Formation Classes

In the last three months Justin and I have taken quite a few classes as part of our formation program. These classes cover a wide range of subjects including spirituality, theology, history of mission and church, psychological health, physical heath and practical rules for being good missionaries.  We are in class Monday through Friday from 9 to 11:30 and 1 to 3. There have been some amazing classes we have gotten to take, that are taught by wonderful professors from around the country. My two favorite classes are our scripture class and our mission theology class. Our scripture class is to help us become more familiar with the Bible. We started in the Old Testament, and our last two classes have been on the New Testament. We discuss key points in the books, interesting phrases, and we read the books we might be less familiar with. Our mission theology class is to help us with questions of faith people might ask us in mission, and also to understand our call to mission better. We discuss the history of the Church, the Bible, the Church Councils, and what people have done well and not so well throughout mission history. Some classes we have only a couple of times, while others we have every week. Luckily, we have these two classes every week. It has been great to have these classes and to be a part of this formation program.

-Lauren

Easter

We had a great Easter. Justin and I went to the Easter Vigil Mass. One of my favorite sights is seeing hundreds of people processing into a dark Church with candles. During those minutes I feel a warm embrace of Christ. The Mass was beautiful. My favorite part was the adult baptism. It was incredible to see this man come forward wanting to become part of the Catholic Church. He climbed into a little pool and was dunked under three times. Water went all over the place. There were kids who came close to the pool to see the baptism. Almost all of them got splashed with Holy Water. Once the man had been dunked father took the bottle of Holy Oil and dumped it on his head. The man then went back in the back and changed into his nice Easter clothing. When he came back out he had the biggest smile on his face. It was really cool to see him transform from the most nervous man before to the happiest man in the Church afterwards. I was really glad that we got to witness the baptism and be a part of this parish during our time of formation.

Holy Week

For Holy Week we had our second silent retreat of the formation. The focus of the retreat was the life of Christ and his disciples in the time leading up to and including the Passion of our Lord. We reflected a lot on how this was the time that Jesus turned his ministry, to bring about the Kingdom or the Reign of the Father, over to the disciples and ultimately over to us. For Lauren and I, we believe that God is calling us to live out this call to ministry as missionaries. While it is very important for us all to think about what our baptisms are calling us to do with our lives, it seems to me today that these big picture decisions are not nearly as important in bringing about the Kingdom as the little decisions we all make everyday. Right now, the most important thing I think I can do to follow Jesus is to choose not to be grumpy because I have been fasting today. I just pray that I can make enough of these "little" decisions to be a good disciple, so that the next time I am faced with a "big" choice I will have the practice to answer correctly.