Baby It's Cold Outside

And when I say cold, I mean COLD! This native Floridian is feeling a little out of sorts in the face (literally) of single digit windchill. But God is good and invented indoors and heaters (when people turn them on). So I have not frozen into an icicle, though it was a close call recently, and am still running after souls at SHU.

Bible Studies are starting up this week. The women have added at least 3 new studies this semester and 5 new student leaders! God is so good! In my senior study we are discussing how to evangelize in their classes and workplaces without being the stereotypical preacher-with-a-megaphone, then we'll go through Salvation History, a FOCUS Bible Study that goes through the fundamental stories that lead to Jesus' coming and Ascension. The juniors wanted to pick a book of the Bible to go through, and we've narrowed it down to six choices as of now. (In case you hadn't noticed, there's 73 amazing books to choose from and 6 women that need to agree...could take a while) I have my favorite that I think would be good for them, but I'm trying not to be too biased and let them pick. And in the Greek (Alpha Sigma Tau) study that just started, we're going to be addressing different topics the girls are battling. They'll bring something they want to talk about and I'll research it and the next week we'll talk about it. They want homework, too. I've led SH before, but the other two methods are entirely new to me. Man, I can't wait for this semester!

This past Tuesday was the 40th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. In the past 40 years in America alone, 55 million babies have been murdered. As the president recently said, "If there's even one step we can take to save one child...then surely we have an obligation to try". Every year, hundreds of thousands come from across the country to Washington, D.C. to march peacefully in protest. The old march with the young; Rabbis and nuns walk alongside each other; different ethnic backgrounds can be seen, banners high, joining the March in an effort to end abortion. This year around 400,000 Americans walked to the Supreme Court steps.

Myself and around 25 other SHU students took a bus at 6am to Washington, D.C. Now, the silly side of the march comes into play when you realize that your friends from around the country will also be in Washington, D.C. Hmm. What a great time to meet up! NOT. I am a firm believer in staying with the group you came with and leaving the people I see up to chance. I'm there for the babies, not reunions. Not everyone holds my opinion, I know, and that's ok. However, that provides the background for my prayer prior to the march: that my buddy (from SHU - the buddy system is best when surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people) and I don't get lost, and if it be Your will, let me say hello to a few far away friends. And boy, is God good!

We ended up at the NC Mass at the National Shrine. Having graduated from a North Carolinian school, I knew the bishops and knew I was praying with my friends from Belmont Abbey. Not only that, but one of my favorite priests from NC was a concelebrant at Mass! And a friend who entered the seminary this year was also in the procession! I didn't get to say hello, but even seeing them was such a blessing! THEN when we got to the Supreme Court steps, I saw the BAC banner and got to say hello to a few old friends. THEN I saw the Nashville Dominican banner. To convey the accurate level of excitement this stirred in my heart, you must know that one of the freshman in my Bible Study last year at BAC entered with them this year. And I knew she was going to be at the March. I saw her for maybe 30 seconds, but they were some of the happiest 30 seconds on the March. THEN I also ran into a fellow missionary friend. THEN we saw the Sisters of Life. Another friend from FOCUS entered there last year. I wasn't sure if she was going to be at the March, so I was just walking through the crowd of nuns, and I saw her! Such a blessed reunion! All of these interactions lasted maybe 5 minutes, but they brought such joy to my heart and soul! And kinda made up for the fact that I couldn't feel my toes anymore. 

Two of our fearless leaders at the March

So many people!

Statue of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton :)

The National Shrine. So beautiful!

And today I went to the swim meet and watched one of the student leaders compete. I love watching swimming, and SHU did such a great job! God is indeed amazing and totally blesses me. Thank you for your amazing prayers and be assured of mine for you!

Continuing to SEEK Him

I can't believe how much I want to share with you all! The missionaries have only been  back at Seton Hall for 2 weeks and the students just finished the first week of the spring semester. But I am still so excited about SEEK! We had a get together for all of the students who went, and a little over half of them showed up! I don't know if you remember trying to plan get together's for students in college, but you invite at least 4 times as many people as you want to show up. It was beautiful to see all of these different men and women mingling like old friends. We shared with them the idea of a gospel presentation, a short explanation of salvation history, and what a great tool it can be in sharing Jesus Christ with Seton Hall's campus. 

But what I really wanted to share with you today is the FOCUS blog. I'm not sure if any of you follow it, but they did an amazing recap of SEEK, complete with videos! Please go check it out!

SEEK 2013

I pray you all have had a blessed holiday season and are ready to jump back into a new year! I had a wonderfully relaxing time in Tampa for a month!

A few highlights:
I was able to head up to visit my grandparents before Christmas. It was so good to see them! I was able to go to daily Mass with my grandma and meet her coffee group. We celebrated my grandpa and my sister's birthday with dinner at Red Lobster and cake. My aunt and uncle from NC also came down with their little boys for the night to celebrate. I grew very close to them when I was at Belmont, so it was a joy to be able to see them, even if only for a little bit.
I got my sister a sonic screwdriver for her birthday. It is also a pen. That writes secret messages. It's pretty awesome.
One of my favorite Christmas presents this year was from my parents. They made a photo scavenger hunt for my sister and I. We spend so much time together, but hardly have any pictures together. So we spent the better part of the day together driving from one location to another.

Our Present!

At Inkwood Books - a cute little bookstore in Tampa

On Bayshore, a beautiful stretch of road along the bay

At Wright's - a delicious cafe on Dale Mabry 

The cake. Yummy!

We snuck into the athletic side of the high school we both attended! Go Crusaders!!

Theresa's new best friend

Megan's new best friend

 My second favorite was that our family all got tickets to go see Les Miserables on Christmas. It was INCREDIBLE. If you haven't seen it, please go see it! Anne Hathaway steals the show!

We celebrated New Year's at our cousins' house, a yearly tradition. It was good to see them! It had been a long time since we had gotten together. Then on January 2nd, we headed to Orlando for FOCUS's National Conference: SEEK. I have mentioned this conference a few times on my blog and I was so excited that it was finally here! For those of you who know the story of when Jesus Christ won my heart, you know it centers around the FOCUS Conference I went to in 2010. I just knew that God was going to do amazing things there.

Theresa came with me, and that was such a blessing! She chose the talks that we both went to, and after we would go out for dinner and discuss what we had just heard. It was so awesome to be able to experience the conference with her. She also has the amazing ability to ground me when I start spinning off on what-if's and maybe's that could go wrong.

Due to a miscommunication between the hotel and FOCUS, some of the missionaries had to be moved to another resort for the conference. I was one of those missionaries. We stayed at the Coronado, which was just as nice. It also forced me to get a good amount of sleep, because the shuttles ran from 8-9am and then again from 10:30pm-1am. So no getting up early or staying out late. Our day started off with Mass at 9, men's and women's break out sessions at 11, lunch until 2, 2 break out sessions from 2:30-4:30 (basically there was a list of 6 sessions during each time slot that you could choose from. The topics and speakers changed every day), dinner until 7, a keynote speaker at 7, then entertainment each night (Wed: comedian Johnnie W; Thurs: swing dance; Fri: Adoration and Confession; Sat: Matt Maher!).

Each missionary has a job during conference, and I was chosen to be on prayer team. For those of you who are not familiar with prayer teams, basically what happens is if you would like to get prayed over, you can go to the team of 2-3 people and ask for prayer. The leader of the team then asks "What would you like Jesus to do for you today?" It could be anything! A lot of people pray for healing from a past wound, for a release of the Holy Spirit into their lives, or for confirmation in discernment. I was privileged to hear some amazing stories. Every time someone would come to my group to be prayed over, I just had this overwhelming sense of joy. Like Jesus was so happy that His children were coming to Him to be healed. Praying with these men and women was one of the best things that I experienced at SEEK. Jesus just wants us to come to Him and ask. The theme from the conference kept coming to my mind: "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you" ~Matthew 7:7

SHU Students at SEEK!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

It has been a while since I posted, and I am truly sorry for that! Things have gotten crazy around here from Thanksgiving, which I spent with my aunt in CT, to trying to get all the students signed up for the SEEK Conference in January. And our final weeks of pushing and asking and praying has paid off! We have around 40 students (including 3 seminarians) signed up for conference! We will be taking a bus from Seton Hall to the Swan and Dolphin Resort starting in the afternoon on the 1st of January. We have been speaking at different parishes, raising money to help pay for renting the bus, and what was said reminded me why I spent so long trying to convince those I love to give it a chance. "[SEEK 2013] will be a life changing event for students – many will go to Confession and Mass for the first time in several years, other students will discover a vocation to priesthood or religious life and many others will recommit their lives to the Catholic Faith." I am counting down the days! 

Speaking of countdowns, I get to see my sister for the first time since August in 3 days and 7 hours. Just saying.

Since yesterday was the feast of the Immaculate Conception, I went to the chapel to pray my rosary in front of Mary and wanted to share this picture with you. This is the statue of Mary at the front of our chapel. I just adore this image of her, a slight smile on her face, holding Jesus yet looking at the congregation of the faithful. A friend of mine and I have discussed our love for Mary at length. Naturally, when I saw this statue I tried to describe it to her. I probably didn't do a very good job, though, so here's the 'real' thing:

The flowers are for her feast day!

Last night the missionaries went into the City for some relaxing time. It was much needed and we all had a great time! Most of the FOCUS missionaries went as well as the missionaries from St. Paul's Outreach. With their 4 plus our 5 (one of us couldn't make it) plus one, our group got to be pretty large! We got to the City around 8 and made a beeline for the tree! It's very beautiful. Many say that they are disappointed by how small it is in real life, but it was still very impressive. 

Then we stood along the rail and watch the skaters (you would just watch too at a $45 fee to skate on such a tiny crowded rink!). It was amusing to watch a little boy skillfully darting through adults - he reminded me of my almost 10 year old cousin - and the four little girls trying to spin and the really talented skaters try not to hit the mere mortals while spinning gracefully.

Caitlyn wanted a ride!

Toward the end of the night half of the party departed and the rest of us went to Phebe's Tavern and Grill to continue with our fellowship. It was wonderful to be able to talk with the two SPO women. We have been becoming closer friends, but because all of us are busy with our own missions, we don't have much time to spend just us missionaries. I am so blessed to be serving on a campus with such amazing men and women!

Me and the SPO women

Blessings

I took the bus from Manhattan to South Orange and was astounded at the amount of damage and debris I saw still on the roads. Being from Tampa, I am no stranger to hurricanes, but we have been blessed that the hurricanes for as long as I can remember have avoided our corner of the world. I have never had to drive through my city and see the havoc Mother Nature left. When Sandy hit last week, I was running around the apartment filling up the tub, buying perishables, getting flashlights in easily accessible places. All through Sunday, Monday, and early Tuesday my team waited...and waited...and waited. But the electricity stayed on, the water kept running, and the worst damage we could see from our window was trees flexing in the wind. I was getting updates from my aunt in CT who lost power for a day, the other Catholic missionaries - who live in a house behind the university - who were without power until yesterday afternoon, and other missionaries from the area most of whom lost power. Driving to campus last Wednesday to pick up my car from the parking garage where it stayed during the storm, we saw countless trees and limbs blocking roads. The lights remained dark in the neighborhood between our apartment and the university until yesterday. The devastation is astounding, but the response from the students is amazing as well! DOVE, the service organization on campus is swamped with students desiring to help our neighbors. 

If you could please keep one of my student leaders in your prayers. She has family that lives on the coast. Her great-aunt's house is condemned, the sea-facing wall having been swept away. A few other relatives' houses, including her grandmother's house where she has lived the past two summers, have at least 3 ft of water damage, making the furniture useless and requiring a lot of work to make them livable again. It's really shaken her up to see pictures of that house on the Internet, taken by random strangers who are wandering the coast documenting the damage. 

In happier news, I was able to go home this past weekend! It was such a blessing to be with my parents! At first I thought I wasn't going to be able to leave as my flight was supposed to leave last Thursday morning from JFK, but after only a little bit of hassle, I got switched to a flight from Hartford, CT to Orlando. One of my teammates graciously made the 3 hour drive from South Orange to Hartford in Starr then turned around and drove her back. My mom promised him homemade apple bread, though, so it's all good. Then my mom was waiting for me in Orlando, having driven 2 hours to come pick me up. She and I can talk about pretty much anything, so the 2 hour drive back was filled with easy, light conversation. You know, things like emotional chastity, finding joy in difficult situations, not being married in heaven, and how to be a better missionary. Man, I love my mom! 

Getting ready to head home! (in other news, I now have Instagram and think I am a professional photographer)

Sitting by my pool in the backyard, soaking in the FL sun...

She went to a scrapbooking event on Friday, so my dad and I were on our own for dinner. That translates into Mr. Empanada!! It was so nice to sit down with my dad and chat. We had a great time at dinner and then chugged up on the couch to watch The Book of Eli. Great father-daughter bonding time. We were going to go see Flight on Sunday, but his dad (my grandfather) passed away on Saturday evening. He has been sick for a while and we weren't sure he was going to hang on this long, but he's a stubborn man. He made it to his 90th birthday which was last Monday and held on even longer as a special gift to me so that my parents were home for 3 days with me before they headed up to PA for the funeral on Sunday morning. The funeral was yesterday, and though I'm sad I wasn't there, I heard it was beautiful. 

More on the weather front, I just have to illustrate how much God loves me. He allowed me to go home and lounge around in my sundresses and bare feet for 5 days out on my back porch before He sent me back north to the Nor'easter storm that gave us a good 3-4 inches of snow yesterday. Brrrr!!! Spent a while unburying Starr this morning.   

...fast forward 36 hours and it's snowing!!!

Poor Starr! (and since I think I'm a professional photographer, sometimes I tilt my phone sideways...which sometimes works better than others)

Oh Sandy!

Well we're all hunkering down to weather Sandy, the hurricane that is passing through. We woke up with electricity, and since everything else, including the University and the churches are closed, I figured it would be a good time to post an update on how things are going!

Here is a map of Sandy's path as of midmorning Monday.

This weekend I was able to head up to Connecticut to visit my aunt and uncle. They were having an early Thanksgiving get together, as not everyone could make it in a month. I got to see my cousin who I grew up with visiting my grandparents' house. We are only a few months apart in age, so we get along pretty well. It had been a long time since we had seen each other though, almost a year and a half! As my uncle is a new and welcome addition to my extended family and I was unfortunately unable to attend his wedding to my aunt, I had yet to meet his 5 children, and my new cousins. Luckily two of his boys were able to come as well as his brother and sister-in-law. We had such a great time! There was so much food, even the men didn't have seconds of everything. Once we had rolled ourselves out of the house after dinner, we made our way to 41st Bridge Street, a nice restaurant that was hosting a Blues Band competition. It was so awesome! Both bands were extremely talented, but my favorite was the Delta Generators. They received a standing ovation and came on for 2 encores!

I had made the decision to leave in the morning, against my aunt's wishes, but it was important to be back down here to weather the storm with my team. Yesterday was spent stocking up on water, non-perishable foods, and batteries. The news is constantly on in the background - and gosh, I never thought I would become my mother. But here I am with a tab opened to the weather channel online, keeping an eye on Sandy even as I type. Both of my parents have been such a help and a blessing. Even though I am standing on my own two feet, making my own decisions, I know I can always call them, ask for advice, and they will give it. I am so blessed! Know that if you are in the path of the hurricane, you are in our prayers. Please keep me in yours so that I make it home on Thursday! (my plane leaves from JFK at 6:15am on Thursday)

I saw on one of the news stories that there were people refusing to evacuate, even though they were in evacuation zone A. While I know some of them choose this because, like someone told me recently, they think the government and the weather channel are in cahoots to boost the economy and the storm won't really be that bad, the reporter said some were staying behind because they were scared of loosing their houses. Seriously? I'm imagining a man standing in front of his house, his family huddled behind him, pointing a shotgun at the oncoming 'Frankenstorm'. All joking aside, there is something wrong with society that a person's property is worth more than complying with a government that's trying to save their life and the lives of the rescue teams who this person assumes would come rescue them if things got too bad. It reminds me of the story of the Prodigal Son. While this story is definitely a story about forgiveness (the younger son takes money from his father, squanders it, then comes back home where the father forgives him and welcomes him back with a huge party) the main moral is often overlooked. Both sons value material things: the younger son demands his inheritance from his father and returns only when the money has run out, the older son follows the letter of the law and is mad that he hasn't gotten a party sponsored by his father with his friends. But that's not the true treasure. The father says to the older son when he complains: "My son, you are here with me always". It is not the material things that have the most value, but the fact that we have a relationship with God.

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. ~Mother Teresa 

Welcome to Fall

So it has been awhile since I posted, and for that I am sorry! So much has been going on that I can't wait to tell you about!

Two weekends ago the students at Seton Hall went on Fall break and the missionaries got to go to Pennsylvania for our regional gathering. All of the missionaries from the Northeast and Atlantic regions had about 40 hours to spend away from campus, playing and praying with fellow missionaries in the beautiful, mountainous, colorful retreat center in the woods. Because one of my teammates went to Mount St. Mary's, only a short drive from the retreat center, we were able to stop by and even see the shrine to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton! Then this past weekend, I was able to go visit my aunt who lives in CT! It was such a beautiful and relaxing drive and time with her and her husband!

For those who know my testimony, you know that the FOCUS national conference in 2010 played a big role in my conversion story. This year FOCUS is having another national conference in Orlando. We're expecting 7,000 students to descend on the Swan and Dolphin Resort for 5 days of rejuvenating and life changing experiences. Here at SHU, we are hoping to bring 100 students on 2 buses for an over 24 hour drive! The missionaries started fundraising last year and we have been able to sponsor 2 students who will be going for free. I wanted to share these two stories with you to show you how God is working here.

First, there is a girl who is currently going through RCIA and is very involved with Campus Ministry. I had asked her if she was going, but she said that she wasn't. She is from California and because of other circumstances, she won't be able to go home at all next summer, so she really wanted to have as much time at home as possible over winter break. Going to conference would mean coming East 2 weeks before she had to be here. Her name ended up in a drawing at one of our events last week, and when her name was read as the winner, she started crying. She said she had been praying about going, and that this is God's answer. She is sad about missing out on time with her family, but she is so ready to go to Florida! I had dinner with her yesterday and she told me a story: In the Bible Study she is in, they make a poster at the beginning of the year with a quote that they will try to live out all year. This year's ends with "God keeps you going." After winning free registration, she got a 'going' sticker and put it near her poster. She couldn't sleep the other night and started meditating on the quote, and this is what happened:

Praise God for answered prayers!

The second is just as amazing! A young man who none of us had met before won at an event we had earlier this year. He looked like someone who was just at the even to get points to put him in a better position for housing next year. He didn't partake in any of the small group discussion, basically keeping to himself and studying the whole time. When we called his name at the raffle, someone overheard him say an expletive. The missionaries assumed he was mad about going and was going to drag his feet. Well one of the male missionaries had a meeting with him last night and found out differently. Apparently he never wins anything, and when our team director said "and the person going to FL is..." he said his own name followed shortly by our TD announcing his name. Out came the expletive. He has also been wanting to go to Florida for a long time. My teammate asked him if the faith aspect was a deterrent  since we actually won't be seeing much of Florida. He responded that it wasn't. In fact, he is inviting at least 7 of his friends, who all are interested if they have some help fundraising! Praise God! Please keep these two and the other 98 students going to SEEK from Seton Hall University in your prayers.

In other news, two of my really good friends made the 12 hour trip from Belmont Abbey to come and visit me for their fall break! They got here last night around 2am and will be here until Sunday! I am so blessed to have such amazing friends!