrown its pot.  Nice effect!

On Sunday, the New Orleans Saints suffered what the newspaper called an ‘Epic Fail.’  An understatement. 

Cat and kumquats

FOR REFLECTION:

"They watch for Christ who are sensitive, eager, apprehensive in mind,
Who are awake, alive, quick-sighted, zealous in honoring him,
Who look for him in all that happens,
And who would not be surprised,
Who would not be over-agitated or overwhelmed,
If they found that he was coming at once.

"This then is to watch:

to be detached from what is present, and
to live in what is unseen;
to live in the thought of Christ as he came once,
and as he will come again;

to desire his second coming,
From our affectionate and grateful remembrance of his first."

                                               John Henry Cardinal Newman

BLOG 12.08.14