Argh!!!

So I'm assuming all of today's events are a sign that something good is about to happen with my visit to St. Walburga's and the start of my new job shortly after that.

First "argh!" moment today occurred when the ticket I was trying to reserve (the bargain priced one) disappeared while I was reserving it. I had to go for the slightly higher priced one for a flight later in the day. While I was booking that one, my mastercard was declined, twice! Yep. Had to use my mom's card. The good news is that I'm booked now! Concrete, I will be going to St. Walurga's I have the itinerary and confirmation.

Second, after coming home from a wonderful evening at my sister's spent with my super cute niece and nephew I went to check the mail and got my bank statement. I checked my bank statement to find that $200 had been stolen from my account. It was stolen the day after I got back from the West Coast Trail on Father's day. I apparently made a $200 withdrawal from an ATM in Vancouver that day......that's pretty hard to do when all I recall doing is going to a Father's day picnic, sleeping, and going to adoration and mass. Argh....

So let's hope that the bank has some hopeful news for me tomorrow. I wonder what other sorts of trials are coming my way....heh. St. Michael the Archangel.......

Thinking about it now, this could have been a lot worse. I mean I had so much grace over the weekend, what with confession and mass and the blessings from the 2 new priests and Jacob's baptism and all the praying that went on this weekend. Not to mention the fatty benedictine crucifix I'm wearing. I mean I think I'm pretty well guarded, so this could have been a lot worse. My friend was also saying that this could have been a result of all of that grace. You know, spiritual attacks to help me lose that grace. So I suppose I should be thankful to God for the trials and thankful that it isn't worse than it is. Hmm....patience and trust in Divine Providence right?

UIOGD

Gourmet

"Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to his beloved is that of overcoming self"
-St. Francis of Assisi

"When You have loved Him, You are chaste; when you have touched Him, You become more pure; when you have accepted Him, You are a virgin."
-St. Clare of Assisi

"Listen carefully, my son, to the Master's instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart. This is advice from a father who loves you; welcome it, and faithfully put it into practice. The labor of obedience will bring you back to him from whom you had drifted through the sloth of disobedience. This message of mine is for all, and armed with the strong and noble weapons of obedience to do battle for the true king, Christ the Lord."
-St. Benedict

"I asked a favor of you," Scholastica replied simply, "and you refused it. I asked it of God, and He has granted it!"
-St. Scholastica
Ha ha ha!! She's great!

Countdown to adulthood....

Had another driving lesson, things were much smoother this time. My instructor was not distracting and pretty helpful. Waiting on word about my ticket to Denver.....I'm not sure how this is going to work out, I guess I just need to do that praying and trusting thing again. St. Walburga's I'm coming....I've just got to get to you. It's time to see what's going on. This is the real deal now. My friend Kristine is out there right now, I hope things are going well.

I start work officially on the 17th of July, but I don't know where I'm going to live yet. No available 1bdrm apartments in Stanwood.....Here we go, yay I'm an adult. Ha ha ha! You'd think I would have figured that out back when I was 18. But I really wasn't an adult then. I'm still unsure of my adulthood now, but I'm sure that will feel really concrete once I start work. Adulthood, what does that mean? It means I have to trust God more :)

What a Weekend!

This was the most fun I've had in one weekend in a really long time.

On Friday my friend Jon arrived from Bellingham, we got fed a lot by my mom and we headed out to Richmond for the last ordination mass in the Vancouver Archdiocese. We met some of my friends from my home parish there. Luckily, they saved us seats in the third row!!! It was really crowded! In Vancouver the ordinations are done separately and each one is done at the seminarian's home parish. It's done like that for the seminarians and as a vocations promotion tool to revive and keep up the parish's good work. It was a great mass. I think the coolest part of the whole mass was right after Fr. Henry was made a priest when the Archbishop said something like "there are special graces associated with blessings from a new priest, and no one needs it more than I do," then he took a knee to the new priest and received a blessing from him. Talk about being a servant, for the Archbishop to kneel in front of the newest priest to get blessed by him....wow!! After the mass we got to eat more and wandered around and talked to some of the priests we knew and got blessings from the newly ordained priests and one of the other priests ordained that week. We also got to chat with some sisters who were there, we saw the missionaries of charity wandering around, and asked a few priests in cool habits questions about their orders etc. I was also introduced to a few seminarians because apparently my friend Kristine knows them all! From a vocations standpoint it was sooooo wonderful to see a man become a priest. It's so beautiful to see God inspire and work through people. I can't describe how amazing it was to watch him say his first words of consecration and the feeling in my heart to know that there are two more hands that can bring Christ in the flesh out to our starving world. It was amazing. Yay for Fr. Henry Yeung!! It was so wonderful seeing all the priests and the sisters and seminarians there. It really felt like a family affair, sisters and brothers coming together with God as our heavenly Father. So awesome!!! It was also the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, what a great day to be ordained!!
Since we were already in Richmond we headed out to the night market. We got a little lost so we only had about an hour there, but it was really fun. Donne and Jon had never been to anything like it before. Jon ended up buying this cool looking decorative dagger thing, it's not sharp so hopefully he won't have any troubles getting it across the border. I almost thought he was going to buy a samurai sword, but he opted out of it. That was an adventure, the night market is always fun. We ended up getting home around...1am I think.

Saturday morning we went to confession and headed out to playland. We got there around 12:00 and started the day off with the Hellevator. If you don't know what that is....well it's basically a ride where you sit back and are harnassed in and you get shot up about 12 storeys into the air and get dropped again. That was crazy!! It was really fun though. We met up with my church friends again around 1:00. We went on a lot of rides. I went on a lot of rides I wouldn't normally go on, but Jon is a persuasive guy and so I got suckered into going onto rides like "The Scrambler"....yeah you can imagine. My favorite is always the classic wooden roller coaster from the 50's that gets up to 90km/hr. Yep, it's crazy and you feel like you're going to fall out of it. Halfway through our day at Playland we took a trip to Holy Rosary Cathedral in downtown Vancouver. It's such a beautiful Cathedral. Beautiful stained glass and gothic architecture. Jon saw his first communion rail, but got a little confused at Communion time and got into the regular standing reception line instead of the line for the rail. Oh well, maybe next time. I love mass at the Cathedral, it's so great. We headed back to Playland to get our money's worth and went into the Haunted House, did the Coaster and the Hellevator again and went on the log ride where my friend's cousins proceeded to soak us by splashing after the actual ride down the splashy hill. We came off looking like we jumped into a swimming pool. That was crazy, but it was really fun. The Haunted house was hilarious and actually pretty scary. I know I screamed a lot... more than I was expecting to. The actors in it did a great job of growling and sneaking up on you, it was creepy. My friend's cousin Liya was screaming like she was getting stabbed or something she was so scared! Ha ha ha!
After saying goodbye to Playland and getting some much needed cotton candy we headed out to Robson Sushi, an all-you-can-eat sushi place in downtown Vancouver. It was great. A fun experience for Jon who didn't even know these types of places existed. We ate waaaay too much but had a ball of a time. Unbeknownst to me this was supposed to be a belated birthday celebration day o' fun for me, so my meal was paid for and my group of friends sung an incredibly loud and embarassing "Happy Birthday" in the restaurant. That was really funny, I guess it was so loud that other people in the restaurant were singing and the cooks were clapping in the back. Ha ha! After sushi, my parish friends took off for home and Jon and I decided to snag some Gelato on Denman and check out English Bay. It's been a while since I've had Gelato from that place, it's almost as good as Florence.....almost.

Today was wonderful. We went to Saint Clare's for my nephew's baptism, which is a beautiful parish. Right now everything is done in the parish hall, but it's prettier than many parishes I've seen in Canada and the States. Fr. Craig Scott did an amazing baptism service and spoke about the continuity of baptismal promises throughout a person's life. It was great. He's such a cool priest. After the celebration at St. Clare's we headed to my sis' place for the reception. Lots and lots and lots of ....you guessed it....eating!! It was a fun gathering with the family and Joy and Peter's friends. As always I love seeing the babies.

"Boooo....Yay!!!!"

Okay here's the game, when I say something crappy you say "Boooooooo" when I say something fun and cool you say "Yay!!!!!"......it's something we used to do at camp......

Well I didn't get to go to the Abbey today with the girls 'cuz I had a driving lesson in the middle of the day....let's say I need a lot of work with my turns. I don't turn fast enough on the right turns and I turn too fast on the left turns...so I'm always going into the wrong lane of traffic. My instructor was pretty nice, but she talked a lot and turned on the radio...very, very distracting!! "Boooo....."

On the "Yay!!!" side, last night was a really fun bbq/birthday party deal with the family and friends. It's always fun getting to catch up with people after wandering for a while. It was definately a different birthday than my one in Calcutta last year. No monsoon for this birthday, just friends, family, lots of food, and tiki torches in the backyard. It's weird thinking about Calcutta and that it's been a year since I was there. I wonder if I'll ever go back....

The rest of the week is beginning to look pretty busy. Tomorrow me and the parents hit up B'ham and Stanwood to run errands, sign contracts, scout out apartments etc...On Friday I get to see an ordination in this Archdiocese, which I've never seen before. Should be really cool. Saturday one of my friends is planning a day o' fun around Vancouver...complete with a trip to Playland!! Yay 100 year old roller coaster!! Sunday is Jacob's baptism!!! Fun week. God is good. I'm in a bit of a laziness rut with the prayers, hopefully I'll climb out of it soon. I'm pulling a St. Teresa of Avila and blaming not praying on physical tiredness....yikes!!! Okay...focus, focus....

Pictures from the Trail....

Picture commentary below....

The West Coast Trail

On June 9th I finished at camp. Lots of cleaning, lots of tired staff members, but we had a fun season. I went up to Bellingham that night, got up the next morning and ran lots of errands, got lots of stuff from REI went to confession, adoration, and mass and then set out for Port Angeles with Jon and Corina. We got there at around....midnight? Let's just say it took Jon a little too long to pack all his stuff. I think we can also safely say that Jon brought too much stuff :) We all met at Chris' cabin in Port Angeles and had a pre-trip bonfire while we mused over how insane this trip would be. The next morning we drove all the cars to Chris' parent's place and hopped in the big brown van. This wasn't just any van, this was a striped, shaggy, huge, decked out hilarious Van. We hopped the Ferry to Victoria. When we were getting questioned by the customs guy on the other side we were asked "How much alcohol are you bringing on the trail? Do you have any bear mace? Do you have any tobacco?" ha ha ha!!! Bear Mace...Alcohol? Ha ha ha! Ehem...anyways we took a short trip to the Real Canadian Superstore to get some lunch and some last minute items, which for me thankfully meant jerky. The beef jerky which would be a crucial part of staying happy on the trip. (Little known fact: I love beef jerky).

So we get to Port Renfrew which is the southern trailhead and go through a slideshow orientation and general hazard warning session of the WCT. Let's just say the Ranger lady didn't seem to have much confidence in us finishing the trail...:) When we started there were 18 people who had been rescue/evacuated since May 1st of this year. After that good scare and purchasing a couple of maps we headed out for Bamfield, where the northern trailhead was. It was only supposed to take 3 hours.....we got horribly, horribly, lost and it ended up taking more like 5 hours. Up and down logging roads bouncing around in the brown van, and man was it hot. I'm surprized I didn't hurl, but I was sleeping most of the time. We finally got there at around 6pm to find the ranger station closed and a big "no Camping" sign on the porch which was in front of this big flat grassy area. We had no choice!! We couldn't go on the trail yet because we didn't have our park passes and our big brown van had left with Chris' brother John driving it away. We walked out to the beach with all our gear, made our dinner out there and then slept on the ranger's porch. We got up early to get our passes and head out at 9am on Monday morning.

We decided that we needed to hike extra far the first day to make up for the time we had lost on Sunday.....so that meant we hiked 25km!!!! On the first day!!!! The trail is 75km long!! I was thinking we'd go for 7 days and finish on Saturday night(originally without losing the Sunday)....ha ha ha we're insane. We did it in 4.5 days and finished at around 1pm on Friday. As for the middle bits of the trail, let's just say that it was painful, beautiful, and totally random. The pictures will do more talking, but here's some highlights.....saying the 15 decade rosary on the beach at night, swimming and sitting under tsusiat falls, going across rivers on cable cars that the boys pulled across for us, ladders upon ladders, the nice breaks at the lighthouse stations, drinking beers after the boat crossing, watching the boys spend $45 for 3 fresh crabs, eating huge and amazing hamburgers in the middle of the trail at a shack on the beach, seeing bald eagles, whales, sea lions, sea otters and lots of tidepools, listening to funny sounds we all made when falling into mud pits, and listening to Oooyip oooyip ooyip (aka coyotes on the Grizzly Man soundtrack in the van on the ride home). It was insane, I'm quite bruised, but it was so incredibly beautiful and now I can say that I've hiked one of the most difficult trails in the world. Thank you God for keeping me alive!!!

Oh yeah and on the Ferry ride back from Victoria I accepted the Youth Ministry position at St. Cecilia's parish!! I'm a YM!! I have a job!!! Oh no..this means I have to act like an adult now. Oh well, I turned 23 yesterday, I suppose it's time :) UIOGD. Going to visit the Abbey tomorrow after a driving lesson!

Yet another interview....

So I've had a pretty awesome weekend so far. It's really amazing how God's been taking care of me. I had no idea how I was going to get to my interview, where I was going to stay, where I was going afterwards and it all worked out in a matter of minutes. I got a ride from a coworker, the parish put me up at a nice hotel nearby, I took a cab to the interview (also paid for) got to spend some time with Beth, and I'm now spending time with Janet.

So Friday I got to the hotel, took a bubble bath, relaxed a bit, had great Val pampering time. This morning I got up early, packed up, and took a cab to St. Monica's. My cab driver was really nice and he was telling me all about how Vancouver is his favorite city. I got to St. Monica's and I found the adoration chapel right away, it was the first door I tried. I thought it was the entrance to the church, but it was the entrance to the adoration chapel and as soon as I opened the door I was greeted by Jesus! Yeah I hat about 40 minutes to spend with Jesus saying rosary and doing the St. Bridgets before my interview. It was time well spent. I think the interview went pretty well. It is a solid solid parish. MI, Knights of Columbus, Legion of Mary, Friends of the Needy, Respect for Life group, NFP etc...the list goes on. It was pretty darned exciting. I'm praying for all these parishes.

After that I was picked up by my friend Beth and we went to the Qwest field expo for Rite Aid and picked up cool samples of all sorts of health and beauty stuff for 3 hours. It was fun.

I then transferred to Janet in Seattle. We hung out at a friend's house who was having a Pentecost party, ate some great food. Then off to Island County for a few margaritas at Applebees.

Tomorrow....bbq and last mass of the year up at NCCM. Woohoo!

UIOGD

Bye Bye Oly.

It was a great weekend in Olympia. Mass at the Abbey was cool. The building itself was kinda weird but it was just great to go to mass with the OSBs again. Spending time with Nausheen's family and getting to see the capital city was really fun. Not much else to tell from this end. Back on site now, another exciting week of campers are coming in tomorrow! Only 2 weeks left! Crazy.

OSBs

Ooh ooh! I get to go to St. Martin's Abbey Church for Mass tomorrow. Yay Benedictines. I hope it's as cool as Christ the King. More to report tomorrow....

Val the nomad tells stories of the haunted chapel.

This weekend I'm in Olympia. Man that was a creepy Greyhound ride. The Seattle Greyhound station was scary, the Tacoma one was scary too, and the Olympia one wouldn't have been so scary except that I was there at 10:30ish. But now I'm at Nausheen's house for the weekend. It's been a long time since we've hung out so I'm excited to be here for the long weekend! This afternoon I'm going to the mosque with her to see what their Friday prayers are like, should be interesting. It's so great to be around her family, I love hearing that Indian accent!

Now for my own spiritual stuff. It is soooo difficult to do night prayers. I guess the fatigue is beginning to catch up with me. I've been really thankful these past few weeks for some spiritual support on staff. Just having that one extra staff member out there who is a solid Catholic has made a huge difference. This however is a big deal in the spiritual realm. Ie-Satan does not like what is going on at this Catholic Camp! Soo...yay and watch out! We've been having some very strange things happen outside around the chapel. By very strange I mean frightening and unholy. I usually go up to the Chapel on site for night prayers around 10:30 or 11:00pm. This chapel is a beautiful building. There are lots of windows, it's in the middle of the forest. Just beautiful, but scary as all heck at night in the dark. Actually, the chapel itself is not scary in the dark, whatever is outside is scary. There's something that circles the chapel when you're in there and something that definately does not want devout prayers to go on inside. So yeah...that's all I can really describe without getting into too many details. This however just strengthens my resolve to go pray there more! Stupid demons. I should ask Fr. Abbot to come down and do an exorcism on the chapel. I talked to a friend about what might be going on and he said to look for strange things around the chapel. You know, like weirdo pagan stuff like pictures of idols or symbols or something. I didn't really find anything, but there's this one thing that I want to check out. Anyone heard of a labyrinth before? Yeah there's one of those in front. I'm going to have to do some internet research.

UIOGD

Ack!

Okay, so applying for jobs requires a lot of trust in God. I'm so greatful for friends that give good advice and friends who are incredibly honest with me. Thanks guys. This week at work we got a new staff member Amy. Amy is solid, very cool, a God-send literally. Some other interesting things have been happening and are a very nice answer to prayer. Thank you Jesus!

During the week with the kids we do an activity called Serendipity. The activity is designed to calm them down, build some trust, and learn new things about themselves or teammates before going on a night hike in total darkness. Last week I did an activity with them called "questions from a bag". The basic idea is that you pick a question from the bag and answer it for the group. Whoop dee doo right? Some of the questions are :

"If you were on a deserted island what 2 things would you want with you?"

"What do you think heaven will be like?"

" What makes you feel better on a sad day"

etc....

my personal favorite is

"What's one thing you want people to know about you?"

I know what the shape of this card is so I intentionally pick this one....(I know it's cheating..)

But anyways I pick this one to tell the kids about my vocation. So I told them "well, this may shock you, but in a few years I'm probably going to go into a convent and become a nun". Now, I usually get very surprized looks from my students and chaperones, but this week was hilarious. One of my girls said "there are still nuns?" the rest of the group shouted "WHAT?!" and looked at eachother in disbelief while still others shot questions out like machine-gun fire. It was an interesting experience, but wonderful. This isn't exactly a good example of me being humble, but it was such a great feeling to be a witness to those kids in a very defined way. So I answered some questions they had about why I wanted to do it and general questions about sisters and the things they do and we moved on to the rest of our night hike. I'm not exactly sure what happened after that, but I think me being incredibly open with those kids helped them trust me more. So I guess it helped serve the purpose of the activity! We actually got to have mass this week!! Thank goodness! I also got the opportunity to do the last night prayer for the week again and despite my lost voice it went pretty well. It was a pretty fun week. It looks like the weather is going to be wonderfully steamy tomorrow and I hope that continues through this week. I've gotten super dark from working outside all day long, I look like I've been vacationing in Mexico or something....but alas no vacation yet.

Now I'm just up to my ears in applications and phone calls and trying to arrange interviews etc... I've got one lined up for this Friday that I'm really excited about, so if you've got some extra prayers you could spare I'd really appreciate them.

I've basically been running around like a chicken with my head cut off this weekend. I went to see a dance performance of a co-worker's on Friday night, skipped up to B'ham, helped organize my friend's engagement party, went to it and celebrated all day, then hopped on a Greyhound this morning, took the bus from the station home (got a little lost on the way), and then finally got to see my mom for mother's day and spend a little time with the babies. They're like drugs. They're so darn cute and fun to hang out with you don't want to leave. My niece was on a sugar rush this evening before bathtime and was incredibly hyper and giggly. She was basically running around the house in only her diaper laughing, it was really cute. I miss them. This is ridiculous, I need to get my license. Back on the Greyhound and down to Monroe tomorrow........Thank God for God.

UIOGD

St. Olaf's

Well I went and interviewed for my first youth ministry position this weekend. Let me tell you....St. Olaf's is a really cool parish. They've got 101 ministries at the parish, you can tell they're doing something right. What's that you ask? Oh yes, they have perpetual exposition and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. That's right. Oh and they have a seminarian from there too. Yep, vocations come from the parishes with Adoration. So yeah, good interview. Cool people, I should find out in a couple of days about the job. It was funny interviewing with Annie (my roommate for the last 2 years of college). It was nice to have the support going to that first one though. I hope there are more coming soon. There's really only one thing about St. Olaf's that I'm worried about, that's how far it is. It's way out on the Penninsula. But it's a cool little town nonetheless and it's close to Bremerton which is where another friend of mine lives. Eh, I should stop worrying, it's all in God's hands anyways.

I also watched three movies this weekend. Here are my reviews!

"Tristan and Isolde"....uh too many sex scenes, too gushy, too much feeling like I want to slap the characters in the back of the head and say "what the heck are you doing?".

"Pride and Prejudice" very cool. Now there's a more realistic love story. People getting annoyed, real misunderstandings, a family that you love but get irritated with at times. Great closing scene. Aw....I actually liked a romantic movie! Wow!

"Crash" not exactly what you would call uplifting, but an important film. It makes you think, it brings uncomfortable issues up in your face, it's real life in the harshest way. An important film to see. Great cast. I'm so glad this won best film instead of "Brokeback Mountain" ugh.

I also heard this really cool song last week called "Whisper of Angels" by Amici Forever. Check it out, it's beatiful. Thanks for the song Amy!

Yep. Hope you're having a good week! Don't forget that Sunday is Mother's Day. Love your moms. The biological one and the spiritual one!

UIOGD

lingering questions....

So did the Pope sign that document about tridentine masses? Hmm...So what happens when the Pope puts out that new apostolic exhortation about the liturgy that says some instruments like guitars are inappropriate for mass? Will parishes everywhere just go back to organs? Hmm....it's a difficult position. On one hand, I love gregorian chant and I think it would be neat if all the parishes could start filtering out some of the crap music people are playing....but I know that there's some really nice and prayerful contemporary stuff out there which can lead people closer to God if it's done in a humble and appropriate way. I have also definately heard music at some parishes done with the organ that can only make people cringe and pray for it to stop instead of making them focus in on the Eucharist. So what now? Swift changes to happen this fall? Rumor has it this next document from Pope Benedict is due out in October of this year. If you're wondering where all these questions came from....I'm at home this weekend and went to mass at my home parish. We did straight up praise and worship music....it was nice to sing to, but c'mon guys it's Easter! Do some Easter songs! Ehem...sorry for that. I guess deep down I'm still a control freak about mass music. I know.....humility....humility.....humility......

Jacob Donovan

Here he is! My new nephew! 6 pounds 11 ounces. April 25th!! What a cutie. Thank the Lord for Life.

Home for the Weekend

I went straight from the Greyhound station to Joy's house! My new nephew Jacob Donovan was born on Tuesday!!! He's sooooo adorable. I arrived late in the evening, so he was asleep. I can't wait to see him tomorrow when he's awake. They say he's a whiner. Ha ha!

This week was challening because it was really exhausting. I really began to see the fruits of the Divine Mercy Novena when I got back on site last Sunday though. Wowee, the Holy Spirit can work so quickly. I also had a fun experience with my own vanity this week. It's so strange....all you have to do is let your guard down for a second and give in to vanity or pride and you leave yourself open to attack, to a flood of doubts, to self-pity, and feelings of abandonment or loneliness which can only be relieved with humility and faith. Sometimes it seems as though the most difficult thing you can do in the world is turn your eyes to God. When you're overwhelmed, to focus and put blinders on to the world is like putting a hat on in a windstorm. We're so stupid sometimes as people that we forget that all we have to do is step under the shelter of the Lord. Lord, please laugh at my feebleness and have mercy on me.

Today after we had communion service at camp I got to deal with the altar cloths and cleanup of the vessels. I accidentally volunteered for it. It was either that or they'd have to call this lady to drive out to do it because we didn't have a priest with us. I've never even been an Extraordinary Minister of the Eucharist before! I've just watched closely and listened to my friends who have been sacristans before. As far as I know (I called people and checked too) I did everything right. Sorry if I messed up Jesus, have mercy on my ignorance....Ecclesia Sufficit?

Short, but cool and hilarious weekend.

So this weekend was pretty fun. It's shorter than my usual 3 day weekends (yes I'm at camp right now and we start tomorrow) but it was chillax and fun. Brett (my world youth day travelling/college campus ministry buddy) picked me up from camp on Friday evening and we drove over to his dad's cabin/mansion/rustic german looking house in Lake Stevens and had a (George Foreman) BBQ with a couple friends of his. His dad was away for the weekend and mom was a little overwhelmed with stuff so he thought it best we stay there. Let me just tell you that this place was incredible. I'm not talking like ritzy and fancy or anything like that, but it's just one of those places you read about in kids books. There's this huge german looking house that his dad built in the woods that has 5 acres surrounding it. There's random rope swings everywhere, a greenhouse, a garden, a firepit with benches, an orchard, a stream with this cool bridge over it, a little cabin that's powered by solar panels, there's a great deck overlooking it all....ah. It was pretty sweet. Basically I want to buy this place from Brett's dad and start a Benedictine Abbey for women there..... So yeah, had a bbq and a few chill drinks on Friday night, woke up to an amazing sunny warm day on Saturday. Went down to the stream and did lauds and just breathed in heavy and deep. It's amazing what doing lauds has done for my morning personality. Anyone who knows me knows I'm a night owl and am a complete zombie in the mornings, but after doing lauds I feel light as air and alert. It's so great. Nothing like a little God to start your day. We had breakfast on the deck in the sunshine, Brett took me on a full tour of the house and property, and then we headed out to see Michael Gunn.

Went to confession, went to dinner at a Mexican restaurant, went to the Five Point in downtown Seattle and caught up with Michael G. and Colleen, and watched a ridiculous Canadian movie starring David Hasselhoff as a former cowboy who lives in Calgary (it was ridiculous, I fell asleep at the end). This morning we went to mass at OLPH which was Brett's home parish growing up and then went out to lunch with his mom. She was really cute. Just chatty and really bubbly and open, I can see where Brett's personality comes from. Anywhoo, after that we went to the Divine Mercy prayers and a bit of adoration at OLPH before he took me back to camp. All in all a refreshing, random, and absolutely hilarious weekend hanging out with Brett and Michael Gunn. Thanks guys.

Tomorrow we start the long string of max capacity sessions. We're going to have over 100 students every week from now until June. Crazy! It should be really fun though. I've decided to start actively placing God in my lessons and in all of my language while teaching all this ecology stuff. It's weird, I always wanted to while I worked at Evans Lake, but it was a secular camp so I couldn't. I volunteered and worked there for 8 years and just got stuck leaving God out. These first few weeks at CYO I've just been teaching the stuff like I always do until my Assistant Director asked me if I had been putting God into my lesson plans.....so which I answered with a surprize "No actually." It was sort of a "Duh! You can do that now!" moment for me. So woohoo!! God and the Environment out in full force! Yesss!!

Also, I've been checked out, I'm not a wacko and can come to visit St. Walburga's for sure. The sisters have given me the best dates to come and told me to start checking travel plans. Woohoo!!! So exciting!!

Real Art

This beautiful painting was sent to me by my friend Jon. It's of young Mary. I don't know what the title of the painting is, but it's so beautiful. I hope the artist (who I also don't know) doesn't mind me sharing her with you all.

"Oh most pure and loving heart,

of My Mother and My Queen

Grant that I may love thee,

love thee daily more and more.

Grant that I may love thee,

love thee daily more and more."

Alleluia!!!

+The Lord is risen, alleluia.
+The splendor of Christ risen from the dead has shone on the people redeemed by his blood, alleluia.
+Our Redeemer has risen from the tomb; let us sing a hymn of praise to the Lord our God, alleluia.
+Alleluia, the Lord is risen as he promised, alleluia.
+This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad, alleluia.
+Very early on the morning after the Sabbath, when the sun had just risen, they came to the tomb, alleluia.
+Christ has risen from the dead and will never die again, alleluia.
+He was handed over to death for our sins;he was raised to life to justify us, alleluia.
+Since you have been raised to life with Christ, seek the things that are above, alleluia.
+Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the Lord's tomb, alleluia.
+Come and see the place where the Lord was buried, alleluia.
+Jesus said: Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to set out for Galilee; there they will see me, alleluia.
+This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad, alleluia

God our Father,
by raising Christ your Son
you conquered the power of death
and opened for us the way to eternal life.
Let our celebration today
raise us up and renew our lives
by the Spirit that is within us.

Grant this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Happy Easter!! God Bless!
U.I.O.G.D.

Easter Sunday Antiphons from Christian Prayer: The Liturgy of the Hours

Underway.....

(image from www.walburga.org)

Plans are underway. I've made contact. After I send them some info on myself to make sure I'm not a wacko, I can sign up to visit. They're expecting a visit in July. It's only $287.00 to fly from Seattle to Denver. Now getting from Denver to Virginia Dale is the problem. Ooh dang I'm excited. Check these ladies out, they're really cool.
It was kind of a weird thing to do late at night/ in the morning on Good Friday, but I was compelled, what can I say?

On another note, Father did a wonderful job with the Good Friday service today. It took almost 2 and a half hours!! Incredible.

"Behold, behold the wood of the cross on which is hung our salvation. Oh come, let us adore....."
We look forward to your ressurection Lord.