Mission Formation: St. Lucia style

North and West from here in St. Lucia, at Big Woods every Wednesday night, people in the community, as well as state-side missionaries in Louisiana, join together for Mission Formation.  This is a wonderful evening of food, fellowship and worshiping together.  At least once a month they have mass and the other weeks they have...well the formation of missionaries.  We give testimonies,sharing what the Lord is doing in our own lives, in the lives of those the missionaries are reaching and then there is a topic pertaining to the missionary life (which by right of baptism we are all called to be) that encourages, teaches, and inspires.  In another word, catechesis. 
Since our experiences from living at the Big Woods last year during Intake (our missionary training time) we have desired to have a night like that in our mission post.  A lot of times our desires are brought to fulfillment but not always the way we had originally thought.  Now that we have been here for a couple of months, we are starting to see the fruition of having a Mission Formation night come to pass.  Instead of Wednesday night our family tradition of Sunday night desert is morphing into Mission Formation.  Praise the Lord!

The Food

Tonight Mia made pineapple upside down cake.  Yum Yum Mia!

The Worship

                                                     

The Testimonies

Jessica sharing a testimony

Our mission formation night is small, well considering our own family still outnumbers those who come, but it is still a blessed time of talking about Jesus and encouraging one another.  We pray to see this grow.  Pope John Paul II on Catechesis in Our Time writes:

"If catechesis is done well, Christians will be eager to bear witness to their faith, to hand it on to their children, to make it known to others, and to serve the human community in every way.”

And, as missionaries, this is always our job; to work ourselves out of a job

14 days left!!!!

Soo good to be home.  It is funny how endearing others can be when one lives in community with others.  We love our missionary friends.  Last night Sarah came home and we had her, Sidney, Jonathon and Kristin over for dinner.  Mrs. Gennie took the oldest five children to New Orleans to spend the night at the Granger's and then pick up Susanna at the airport this morning.  We have been praying that Susana would not have to return to India in order to get her Visa for the Philippines. 

Now we are getting the kids ready for Mission Formation.  As you may have noticed the date of our departure has been moved to the 19th.  Tickets were a little cheaper for the 19th, but the tickets are now bought!!! Praise be to God.  Thank you so much for all those who have supported us. 

Privileged to Serve

    Today three of the girls were asked, along with others, to help with the singing as part of a choir at a funeral.

"Privilege, huh?"

    Yep! One of our fellow missionary's Grandma passed and today was the funeral mass. Abi, Ellie, and Esther sang very well. The family was grateful to have music. Speaking of family, our being here, living in community, training with other, is a lot like living as a family. Our lives intertwined, their concerns become our concerns.  So we were glad to go and support our sister and her family and serve!

     When Lora and I got married one of our life goals was, and is, that we would be able to love and serve the Lord  and our neighbor as a family. We believe that putting into practice our Lord's words is one of the most important ways of giving others faith in Jesus.  Missionary life brings so many opportunities to serve and we have not even left our training yet, much less the country!!! As part of our training we are learning to integrate certain things into our life routine. They are Prayer, God's Word, Sacraments, Community, and Service.  Each day we try to examine our day and see where we have put them into practice. I will write more about what this list means practically, later on.

Please pray for our sister Andrea who will be delivering a baby any day now.